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Donald Trump can claim a lot out of his 2024 election win:
► It’s a comeback for the ages for a president to go from a pariah after trying to overturn one election to president-elect after the next.
► A rightward shift in election results gives him a mandate to start trying to remake the US government like he promised he would.
► If Republicans win control of the US House of Representatives, he’ll have control of the entire US government to help him enact change.
What Trump cannot claim is a landslide victory, although that’s how he will describe it.
As of Saturday, Trump is winning the popular vote with a little more than 74 million votes, although millions of votes have yet to be counted in California, Washington and Utah, among others. The final 2024 popular vote tally likely won’t be known until December.
When he lost convincingly in 2020, Trump got a little more than 74 million votes. So while it’s true that much of the country moved to the right in this election, it’s also true that there was some voter apathy if, at the end of the day, turnout is down from 2020.
That doesn’t mean this will end up being a low turnout election. The University of Florida Election Lab estimates as of Friday that turnout in 2024 will be about 62.3% of the voting-eligible population, down from the high-water mark of the modern era of more than 66.4% in 2020 but still above other recent elections. Turnout in 1996 and 2000 was not much over 50% of the voting-eligible population.
In terms of the Electoral College, Trump is on track to win 312 electoral votes if his lead in Arizona holds. It’s a solid win, but in the lower half of US presidential elections.
It would be a better showing than either his or Joe Biden’s 306 electoral votes in 2016 and 2020, respectively. It would also outperform both of George W. Bush’s electoral victories in 2000 and 2004. But it would be far short of Barack Obama’s 365 electoral votes in 2008 and 332 in 2012.
Bill Clinton never reached 50% in the popular vote because both of his presidential elections featured a strong third-party candidate in Ross Perot. But Clinton did run away with the Electoral College vote, winning 370 electoral votes in 1992 and 379 in 1996.
Even those strong victories are dwarfed by Ronald Reagan’s 1984 win, a true landslide. Reagan lost only Washington, DC, and Minnesota, the home state of his Democratic rival, Walter Mondale, thereby securing 525 electoral votes and more than 58% of the popular vote.
Both Richard Nixon in 1972 and Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964 exceeded 60% in the popular vote for their reelection campaigns, something that seems impossible in today’s political climate. It’s also incredible to think that two such massive landslides would occur within eight years. Nixon’s reelection rival in 1972, then-Sen. George McGovern, lost even his home state of South Dakota and won only Massachusetts and Washington, DC.
Voters were much more likely to split their tickets in those years. While Johnson, a Democrat, enjoyed a strong Democratic majority in the House after his 1964 landslide, voters who gave both Nixon and Reagan all but one state also checked them with a Democratic-controlled House.
The more recent trend is for voters to align their votes for House, Senate and the White House. That trend has led to a period during which the White House and Congress change hands more frequently, although Democrats will keep Senate seats in multiple states won by Trump this year.
Trump’s 2024 win marks the third straight presidential election in which voters have thrown out the incumbent party. The last time that happened in three straight elections was in the late 1800s when Grover Cleveland became the first president to be elected to nonconsecutive terms. Trump is the second.
Trump will never be on a presidential ballot again, because the 22nd Amendment limits presidents to two terms. But voters will get an opportunity to weigh in on how he and Republicans use their power in two years, during the 2026 midterm elections.
The past three presidents, including Trump in his first term, all lost control of the House after their first two years in office. If Trump does end up with a friendly Republican majority this year, he’ll have to work hard to keep voters on his side two years from now.
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