Cover credit – Matt Meduri
Eight years ago, the thought of voting for Donald Trump (R-NY) was so unpalatable to some, it was a non-starter conservation topic. For others, it was the uncertainty of just how many people supported Trump that election, that it was incredibly difficult to gauge the political moods of the country. This leads to what’s known as the Reverse-Bradley Effect, which occurs when the polling environment is so tainted that an upset occurs on Election Day.
Eight years ago, Republicans and conservatives – or anyone supporting Trump and conservative policies – might as well have been relegated to basement speakeasies with sheet metal doors and a viewing slot through which to utter a password.
Today, there is a newfound openness of being a Republican, a conservative, a Trump voter, or anyone who simply backs the President-elect and/or conservative policy.
The media is trying to insist that Trump does not have a “mandate” based on these results, since the popular vote margin is just over a million votes and Trump “only” captured a plurality of the electorate.
They’re trying to take this victory away from him since he was literally 0.01 percentage points from taking a majority – at least 50% plus one – in the popular vote.
Furthermore, they insist that since the GOP only held the House by a razor-thin majority, it negates the mandate he received.
Over the next several weeks, check in our Civics 101 column on Page 14. We’ll be doing in-depth analyses of how each state voted in this election. Getting under the hood and going through the numbers shows that the win was much bigger than some people think.
For instance, it’s common for losing presidential candidates to swing a few states in their party’s direction. John McCain (R-AZ) lost badly to Barack Obama (D-IL) in 2008, but he still managed to swing five Southern states towards the right. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) lost in 2016, but eleven states trended blue that year. When Trump lost in 2020, several states still shifted towards him, even deep-blue states like Hawaii.
Harris did not swing a single state, even the sapphire-blue District of Columbia, in her direction. This is the first time we’ve seen a uniform swing across the country in one political direction since 1976. On top of that, about 90% of all counties swung towards Trump, with the most dramatic shifts occurring in the Tri-State Area, the Rio Grande Valley, and Harris’ home state of California.
