Donald Trump talks about his presidential campaign and the importance of turning out the vote at a rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, before the polls open on Nov. 5 (Anna Liz Nichols/Michigan Advance).
A divisive election season full of twists and turns is now over. With control of the House of Representatives, the U.S. Senate and the presidency, Republicans look as though they have won in a landslide.
How did we get here, and is there more to this victory than meets the eye?
In November 2022, Donald Trump announced that he would be running for re-election. The following April, Biden announced that he, too, would be running for re-election.
Despite being an outcome that many did not want, America appeared destined to endure a Trump vs. Biden rematch.
In May of 2024, Trump became a convicted felon.
In June, Biden stumbled his way through a terrible debate performance.
In July, Trump survived an assassination attempt. Later than month, Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed Kamala Harris.
In September, Trump falsely claimed that immigrants were “eating the dogs” in Springfield, Ohio.
In October, Biden seemingly referred to Trump supporters as “garbage” which the White House and Harris later tried to walk back.
Then, in November, Trump became the first president in over 100 years to win non-consecutive presidential terms.
Trump claims that Republicans won “a political victory that our country has never seen before.” Is this true?
In the House, Republicans won 220 out of 435 seats. In other words, they won about 50.57% of all seats. When you look at the popular vote, the results are similar. As of when this article was written, Republicans have received 74,826,851 votes out of 148,033,237 votes cast.
This equates to about 50.55%.
Put differently, this means that the percentage of seats that Republicans won in the House is roughly proportionate to the percentage of the total votes Republicans received. As such, you could say that the narrowly divided House reflects how narrowly divided America is at the moment.
The same could not be said about the Senate. Recall that senators serve 6-terms and roughly a third of the Senate is up for grabs every two years. After this election, Republicans will control 53 out of 100 seats — or 53% of all seats.
However, when you look at the popular vote, Republicans received 54,402,269 votes out of 113,998,100 votes cast. This equates to about 47.72%. This means that more than 50% of voters cast their ballot for someone that was not a Republican.
What about the presidential election? Trump claims that his supporters “showed up in record numbers to deliver a victory.” Trump won 312 out of 538 electoral votes, which comes out to about 57.99% of all electoral votes. So, it is accurate to say that his supporters helped to deliver a victory.
However, the part about his supporters showing up “in record numbers” is not true. Trump received 77,302,164 votes out of 155,477,242 votes cast. This equates to about 49.72%. This means that more than 50% of voters cast their ballot for someone other than Trump.
It is also worth pointing out that the number of votes Trump received in 2024 is substantially less than the 81,283,501 votes that Biden received in 2020. In other words, Trump’s “massive” victory was about 4 million votes less that Biden’s victory.
Prior to Trump’s 2016 inauguration, he predicted “an unbelievable, perhaps record-setting turnout.” A few weeks later, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer stated that Trump’s inaugural ceremony had drawn the “largest audience to ever witness an inauguration — period — both in person and around the globe.”
Photos from the National Park Service appear to contradict this claim, as do statistics on public transportation ridership, as well as estimates of the number of television viewers.
During a “Meet the Press” interview, Chuck Todd asked Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway why Spicer would attest to such a “provable falsehood.” Conway responded that Spicer had given “alternative facts” — thereby coining a new term for “facts” that are not true.
In his 2024 victory speech, Trump said that Americans have given Republicans “an unprecedented and powerful mandate.” In a recent interview with Time magazine, he added that “the beauty is that we won by so much.”
It seems as though the era of “alternative facts” is not over.
Although Republicans won the 2024 election, this victory was neither “massive” nor “unprecedented”.
Rather, with nearly all votes counted, it looks as though Republicans barely squeaked by with a majority of the popular vote in the House, while in the Senate and at the presidential level, more Americans voted against Republican candidates than for them.
Today, American is divided right now the middle, with nearly half of voters supporting Republicans and the other half supporting Democrats.
Despite this nearly equal division, thanks to the quirks of our electoral system, Republicans now possess a disproportionally large amount of power.
Hopefully they wield it wisely because in less than two years, those in power will have to face voters, as Americans will be back at the polls to vote in the 2026 midterms.