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Democrats lost the election by 2% of the vote

With most of the vote now counted, the big picture of the election has come into focus. If 2% of the electorate had switched their votes, Democrats would control the House of Representatives and Kamala Harris would be president. Democrats still would have lost control of the Senate, thanks to a horrible map, but by slightly less.

So that's that. The Republican trifecta hinged on 2% of the vote. It's really hard to draw any sweeping conclusions from that.

72 thoughts on “Democrats lost the election by 2% of the vote

  1. realrobmac

    We can draw the sweeping conclusion that if a political candidate shows no shame about committing crimes or violating "norms" then the voters won't care either.

    1. camusvsartre

      Harris needed about 1.7% more votes. Assuming such an increase was spread equally across the states this would have been enough to carry Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. It also would have been enough to barely win the popular vote not that such a thing actually matters.

    1. HokieAnnie

      Ah but how? Easy to say but what's the winning secret sauce to that?

      They though the armies of volunteers going house to house was the answer. Maybe back in 2000 or 2004 that might have been the answer.

      I think the problem was that the firehose of GOP disinfo was not countered by a firehose of Democratic friendly truth sandwiches - where are our social media channels and popular blog/influencers? We let the GOP control radio now we've ceded social media to them too?

      1. lawnorder

        My view is that the best way for the Dems to improve turnout is to go with a straight-up progressive platform. There are too many people out on the left hand side of the political spectrum that don't vote because neither party speaks to them.

    2. ScentOfViolets

      The sweeping conclusion is that Republicans won't vote for a candidate who's a member of a marginalized/minority group unless times are bad. Otherwise, they exercise their mischievous impulses to the fullest extent possible, aided and abetted by an eagerly compliant legacy media.

      1. rick_jones

        So the six million or so voters who came out to vote for Biden in 2020, but didn’t come out to vote for Harris in 2024 were Republicans?

          1. rick_jones

            Harris garnered 6 million fewer votes in 2024 than Biden did in 2020 (see comment elsewhere here). You said that Republicans wouldn’t vote for Harris. So ostensibly those six million votes she didn’t get were Republicans who voted for Biden in 2020.

            1. spatrick

              When you make it easier for people to vote, it does help the Dems. Kevin may dispute this but I don't think it's any coincidence that vote-by-mail on the West Coast has cemented Dem dominance in these states. Likewise in 2020, when all you had to do was mail or drop off a ballot, that's a lot easier for people to do than stand-in-line all day. If I'm Dem in New York or Illinois, next year I damn well would pass laws for vote-by-mail or drop-off boxes.

              1. Batchman

                Vote by mail may have helped the Dems in 2020 but it was still available in 2024. What really may have made a difference is that while Repubs were discouraged in 2020 from voting by mail, the GOP/Trump stance on voting by mail changed in 2024 and so the Dem vote-by-mail advantage disappeared.

            2. Jasper_in_Boston

              So ostensibly those six million votes she didn’t get were Republicans who voted for Biden in 2020

              Many likely were Biden 2020 voters, yes. We don't see massive percentages moving from one party to the other, but we do see pretty large numbers in absolute terms, per my reading, at least. Similarly large numbers of Obama 2012 voters went for Trump in 2016, and many Trump voters then voted for Biden in 2020.

              1. KenSchulz

                I’m somewhat skeptical about the number of ‘swing voters’, as there is a known tendency for a larger percentage to ‘remember’ voting for the winner of an election, than actually voted for the winner. The number is likely smaller than survey data suggests.

            3. ScentOfViolets

              Ah, I see, should have caught that. You are of course correct that I should have said 'some people' instead of 'Republicans' if I was making the point you thought I was making. But my point -- sorry for the miscommunication -- was somewhat askew from that. I strongly suspect there was a somewhat higher turnout in 2020, relatively speaking, because times were bad. And by 'bad' I mean 'very bad' and people simply couldn't afford any more inept, incompetent Trump Shenanigans. As I've frequently noted, there are no Republicans in foxholes.

              But I'd like to amend that observation a bit: There are no Republicans in foxholes if both candidates are men. Otherwise, not no way, not no how will these particular folks vote for a woman even as they're losing half the people closest to them and have been out of work for six months and inflation is 9+ percent. Yes, doubtless some of those 6 million fewer votes were Democrats. But cynical as the last ten years have made me, I'd still like to think those Democrats would come out and vote for a woman under the conditions I just described. But maybe I'm being naive 🙁

              1. lawnorder

                My guess is that the committed misogynists will almost all vote Republican regardless of who the Democratic candidate is. Obama demonstrated that racism is not a barrier. Many states, including surprisingly enough Texas, have elected female governors, so misogyny doesn't seem to be a total barrier.

                I'm fairly sure that being female is a handicap for a presidential candidate, but not a big handicap; it may tip the balance if the election is close anyway, but not otherwise.

        1. Vog46

          If those 6 million votes came from folks in the midwest and southwest the story would be different. DEMs have allowed the GOP to claim as their own the rural states.
          Whatever happened to Robert Byrd of WEST VIRGINIA, or maybe Mike Mansfield of Montana????????
          When did the DEMS give up the south and west???????

      2. akapneogy

        "The sweeping conclusion is that Republicans won't vote for a candidate who's a member of a marginalized/minority group unless times are bad."

        Which explains why bad times alternate with good times.

        1. ScentOfViolets

          I think my hypothesis is just as simple as a hypothesis can get and still explain what we've observed over the last quarter-century ... 67% of the variance 😉

    3. Jasper_in_Boston

      The sweeping conclusion is getting out the vote is paramount.

      That's questionable. People like to state that turnout is paramount, but in in the real world, an in crease in turnout doesn't mean only your voters show up. Some will be for the other side. And in the 2020s, it's pretty clear greater turnout on balance tends to help Republicans more than Democrats. I really doubt an extra five million voters would have given Harris the victory, because they would've broken 51-49 for Trump.

      Also, Harris's vote generally exceeded Biden's 2020 totals in the swing states. She got her people to the polls where it counted. But alas, so did Trump.

      Kamala Harris lost that election mainly because persuadable, low-propensity voters wanted pre-pandemic conditions back, and nothing Democrats could do countered what the GOP was offering (the pre-pandemic president himself).

      1. lawnorder

        My distinct impression is that the "might vote" people are much more likely to vote Democrat when they do vote. History says that there is a strong correlation between voter turnout and Democratic victories.

        1. Jasper_in_Boston

          Your distinct impression is outdated by about 15 years. Democrats now rely very heavily on college educated voters, and such voters are highly dependable. The single best proof of this is the last two midterm elections. Historically, Democrats used to take it on the chin during midterms, because low propensity voters tend to be less reliable in non-presidential election years. But clearly this is no longer the case.

  2. bananaevangelion

    > It's really hard to draw any sweeping conclusions from that.

    The conclusions that can be drawn is that Democrats still lost against a candidate as horrible as Trump, which means they must have something working well on their side, or else Democrats will continue to lose, by margins large or small.

    1. Austin

      In a 2 party democratic system, either party can do anything it wants and eventually the voters will tire of whatever the other party is doing (or something awful will happen that the governing party royally fucks up). At that point the voters will vote for Change, which by definition means voting for the only other party available.

      Republicans have already learned this dynamic: this is why they never ever moderate. They just bide their time until they’re returned to power again, usually no more than 8 years later. Dems would do good to learn it too, before Republicans take the lesson to the next step: eliminating the democracy itself that allows such flip flopping to occur.

      1. OldFlyer

        it may already be too late.

        Trump 2.0's Trifecta is sure to "strengthen" voter security registration hoops and vet VPs to NEVER certify an electoral vote that they lose.

        In the unlikely even they lose big, there is always Plan-B Election denial and capital insurrection have now been exonerated. Insurrectionists are now proud patriots

        1. aldoushickman

          It's meager comfort, but 78-year old sundowning-obeseman-with-anger-issues Trump can't last forever. The reaper has a multibillion year undefeated streak, after all.

          1. GMF

            Trump is just he horse the real problems are riding in on - he doesn't have any real driving ideology, but the Vance's & Stephen Mitchell's do.

        2. Yehouda

          You are missing the main issue.

          The way authoritarians destroy democracy is harassing opposition politicians from running, harassing the media, and harassing judges and other officials to not interfere with the harassing. C.F. Putin.

          That is the main plan of Trump 2. The initial steps towards it are corruption of the DOJ, FBI, DOD and other agencies, and maybe creating Trump-loyal militia.

      2. Jasper_in_Boston

        Republicans have already learned this dynamic: this is why they never ever moderate.

        Learned what? Not to moderate? That seems highly questionable. Republicans lost three elections in a row prior to last month's. Which is another way of saying Democrats have won three out of the last four!

        Recent history strongly suggests GOP/MAGA overreach hurts them, not helps them.

        I wish folks would learn to put things in context. Yes, this most recent election badly hurts, but still, there's no evidence suggesting Republicans are evil geniuses when it comes to electoral politcs...

        1. kennethalmquist

          The point is not that overreach doesn't hurt Republicans; it's that it doesn't hurt them enough to change their behavior. Republicans knew how the 2020 race turned out, but rather than switching candidates, they decided to rerun the same race and hope for a different outcome. This is quite different from the Republican Party of 1992, where it was immediately obvious after George H. W. Bush lost to Clinton that the Republican Party would choose someone other than Bush to run against Clinton in 1996.

          I think there is a chance that the Republican Party will at some point discredit itself in the eyes of a majority of voters and spend a generation or more as a minority party. But so far, all we see is Republicans losing an occasional election that a more moderate Republican would have won.

    2. Davis X. Machina

      "The conclusions that can be drawn is that Democrats still lost against a candidate as horrible as Trump"

      The conclusion that can be drawn is that Democrats still lost against a candidate I find horrible."

      Candidates aren't horrible per se, any more than a book is boring per se.
      All you can say is "I was bored reading this book".
      The boredom -- or the horribleness -- is a reader -- or voter -- response.

      1. KenSchulz

        Fine, you can have that point. However, it is a fact, not a feeling, that in 2016, Republicans and the media were strongly critical of Sec. Clinton for having allegedly classified snippets on a private server* which was successfully secured, while in 2024 the candidates who kept many documents clearly marked Secret and Top Secret unsecured, and refused to surrender them as required by law — that candidate was given a pass. Just one of many things which would have ended most politicians’ careers — but not TFG’s.
        *Not illegal at the time, but in violation of departmental policy.

  3. seanathair

    Biden won by about 4%. The sweeping conclusion is that against the same opponent with similar candidates, the Democrats slid by about 6% from one election to the next.

    1. Anandakos

      Trump got almost exactly three million more votes, which would not have been enough to defeat a Democratic candidate who got Biden's 2020 vote. But Kamala in 2024 got over six million fewer votes than did Joe in 2020. So figure that three million swung to Trump and the other 3.2 million -- mostly young people I expect -- just didn't bother to vote.

      So, had the reluctant 3.2 million gotten themselves to the polls, the race would have been amazingly close. At least a couple of swing states would probably have been decided by Bush v. Gore margins.

      1. deathawaits

        The voting eligible population (VEP) increased by about 4 million between 2020 and 2024. Trump's popularity went from about 30.85% to 31.57% of the VEP. Biden in 2020 received 33.78%, while Kamala received 30.63% in 2024.

  4. Yikes

    The "conclusion" is IMO in this article, which is a bit of an over-analysis, but anything worth analyzing is worth over analyzing, yes?

    https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-populist-challenge-to-liberal-democracy/

    In summary, we have been moving from "democracy" to "liberal democracy" over quite a long political time. The difference is that the "Founders" who allowed landholding men the vote, may have had a "democracy" but not a "liberal democracy." If the landholding men voted, say, for slavery, it was "democracy" but certainly not liberal.

    As Galston writes, "liberal democracy" means recognizing limits on what a simply majority can do. It means recognizing rights of minorities. Recognizing a right of a minority often results in a corresponding limit on the power of the majority.

    The results of the election show that you cannot assume that the US is a strong liberal democracy, when Trump voters voted against trans people and immigrants. The Dems went down defending the rights of minorities. There was a reason Trump ran the ad about Harris being in favor of health care for trans inmates.

    1. KenSchulz

      Thanks for the link; a very thought-provoking article. I especially appreciate the citation within it of David Goodhart and the naming of ‘Anywheres’ and ‘Somewheres’; people whose identity is professional/careerist vs. bound to a place.

    2. lawnorder

      The existence of the Bill of Rights, which clearly recognizes the rights of minorities and limits the power of the majority, says to me that the Constitution's framers intended to construct a liberal democracy, at least for white men.

  5. Joseph Harbin

    The big gulf is not the margin of victory but the difference between the two outcomes.

    Democrats can work on boosting performance and assuming relatively free elections the fundamentals should move in a D direction next cycle.

    The harder task will be solving the problem of the GOP cult in which the most degenerate candidate is automatically within the margin of error of winning.

    ETA:
    Per the latest pop vote count, Harris is within 1.5% of Trump.

    1. rick_jones

      Where Trump added 3 million and change to his vote total vs 2020 and Harris garnered 6 million and change fewer votes than Biden in 2020. Per the respective Wikipedia pages anyway…

      1. iamr4man

        Harris lost a lot of votes in the big states, Texas, Florida, and oddly, California.
        Trump made almost no gains in California though. His total is very close to the 2020 total. But how close it was nationally is pretty meaningless isn’t it? If Harris got exactly what Biden got in those 3 states she still loses. I just looked at Pennsylvania, which was a state she needed badly. Her total there was close to Biden’s and if Trump got the number of votes he got against Biden he loses there. But he gained, and he gained more than Biden voters voting for Trump instead of Harris. And quite frankly I can’t think of a thing Harris could have done to get more votes in Pennsylvania.

        1. James B. Shearer

          "... And quite frankly I can’t think of a thing Harris could have done to get more votes in Pennsylvania."

          Pick the Governor as her VP candidate?

          1. iamr4man

            Maybe. But I think the calculation was Shapiro could have helped her there but hurt her elsewhere. In order to win Harris needed to win Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. She underperformed Biden by about 65K votes total in those three states, actually over-performing him in Wisconsin (yet still losing). I just don't think the problem is messaging. If it was Trump would have lost the Republican Primary. I think the problem is that Trump is personally popular. I, of course, just don’t get it. To me, the man is repugnant in every way imaginable. I don't think any other person with his baggage could win even 30% of the vote. It really is a cult.

            1. aldoushickman

              "I think the problem is that Trump is personally popular."

              To a point. He has millions of die-hard fans (witness the weird Trump shrines and t-shirts that have no analog among Dems), but still has underwater favorability ratings (even with the post-election victory bump). Writ large, he is not now and never has been popular.

              My takeaway is that it was a close election, and it could have gone either way. Had Trump lost, we'd be sagely nodding about how Americans just don't like Trump and are embracing multiracial democacy, despite the underlying Will Of The Voters being nearly identical.

    1. Srho

      That's optimistic. In a normal distribution, 16% are more than one standard deviation lower than the mean. And we know how dumb the mean is, right?

  6. spatrick

    What it means is that in four years if enough people are dissatisfied with their lives or the economy or the state of the union in general then the swing can easily go in the opposite direction. It's,that simple.

    1. Jasper_in_Boston

      +1

      And if it happens again in 2028, it would be the fourth consecutive time the White House changes hands in terms of party. That would be the first time in 132 years. I think it may well occur. We've entered an era of constant back and forth. At this point we've seen either the White House or a congressional chamber change partisan control six elections in a row. When's the last time that happened?

      (In the 50s, 60s and 70s we went twelve elections in a row by my count without a single change of control in either chamber!).

  7. kenalovell

    So many left-adjacent Americans are behaving as if the Democratic Party is facing an existential crisis. It's nonsense.

    Now that the election is over and we don't have to be relentlessly positive, can't we just admit that Joe Biden was utterly unfit for another four years in office? He was a middling to good president, but by 2024 he looked every minute of his 81 years and then some. People I talked to in Australia with absolutely no partisan interest in US politics often expressed their astonishment that he was even president, let alone running for re-election. Kamala Harris, to be honest, was a breath of fresh air but also a poor communicator. The burst of enthusiasm she got was from "thank God we don't have to vote for Biden" Democrats. As time went on, the realisation hit home that she was really just another word salad politician.

    Get out and win the mid-terms. Run an inspiring, articulate, energetic candidate in 2028. Watch swing voters come back to the Democratic Party.

    1. KenSchulz

      The choice between just another word-salad politician who could be counted on to pick qualified, competent people for appointive positions, and a vindictive, racist, misogynist narcissist who would pick bootlickers and toadies without regard to competence, should have resulted in a lopsided victory for the former. The fact that Democrats seem to need to run exceptional candidates to beat an opponent obsessed with movie characters and dick sizes should give one pause.

    2. spatrick

      So many left-adjacent Americans are behaving as if the Democratic Party is facing an existential crisis. It's nonsense.

      I'm sure they do. They want to take advantage of it. I would rather they would be the Greens they were meant to be.

      As I said before, a Biden 10 years younger, I believe, wins re-election.

      I think if a celebrity (yes, a celebrity) who had a rapport with their audience deeper than just politics and was reasonably smart or did something civic-minded in the past to make them credible, could, given how wide open the scene is, run as a Democrat and win the nomination and the election.

    3. aldoushickman

      "As time went on, the realisation hit home that she was really just another word salad politician."

      I think that overstates it. I think, as Ken Schulz alludes to below, there really is a problem with media and information in this country. Millions of people voted for Trump, apparently because they disliked inflation or were concerned about immigration, despite (a) Biden-Harris presiding over a lot of pro-growth anti-inflation policies and Trump promising pro-inflation policies, and (b) immigration objectively being a non-issue in terms of impacts on voters' actual lives.

      That said, I do think that Harris had some mediocre aspects. I felt a sinking feeling seeing her on Colbert (Colbert! The softest of soft interviewers and formats for a Dem politician!) and being unable to articulate a clear answer to the basic question of "What would you do differently than Biden?". That's something that not only _should_ she have had a ready answer to, but also was something she easily could have had any number of great answers to. Instead, she hemmed and hawwed, and said basically that "obviously" she's not Biden, but she's also not Trump.

      1. kenalovell

        Harris when asked what she'd do about inflation:

        "Let's start with this: Prices have gone up, and families and individuals are dealing with the realities of — that bread costs more, that gas costs more," Harris said. "And we have to understand what that means. That's about the cost of living going up. That's about having to stress and stretch limited resources. That's about a source of stress for families that is not only economic but is on a daily level something that is a heavy weight to carry."

        "So that is something that we take very seriously, very seriously. And we know from the history of this issue in the United States that when you see these prices go up, it has a direct impact on the quality of life for all people in our country. So it's a big issue, and we take it seriously, and it is a priority, therefore," Harris explained.

        That isn't exactly word salad. More like vacuous gibberish.

  8. iamr4man

    The difference between Democrats and Republicans:
    Democrats lose by a slim margin, Democrats point fingers at each other and assign blame for losing.
    Republicans lose by a slim margin, Republicans point their fingers at Democrats and blame Democrats for stealing the election.

  9. bouncing_b

    The only hopeful news is that Trump leads a cult of personality and as such he is not replaceable. All of those other guys (Desantis, Vance, Hawley) are pale imitations who aren't going to be able to step into those shoes.

    No other R has his feral genius of "reading the room" and working the audience. None of his advisors would've said he should lean into misogyny (gonna lose those suburban women) or any of his other stunts. But he knew otherwise.

    The task now is to minimize the damage because 2028 is ours.

    1. KenSchulz

      Agree that it’s a cult of personality; but one that’s very different than our usual concept of a cult. We normally see the object of a cult treated as an oracle, whose every utterance is revealed truth to followers. The Trump cult by contrast discounts much of the craziness and bullshit he spouts. But they believe that he cares about people like themselves, though he talks only about himself. The Trump they worship exists only in their minds.

  10. Salamander

    Actually, it would have taken a little more than 1% to "switch their votes." Assume 47% for Harris and 49% for the Felon, a one percent shift would give 48% for each.

  11. jamesepowell

    It may be only 2% of the vote, but people have and will continue to draw sweeping conclusions. It's what they do.

    More important, there will be sweeping changes as a result, most of them unpleasant.

    Democrats will be blamed.

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