Change My Mind: The 2024 Election was a Decisive Mandate for Trump

[E-Dawg]

Trump winning the popular vote was thought of as unlikely before the election by most, let alone him winning it by 1.5%. Harris not flipping a single Trump 2020 county was unthinkable, since it hasn't happened since 1932. Every state swinging toward Trump was unthinkable, since it hasn't happened since 1976. Trump bringing Texas back to near 2012 margins was unthinkable. Trump making New Jersey close was unthinkable. Trump topping 30% in NYC and cutting Biden's New York state margin in half was unthinkable.

If you gave the exact 2024 results as a pre-election hypothetical, you would have been laughed out of the room for being a wish-casting Republican hack. Even I would have laughed at it, and I'm somebody who predicted a narrow Trump victory!  Any Harris supporter pre-election would have conceeded that this result would be a clear Trump mandate if it happened, they just would have (reasonably) believed that it would not happen.

Trump's victory was narrow historically, yes. But it has to be considered in the context of the recent past, in which polarization has been extremely high and a Republican popular vote victory hasn't happened in 20 years. At the end of the day, Trump swung the 2020 NPV 6% in his favor, improved among nearly every location and demographic groups, had a number of insane electoral feats nobody thought was possible, held Harris to the worst Democratic performance since 1988, and was the 2nd Republican in the last 32 years to win the popular vote. In the context of this modern day, this was a decisive mandate for Trump.

Note: I originally posted this as reply on this thread, but I decided it was worthy of its own thread since I have seen this talking point thrown around a lot of this election not being a mandate for Trump.

[ottermax]

2020
2008
2004
...

there's some elections that have an argument for a more "decisive" mandate than 2024 depending on the data you want to cherry pick.

I think there's a very clear argument that Americans wanted change and largely selected Trump and Republicans to be that change. However I think the flaw with this line of thinking is that the American public explicitly endorsed any specific vision for America that Trump has outlined. A lot of this support is not deep, and Trump now will be held accountable for his actions I think a bit differently than in 2016.

I think because of this perceived mandate unlike 2016 he won't have the excuse of blaming RINOs, the establishment, and media as effectively as he did in his first term. And this will be tricky for him and Republicans to navigate in case anything goes wrong.

One thing that will likely help Trump is that the media will probably focus more on stupid things he says or people he associates with rather than actual policy criticism, but let's see how he handles the next crisis. He was exceedingly lucky to avoid crises that frustrate regular people from 2016-2019, and then there was a pandemic that he flubbed.

[Crane]

He got 3-4 million fewer votes than Biden did in 2020.

America made a decisive mistake, not a mandate.

[E-Dawg]

2020
2008
2004
...

there's some elections that have an argument for a more "decisive" mandate than 2024 depending on the data you want to cherry pick.

I would also consider 2008, 2012, & 2020 to be mandates (although Biden barely won the electoral college, his popular vote lead was decisive against an incumbent). I'd lean no on 2004 since the results were rather underwhelming for Bush considering him being a popular wartime incumbent with a decent economy, although it can be argued that it was partly due to heavy polarization already having set in.

[ProgressiveModerate]

2020
2008
2004
...

there's some elections that have an argument for a more "decisive" mandate than 2024 depending on the data you want to cherry pick.

I would also consider 2008, 2012, & 2020 to be mandates (although Biden barely won the electoral college, his popular vote lead was decisive against an incumbent). I'd lean no on 2004 since the results were rather underwhelming for Bush considering him being a popular wartime incumbent with a decent economy, although it can be argued that it was partly due to heavy polarization already having set in.

But mandates shouldn’t be based on results relative to expectations, they should be based on the absolute results themselves.

[ultraviolet]

In actual terms it’s less of a mandate than Hillary got in 2016 lmao

[Pericles]

A mandate is judged on the candidate getting broad support, not beating pre-election expectations.

The US isn't fundamentally a different nation than what it would be if Harris won by 2% instead, because the margins are so small. A mandate is not just swinging the minimum swing voters required. It is winning by so much that you effectively win the argument and the opposition can't win with basically the same policies.

[Beet]

Like I said, most Americans voted against him. When most people vote against you it's hard to call that a mandate.

[Zenobiyl]

Trump winning the popular vote was thought of as unthinkable before the election by most, let alone him winning it by 1.5%. Harris not flipping a single Trump 2020 was unthinkable, since it hasn't happened since 1932. Every state swinging toward Trump was unthinkable, since it hasn't happened since 1976. Trump bringing Texas back to near 2012 margins was unthinkable. Trump making New Jersey close was unthinkable. Trump topping 30% in NYC and cutting Biden's New York state margin in half was unthinkable.

If you gave the exact 2024 results as a pre-election hypothetical, you would have been laughed out of the room for being a wish-casting Republican hack. Even I would have laughed at it, and I'm somebody who predicted a narrow Trump victory!  Any Harris supporter pre-election would have conceeded that this result would be a clear Trump mandate if it happened, they just would have (reasonably) believed that it would not happen.

Trump's victory was narrow historically, yes. But it has to be considered in the context of the recent past, in which polarization has been extremely high and a Republican popular vote victory hasn't happened in 20 years. At the end of the day, Trump swung the 2020 NPV 6% in his favor, improved among nearly every location and demographic groups, had a number of insane electoral feats nobody thought was possible, held Harris to the worst Democratic performance since 1988, and was the 2nd Republican in the last 32 years to win the popular vote. In the context of this modern day, this was a decisive mandate for Trump.

Note: I originally posted this as reply on this thread, but I decided it was worthy of its own thread since I have seen this talking point thrown around a lot of this election not being a mandate for Trump.

Depends on how we determine a mandate. The results are stunningly strong at the top of the ticket, yes, but Trump’s party is coming into congress with an even weaker house majority than Biden got—not to mention losing almost every swing state senate race.

I’d consider a mandate as something that involves all the electoral races, since weak congressional majorities suggest voters want a president to be kept in check. With that in mind, I’d say Trump’s mandate is on par with Biden’s in 2020.

The main difference being Biden’s mandate was less than expected by pundits going into 2020, while Trump’s is more.

[Doomer]

He won a mandate.

If the situation were reversed with Harris up 49% to Trump's 48% along with 300+ EVs, Dem posters here would be calling it a mandate.

Just because I happen to believe Americans made a serious and potentially grave error doesn't mean that he didn't win a mandate.

I just hope America doesn't experience another crisis under his watch that leads to millions more deaths as a result of his mistakes. We've been down that road already; repeating it would be catastrophic.

[Virginiá]

I love how over two decades of close elections has reduced expectations to the point that we're arguing over whether a candidate that won a popular vote plurality by a bit less than 2%, a relatively small electoral college majority, and almost a bare minimum House majority in which they actually lost seats, has a mandate. Historically speaking, these are bare wins. Just because the country is so polarized doesn't make it any more significant than that.

The only presidential election of the 21st century that feels like a mandate to me is 2008. Lowering the bar for candidates who had such low expectations to begin with is not a very strong argument.

[JohnAMacdonald]

Trump winning the popular vote was thought of as unthinkable before the election by most, let alone him winning it by 1.5%. Harris not flipping a single Trump 2020 was unthinkable, since it hasn't happened since 1932.  

If you gave the exact 2024 results as a pre-election hypothetical, you would have been laughed out of the room for being a wish-casting Republican hack.

Trump's victory was narrow historically, yes. But it has to be considered in the context of the recent past, in which polarization has been extremely high and a Republican popular vote victory hasn't happened in 20 years.

Note: I originally posted this as reply on this thread, but I decided it was worthy of its own thread since I have seen this talking point thrown around a lot of this election not being a mandate for Trump.

"Unthinkable"-by whom? 538 had a 30% chance that Trump would win the popular vote, they gave a 42% chance that Harris would flip a Trump 2020 state, so that's a 12% chance of both happening, assuming they are independent events, which obviously isn't the case, as for the claim that this is the 1st time since 1932 that this situation has happened, that seems like thorough silliness, there have been many elections since 1932 where the Dems failed to flip a single state.

As for the whole "being laughed out of the room" claim, again, by whoim? Polls showed a close race in all 7 Swing states, and while Harris was perceived as the favourite in some of these, the whole race was anything but easily forecast, and while some people might have expected a close race, we were warned repeatedly that there was a chance of an electoral college blowout, and in the end we had 2016-like results, hardly a shocker if you were paying attention.

Alright, as for the next claim, let's say I have A and B playing a game, A wins 30 times, then B wins once, has B just claimed a decisive victory? Not any more so than any A victory in the past, even more so if A's win is closer than many B wins that came before which you didn't claim were decisive victories.

He won a mandate.

If the situation were reversed with Harris up 49% to Trump's 48% along with 300+ EVs, Dem posters here would be calling it a mandate.

Just because I happen to believe Americans made a serious and potentially grave error doesn't mean that he didn't win a mandate.

I just hope America doesn't experience another crisis under his watch that leads to millions more deaths as a result of his mistakes. We've been down that road already; repeating it would be catastrophic.

Just because some group of people would have done a thing doesn't make it right.
Let's say 500 dem posters would have claimed that Harris had won a mandate if she got at least 1 more vote than Trump, would this make them right?

As for the existential dooming, Covid only killed 1.2E6 Americans, which is a far cry from the "millions" you claimed and the country was ok afterwards, not catastrophic  (Source : https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#maps_deaths-total) Continuously exaggerating claims about Trump only legitimises him further when all the doomsday predictions don't happen.

[E-Dawg]

"Unthinkable"-by whom? 538 had a 30% chance that Trump would win the popular vote, they gave a 42% chance that Harris would flip a Trump 2020 state, so that's a 12% chance of both happening, assuming they are independent events, which obviously isn't the case,

Fair point, I should have said that it was thought of as unlikely, not fully unthinkable.

as for the claim that this is the 1st time since 1932 that this situation has happened, that seems like thorough silliness, there have been many elections since 1932 where the Dems failed to flip a single state.

It wasn't clear what I meant here due to a typo that I now fixed. This was the first election since 1932 where the losing major party candidate was not able to flip any counties.

As for the whole "being laughed out of the room" claim, again, by whoim? Polls showed a close race in all 7 Swing states, and while Harris was perceived as the favourite in some of these, the whole race was anything but easily forecast, and while some people might have expected a close race, we were warned repeatedly that there was a chance of an electoral college blowout, and in the end we had 2016-like results, hardly a shocker if you were paying attention.

The 312 map alone wouldn't have been a good reason to be laughed at, what would have been was the weak Harris margins in safe blue states such as New York, New Jersey, California, and Illinois, Trump's margin in Texas, Harris not flipping a single county, and every single state swinging toward Trump. This was essentially an election where every positive trend for Republicans continued, and every negative trend for Republicans reversed or stopped with very minor exceptions. That is why the results would have been laughed at as Republican wishcasting if made as a pre-election prediction. It was a better result for Trump than anybody outside of the most hack Republicans expected.

Alright, as for the next claim, let's say I have A and B playing a game, A wins 30 times, then B wins once, has B just claimed a decisive victory? Not any more so than any A victory in the past, even more so if A's win is closer than many B wins that came before which you didn't claim were decisive victories.

If you want to heighten the bar for what is a mandate than that's fair (there's a fair argument to be made that Obama 2008 was the only clear mandate this century), but as I said, I would also consider 2012 & 2020 to be decisive mandates. And I do believe that historical contexts of how polarized the country is makes a crucial difference, as well as how good the electoral performances are compared to the fundamentals.

[BlueSwan]

If the situation were reversed with Harris up 49% to Trump's 48% along with 300+ EVs, Dem posters here would be calling it a mandate.

What? I don't even recall us talking about a mandate in 2020, which a far bigger NPV win than this.

[BlueSwan]

Trump winning the popular vote was thought of as unthinkable before the election by most, let alone him winning it by 1.5%. Harris not flipping a single Trump 2020 county was unthinkable, since it hasn't happened since 1932. Every state swinging toward Trump was unthinkable, since it hasn't happened since 1976. Trump bringing Texas back to near 2012 margins was unthinkable. Trump making New Jersey close was unthinkable. Trump topping 30% in NYC and cutting Biden's New York state margin in half was unthinkable.

If you gave the exact 2024 results as a pre-election hypothetical, you would have been laughed out of the room for being a wish-casting Republican hack. Even I would have laughed at it, and I'm somebody who predicted a narrow Trump victory!  Any Harris supporter pre-election would have conceeded that this result would be a clear Trump mandate if it happened, they just would have (reasonably) believed that it would not happen.

Trump's victory was narrow historically, yes. But it has to be considered in the context of the recent past, in which polarization has been extremely high and a Republican popular vote victory hasn't happened in 20 years. At the end of the day, Trump swung the 2020 NPV 6% in his favor, improved among nearly every location and demographic groups, had a number of insane electoral feats nobody thought was possible, held Harris to the worst Democratic performance since 1988, and was the 2nd Republican in the last 32 years to win the popular vote. In the context of this modern day, this was a decisive mandate for Trump.

Note: I originally posted this as reply on this thread, but I decided it was worthy of its own thread since I have seen this talking point thrown around a lot of this election not being a mandate for Trump.

Unthinkable? I was predicting a clear Trump win, including him sweeping all swing states, for most of 2024.

[E-Dawg]

Unthinkable? I was predicting a clear Trump win, including him sweeping all swing states, for most of 2024.

I shouldn't have said Trump winning the popular vote was unthinkable (although it was not considered likely by most), but I stand by that characterization for the other points I brought up.

[The Mikado]

I love how over two decades of close elections has reduced expectations to the point that we're arguing over whether a candidate that won a popular vote plurality by a bit less than 2%, a relatively small electoral college majority, and almost a bare minimum House majority in which they actually lost seats, has a mandate. Historically speaking, these are bare wins. Just because the country is so polarized doesn't make it any more significant than that.

The only presidential election of the 21st century that feels like a mandate to me is 2008. Lowering the bar for candidates who had such low expectations to begin with is not a very strong argument.

I'd agree with this, that 2008 is the only decisive win since 1996 (and Clinton didn't even flip the House back in 1996). 2024 falls into the same category as 2020, 2012, and 2004 as narrow but solid wins, hardly decisive (though 2020 and 2012 have a bit more oomph behind them). 2000 and 2016 are "only won on technicality" zero mandate results.

I've posted this before, but "elections within 5% PV margin" list:

1844
1876
1880
1884
1888
1892
1896


1916
1948
1960
1968
1976


2000
2004
2012
2016
2020
2024


If you feel like 2024 is a big win it's because your perspective is skewed because 2008 is the only big win most people on this site have memory of, but 2024 is closer than almost every election in the 20th century, including several that did make it on this list.

[Samof94]

I love how over two decades of close elections has reduced expectations to the point that we're arguing over whether a candidate that won a popular vote plurality by a bit less than 2%, a relatively small electoral college majority, and almost a bare minimum House majority in which they actually lost seats, has a mandate. Historically speaking, these are bare wins. Just because the country is so polarized doesn't make it any more significant than that.

The only presidential election of the 21st century that feels like a mandate to me is 2008. Lowering the bar for candidates who had such low expectations to begin with is not a very strong argument.

Obama 2012 was not a mandate but hardly a nail biter.

[Joe Rogaine]

I mean anyone can claim a mandate as long as they win. But do I think this is a victory worth bragging about? If 2004 wasn't than this isn't either. It is funny to watch Republicans get a little ahead of themselves talking about how this will be the next Republican majority generation when they again weren't able to win a majority of those who did vote.

Unless you considered Biden's win particularly impressive, aside from the raw vote total record, then I don't see how this is any more impressive, aside from the country's big rightward shift in general, which I think was impressive. But if it doesn't contribute to actual flips (not counting swing states), then it's only so meaningful until it's proven to be a sustained trend.

[Virginiá]

I love how over two decades of close elections has reduced expectations to the point that we're arguing over whether a candidate that won a popular vote plurality by a bit less than 2%, a relatively small electoral college majority, and almost a bare minimum House majority in which they actually lost seats, has a mandate. Historically speaking, these are bare wins. Just because the country is so polarized doesn't make it any more significant than that.

The only presidential election of the 21st century that feels like a mandate to me is 2008. Lowering the bar for candidates who had such low expectations to begin with is not a very strong argument.

Obama 2012 was not a mandate but hardly a nail biter.

It was a decent win in the electoral college, but 3.9% is still a small popular vote margin.

[New World Man]

Biden wins by 7 million and GOP kills cops to overthrow the election.  that.

[JohnAMacdonald]

"Unthinkable"-by whom? 538 had a 30% chance that Trump would win the popular vote, they gave a 42% chance that Harris would flip a Trump 2020 state, so that's a 12% chance of both happening, assuming they are independent events, which obviously isn't the case,

Fair point, I should have said that it was thought of as unlikely, not fully unthinkable.

as for the claim that this is the 1st time since 1932 that this situation has happened, that seems like thorough silliness, there have been many elections since 1932 where the Dems failed to flip a single state.

It wasn't clear what I meant here due to a typo that I now fixed. This was the first election since 1932 where the losing major party candidate was not able to flip any counties.

As for the whole "being laughed out of the room" claim, again, by whom? Polls showed a close race in all 7 Swing states, and while Harris was perceived as the favourite in some of these, the whole race was anything but easily forecast, and while some people might have expected a close race, we were warned repeatedly that there was a chance of an electoral college blowout, and in the end we had 2016-like results, hardly a shocker if you were paying attention.

The 312 map alone wouldn't have been a good reason to be laughed at, what would have been was the weak Harris margins in safe blue states such as New York, New Jersey, California, and Illinois, Trump's margin in Texas, Harris not flipping a single county, and every single state swinging toward Trump. This was essentially an election where every positive trend for Republicans continued, and every negative trend for Republicans reversed or stopped with very minor exceptions. That is why the results would have been laughed at as Republican wishcasting if made as a pre-election prediction. It was a better result for Trump than anybody outside of the most hack Republicans expected.

Alright, as for the next claim, let's say I have A and B playing a game, A wins 30 times, then B wins once, has B just claimed a decisive victory? Not any more so than any A victory in the past, even more so if A's win is closer than many B wins that came before which you didn't claim were decisive victories.

If you want to heighten the bar for what is a mandate than that's fair (there's a fair argument to be made that Obama 2008 was the only clear mandate this century), but as I said, I would also consider 2012 & 2020 to be decisive mandates. And I do believe that historical contexts of how polarized the country is makes a crucial difference, as well as how good the electoral performances are compared to the fundamentals.

Well, not flipping any counties is arguably a big loss, but the margins were only a surprise to those not paying attention, again the polls warned us of a tightened margin among Latinos and young people. As for all the "first time that X did Y", there's a relevant xkcd about that (#1122, see here : https://xkcd.com/1122/). Most of these states were off by between 5 to 8%, which seems logical as polling error is often correlated and candidates like Trump tend to attract a low turnout demographic. As for claims that every negative trend for the GOP reversed, that seems a little inaccurate, considering that the electoral college advantage was heavily reduced.

Fair enough, you at least have a consistent standard for what a mandate is, I'm just saying here in Canada winning by 1.6% is sometimes not enough for a minority government to be stable...

[Fuzzy Bear Stands With S019 And Israel]

Every electoral victory is a mandate for that candidate to do what they said they will do once they're elected.  That's democracy.  Of course, it's a mandate for opposition candidates to oppose the winner's platform; that's also democracy.  Of course, we're a Republic, and it's a republican (small "r") principle to work toward viable compromise in order to Keep the Republic".

[Crane]

Every electoral victory is a mandate for that candidate to do what they said they will do once they're elected.  That's democracy.  Of course, it's a mandate for opposition candidates to oppose the winner's platform; that's also democracy.  Of course, we're a Republic, and it's a republican (small "r") principle to work toward viable compromise in order to Keep the Republic".

Remind me of one time you advocated working with Biden in the last four years.

Oh wait, you can't, because you spent the entire time lying about the election being stolen.

[Frodo]

2024 was as much a mandate for Trump as 2004 was for Bush.