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Analysis: 2024 election marked return to voting norms

By John Zambenini on Nov 08, 2024

As former President Trump turned the tables on Democrats in Tuesday’s landslide popular vote and electoral college victory, Democrats are waking to 2020’s anomalous results. 

Kamala Harris garnered 16 million fewer votes than Joe Biden’s alleged 81 million votes in 2020. But her 68 million votes, whether a sign of low turnout due to the perception of her unmotivating persona and lumbering campaign, were not anomalous, at least as far as historic Democrat turnout goes. 

Barack Obama garnered about 69 million votes behind him both in 2008 and in 2012. Hillary Clinton managed 65 million votes against Trump in 2016. In other words, Harris’ showing returned to within a standard deviation of historical Democrat turnout. 


Adding to suspicions around 2020 are bellwether counties  — counties that reliably pick winners in presidential elections. In 2016, Trump took all of the top bellwethers from Clinton and held on to 16 of them in 2020 against Biden. Biden only picked up one, Kent County, in his home state of Delaware, and still assumed the Oval Office. 

This year, Harris managed to take two from Trump: Clallam County, Wash., and Kent County, Del., again. 

Whatever the case, Democrats are learning difficult lessons this week, and it is clear the remade GOP boasts a coalition that Democrats envy. Trump picked up Independent and former Democrat voters on the endorsements of Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., while Harris lost key union endorsements and couldn’t outrun her role in America’s fragile economy. 

Trump outperformed polls in rustbelt states, taking every swing state, and every former “Blue Wall” state, save Minnesota. 

Trump even came closer to flipping Blue State New York than the Democrats’ ambitions to flip Red State Texas. 

But if past performance is any indication of this week, Harris’ turnout Tuesday was simply a regression to the mean for Democrats, and the remade GOP’s huge mandate from the people has far outpaced historic Democrat norms.