Donald Trump won both the Electoral College and the popular vote in the 2024 presidential election. In fact, Trump this year became only the second Republican to win the popular vote since 1988.
The vast majority of counties saw their margins shift in Trump’s direction, both in places where Republicans historically do well and places where Democrats generally have an edge.
At the same time, Trump’s margins – both in raw votes and percentages – were small by historical standards, even for the past quarter century, when close elections have been the rule, including the 2000 Florida recount election and Trump’s previous two races in 2016 and 2020.
Trump’s victory came without a big boost for down-ballot Republicans. The current narrow margin in the House of Representatives is poised to remain, and Democrats won four Senate races in key battleground states even as Vice President Kamala Harris lost those states to Trump.
During his election night victory party, Trump declared that “America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate.”
But Wayne Steger, a DePaul University political scientist, said the election delivered mixed signals.
“Inflation, immigration, some evidence of backlash against Democrats on identity politics, crime, education, and a public mood moving in a conservative direction all suggested a Republican win,” he said.
Still, “I’m inclined to view it as a close election in which there was enough anti-Democratic sentiment to carry the day.”
Here’s how Trump’s victory sizes up against other recent presidential elections:
Reasons for Trump to call it a big victory
Trump won all seven of this year’s battleground states – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Harris, by contrast, fared worse in these states than President Joe Biden did four years earlier.
Trump’s margins of victory in those seven states were wider – easily – than the margins of the seven closest states in the 2020 Trump-Biden election, and every close presidential contest this century.
Including votes counted through November 19, Trump’s collective margin in this year’s seven battleground states was about 760,000. By comparison, the 2000 election between George W Bush and Al Gore – which the Supreme Court decided after a weeklong Florida recount – produced collective margins of about 46,000 in the seven closest states, or about one-sixteenth as much as in 2024.
Trump also performed well by historical standards for someone running against the White House-occupying party. Going back to 1932, only six other candidates from the out-of-power party have taken as large a share of the vote as Trump’s near 50 percent. The others notching a higher percentage were Franklin Roosevelt in 1932, Dwight Eisenhower in 1952, Jimmy Carter in 1976, Ronald Reagan in 1980, Barack Obama in 2008 and Biden in 2020.
Trump’s margin of victory in the Electoral College – 312 out of 538 – was nowhere near the landslide wins of Lyndon Johnson in 1964, Richard Nixon in 1972 or Reagan in 1984. But it was bigger than four of the seven elections this century, including Biden’s four years earlier.
Where Trump’s victory looks historically small
Other metrics, however, show Trump’s victory was narrow.
Measured both by vote percentages and raw votes, Trump’s margin of victory is modest, even compared with this century’s other close elections.
For votes counted through November 20, Trump’s margin over Harris was 1.62 percent. That’s smaller than any winner since Bush in 2000, when the margin was 0.51 percent. Going back further, only John F Kennedy in 1960 and Nixon in 1968 won the popular vote by smaller margins, 0.17 percent and 0.7 percent, respectively.
Using raw votes, Trump’s margin was also smaller than in any election going back to 2000. At about 2.5 million, it was the fifth-smallest popular vote margin since 1960.
In both percentage and raw votes, Trump’s margin is on pace to be less than half of what Biden achieved four years earlier.
Meanwhile, there is ample evidence that Trump’s strong performance at the top of the ticket did not boost down-ballot candidates much.
Of the seven battleground states, five also held Senate races and one had a gubernatorial contest. The Republican candidate won Pennsylvania’s Senate race, but the Democrat won the Senate races in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada and Wisconsin, and the gubernatorial contest in North Carolina. In North Carolina, Democrats also won the races for lieutenant governor, attorney general, secretary of state, and superintendent of public instruction and were narrowly leading in a state Supreme Court race.
As the final handful of races are called, the US House is poised to end up at or near its margin from the previous two years, producing a Republican margin that is narrow by historical standards. In the state legislatures, Republicans gained only modestly in chamber control, while Democrats made inroads in other legislatures.
“Trump’s victory was solid and convincing,” said Barry Burden, a University of Wisconsin political scientist. Still, “the 2024 elections were not a general endorsement of the Republican Party. Many Republicans down ballot did not perform as well as Trump.”
So far this century, elections have been not only close, but have flipped back and forth between the parties. Since 2000, control of the presidency, the Senate or the House has flipped 16 times in 13 election cycles.
If this pattern holds, the Democrats could be well-positioned for the 2026 midterms and perhaps the 2028 presidential race.
“Voters have been unhappy with the state of the country,” said Jack Pitney, a Claremont McKenna College political scientist. “Unless Trump creates an abrupt change in the national mood, Democrats have a good chance at a successful 2026 midterm.”