Here is the popular vote (in millions rounded to the nearest thousand) for the winners and losers in U.S. presidential elections from 2000 onwards, including the latest figures (Nov 8) for 2024. In brackets I have put the total percentage of the vote of the two candidates combined. You can check my numbers here.
2000 – Bush vs Gore 50.462 / 51.010 (96.25%)
2004 – Bush vs Kerry 62.040 / 59.027 (98.99%)
2008 – Obama vs McCain 69.499 / 59.950 (98.46%)
2012 – Obama vs Romney 65.919 / 60.934 (98.16%)
2016 – Trump vs Clinton 62.985 / 65.854 (93.95%)
2020 – Biden vs Trump 81.286 / 74.226 (98.05%)
2024 – Trump vs Harris 73.478 / 69.107 (98.27%)
You will notice that the popular vote jumped disconcertingly in 2020. Biden apparently got over more than 15 million votes than did Obama in 2012 and Clinton in 2016. Trump’s vote too rose by over 11 million compared with his vote in 2016. Clearly, the shady shenanigans of Covid boosted absentee and mail-in voting and who knows what. The higher-than-usual leakage of votes to third-party candidates affected the result somewhat in 2016. However, accounting for this – about 5 million votes – still leaves the total vote in 2020 between 21 and 22 million more in 2020 than in 2016.
What stands out like sore thumb? Trump has more or less maintained his vote in 2024 compared with his out-of-trend elevated figure of 2020. Showing that it is and was real. Harris has apparently lost about 12 million votes that Biden “won” in 2020. How can that possibly be? In total over 13 million voters have disappeared since 2020. Snatched by aliens?
Did those voters ever exist in 2020 or at least a sizeable proportion of them? Where they figments of voting machines, invented citizens, dead citizens, non-citizens, zombie voters? Let’s face it, Trump won in 2020 despite all the know-it-alls telling us differently. However, in retrospect, his “official” loss turns out to be a boon.
The last four years have shown like no other how utterly damaging progressive policies can be and how the corporate media has sunk from the gutters to the sewers to the Netherworld. That is a great canvass for Trump, now with eight years of political experience under his ample belt, to demonstrate the benefits of common-sense conservative policies. Four years of Trump followed by eight years of JD Vance might even turn the U.S. totally around and Australia with it, albeit kicking and screaming. It is the sweetest victory of them all, as Paul Keating once said in another context.
I had started a similar analysis yesterday.
What I was going to add was the US population of voting age for each year.
The question is, why didn’t they cheat this time?
Yes, Covid postal ballots helped, and the GOP was more vigilant about compliance, but I am still wondering why they didn’t push it this time around.
I’m wondering too. The answer I come up with is not nice.
But they did, but mitigated by the 500 GOP lawyers in each state and 230,000 observers, as Lara Trump and the GOP set up. There were threats of legal action and some Court cases. Even so, ballots were observed being delivered in Chicago from cars with California plates.
What Will wrote.
I’m speculating that this is why Biden & Harris are calling for a peaceful transition.
That is, this time they’ve been caught red handed.
The concerted campaign by the Republicans to get their supporters to vote early by mail was no doubt a factor, as these can be scrutinised better. In any case they must have finally learned from the first successful campaign by Obama that the party faithful need to get out into the community – especially aged facilities – and assist people to mail-in vote. I understand that Republicans persuaded many people to vote for the first time in their life!
This, people, is how you win. Determinism and commitment. The Democrats were now matched head to toe in commitment.
2020 and Covid will probably be the high water mark for some time.
They didn’t push it this time because Biden was too incompetent to manage it and Kamala was no help with no clue. The Obamas were too busy in Nantucket and Hilary had lost interest too.
I really thought Hillary was going to have a go.
That’s $300 down the drain.
Oh well.
Almost 40% of Californians voted for Trump.
In 2016 & 2020 it was in the low 30s.
“If this trend continues…”
Hispanics
Correct. Catholic Hispanics.
What I find curious is that anecdotally a lot of people were very energised to vote for Trump this time in contrast to 2020. Many even changing their votes. But the Trump total went down from 2020??
I think that is highly unlikely and suspect that a lot of Trump votes were knocked out by issues like spoiling the ballot with a small dot in the Harris box, mismatched ballots to machine, folk turned away from voting, etc and probably a lot of switched votes as well.
So I think a strong possibility is that Trump got more votes than 2020 and that Harris actually got a less than is showing for her in 2024.
Trump surpasses the number of votes he received in 2020 (74,224,319) and today (74,247,470 – and counting).
The Trump machine has quietly and efficiently gone about flushing out the Rhinos from the party and putting in place an awesome grassroots vote turnout ground game.
JD will take over that machine in 2028, so yes, probably 12 years of MAGA.
Then eight of deSantis.
Next chance for the DemonRats in 2044?
What is hilarious now about the voting numbers is that Dimocrat strategists have to do one of two things:-
1. Admit that 2020 was a steal of yuuuuge proportions; or
2. Concede that the Dimocrat vote has collapsed which necessitates ditching all sorts of batshit crazy far-left policies.
Beautiful wedge.
After Hubris comes Nemesis.
According the US Bureau of Statistics there were 168 million registered voters for the 2020 election, and when you add up the votes received by Trump and Biden it comes to ~ 156 million, meaning the voting participation rate was 93%.
Previous to that the greatest participation rate in US history was around 68% which was garnered in the 2008 election of Obama, where lots of previous never-voted were inspired to get out an vote for him (much to their later chagrin).
Consequently, the chances of a completely unprecedented get out the vote effort for Biden, who was a very uninspiring candidate, to get to that participation rate is a lot like many of the other numerical anomalies associated with the 2020 election, it was just not mathematically possible.
However, just like climate change and a host of other issues our political, journalistic and academic elite class never bother to ask themselves the question ‘is this plausible?’, and so this stupidity and tail chasing goes on unabated. Hopefully Trump will bring an end to some of it.
As Dover Beach has pointed out, the fake votes for Biden — who didn’t even campaign or hold rallies in 2020 — stick out like dog’s balls. The notion that Biden in 2020 got 30%+ more votes than Obama in 2008 is laughable.
What I hope and expect to see now.
Hamas, Hezbollah defeated, the Ukraine and Russia to negotiate a settlement.
Maybe even Venezuela to get rid of their dictatorship.
The numbers of illegal immigrants entering the US to reduce to a trickle with a net outflow of illegal immigrants.
US households to become more prosperous though a combination of reduced taxes, cheaper energy flowing through to lower prices for goods and services and cheaper housing, higher wages through reduction in demand for housing etc and job competition caused by the 30/40/50 million illegal immigrants squatting in the US.
An end to the stifling effects of DEI and government bloat, an end to trans ideology poisoning the American education system.
America is allowed to put Americans first.
Here’s to hope and change.
Anyone with a functioning brain knew at the time that the 2020 election stank like a bucket of prawn heads left out in the midday summer sun.
We all saw the steal happen in real time here, thanks to the benefit of the time difference.
Trump gained support almost across every part of the US. This is unprecedented.
I still don’t see how they could scam millions of votes without any concrete evidence emerging. To harvest that many fraudulent votes would require hundreds of operatives in multiple states, each with different rules and verification processes. It’s basically impossible to avoid detection somewhere. Of those hundreds of operatives, someone will turn or will be too stupid or drunk to stay quiet. The stats look odd, but there’s likely a sensible explanation.
A million peasants with a bucket of sand will block a river as effectively as a thousand trucks with the same load – and leave a much smaller footprint for evidence.
This analysis appears to have early vote totals for 2024 which have now been surpassed.
Currently at Trump 75,491,241/ Harris 72,350,352