The Illusion Of A Trump Mandate Has Completely Crumbled

Donald Trump didn't gain substantial support or flip Democratic voters in 2024. It turns out that Trump's margin came from blue state Democrats not showing up.

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The mainstream media, including some supposed leftward-leaning media, have been treating the Republican victory in 2024 as if it was a big win that was a rejection of Democrats and Democratic policies.

There has been overwrought angst from Democrats about how they have lost touch with voters and how they need to transform the party radically. At the same time, the media spends much of its coverage exalting Trump and acting like Democrats have ceased to exist.

The votes continue to be counted, and the behavior of voters is painting a different picture than the narrative that has taken shape.

NPR reported:

With 96% of the vote in, Trump has, according to the Associated Press, 49.97% to Vice President Harris' 48.36%, or 76.9 million votes to 74.4 million. (The U.S. Election Atlas has a higher raw vote total and a slightly narrower margin, 49.78% to 48.23, or 77.1 million votes to 74.7 million.)

…

A reason for Trump's popular-vote gains this time is that Harris was well below President Biden's 2020 vote totals in blue states.

Just in New York and California, Harris was off Biden's totals by almost 3 million votes. And most of that was not vote-switching. In New York, Harris was off by about 900,000 votes, but Trump only gained about 200,000 from his 2020 total. In California, Harris got roughly 1.9 million fewer votes than Biden, but Trump only got about 60,000 more.

All those “big gains” that the mainstream media has spent weeks droning on about and that the pundit classes on both the left and the right accepted as reality didn’t happen.

Voters didn’t look at Donald Trump and Kamala Harris and decide they had misjudged Trump. Voters didn’t necessarily look at Trump and see him as the better candidate.

Where Democrats came up short was with their own voters.

Don’t Blame Democratic Voters, Blame The Strategists

The whole point of a political campaign is to mobilize supporters to vote for a candidate or a party. When that candidate or party fails to win, the blame falls on those who devised what turned out to be a losing strategy.