There is a table which should add some perspicuity to the title (I changed the title because it was probably incomprehensible to readers). That chicken scratch title probably only made sense to me (hence I changed it), but I wasn’t sure how else to convey the idea that five times [since 1976] the Republican Party was able to boost the vote total for their presidential candidate by 10 million votes compared to the previous vote total for their previous presidential candidate and once they were able to boost the vote total for their presidential candidate by 22.8 million votes from the vote total of their presidential candidate eight years ago. That’s rather remarkable. Now, they did have some precipitous drop-offs as well. If they had not raised their vote total so much so many times, I might have merely called it volatile. But that might not have been right either as a number of times it was stable.
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I must admit that I am still rather stunned that 11.2 million more voters saw what Trump did in the first time when they did not vote for him and they said, I want some more of that??? Seriously???
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Next point, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton won 65.9 million votes. In four short years, President Biden was able to win over 15.4 million more voters. Who else could have done that? Essentially 16 million more votes in 4 years? Thus, I strongly suspect that the vast majority of those votes were republicans or conservatives. Would those conservatives have voted for anybody else? It seems doubtful. But President Biden only won the electoral college vote by about 40,000 votes in an election in which 155 million votes were cast. If President Biden had won one million fewer votes in 2020 than he actually did win, then he likely would have lost the electoral college vote.
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On a positive note, Donald Trump has never surpassed 47.0% of the vote in any general election. Donald Trump has lost the popular vote in both of his previous elections. Since Donald Trump has an outsized impression on the media, it seems undeniable that elections writ large are a reflection of the voters’ views of Donald Trump and they either lost or severely underperformed in every set of national elections since 2016.
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I am confident that my friends here are going to do everything possible to make sure that President Biden wins reelection! So, I know I don’t have to say to not take it for granted because nobody here will. And many people here will get something more important or perhaps more accurate out of the data I put here, all from Wikipedia.
Election Results 1976-2024
year |
candidates |
vote total |
% vote |
# states won |
EVs won |
% turnout |
Diff in 4 yrs |
Diff in 8 yrs |
|
1976 |
Carter |
40.8M |
50.1% |
23+DC |
297 |
54.8% |
- |
- |
|
1976 |
Ford |
39.1M |
48% |
27 |
240 |
54.8% |
- |
- |
|
1980 |
Reagan |
43.9M |
50.8% |
44 |
489 |
54.2% |
+4M |
- |
|
1980 |
Carter |
35.5M |
41.0% |
6+DC |
49 |
54.2% |
-5.3M |
- |
|
1984 |
Reagan |
54.5M |
58.8% |
49 |
525 |
55.2% |
+10.5M |
+15.4M |
|
1984 |
Mondale |
37.6M |
40.6% |
1+DC |
13 |
55.2% |
+2.1M |
-2.8M |
|
1988 |
Bush Sr |
48.9M |
53.4% |
40 |
426 |
52.8% |
-5.6M |
+5.0M |
|
1988 |
Dukakis |
41.8M |
45.7% |
10+DC |
111 |
52.8% |
+5.2M |
+6.3M |
|
1992 |
Clinton |
44.9M |
43.0% |
32+DC |
370 |
58.1% |
+3.1M |
+7.3M |
|
1992 |
Bush Sr |
39.1M |
37.5% |
18 |
168 |
58.1% |
-9.8M |
-15.4M |
|
1992 |
Perot |
19.7M |
18.9% |
0 |
0 |
58.1% |
- |
- |
|
1996 |
Clinton |
47.4M |
49.2% |
31+DC |
379 |
51.7% |
+2.5M |
+5.6M |
|
1996 |
Dole |
39.2M |
40.7% |
19 |
159 |
51.7% |
+.1M |
-9.7% |
|
1996 |
Perot |
8.1M |
8.4% |
0 |
0 |
51.7% |
-11.6M |
- |
|
2000 |
Bush Jr |
50.5M |
47.9% |
271 |
30 |
54.2% |
+11.3M |
+11.4M |
|
2000 |
Gore |
51.0M |
48.4% |
266 |
20+DC |
54.2% |
+3.6M |
+6.1M |
|
2004 |
Bush Jr |
62.0M |
50.7% |
286 |
31 |
60.1% |
+11.5M |
+22.8M |
|
2004 |
Kerry |
59.0M |
48.3% |
251 |
19+DC |
60.1% |
+8.0M |
+11.6M |
|
2008 |
Obama |
69.5M |
52.9% |
365 |
28+DC+NE2 |
61.6% |
+10.5M |
+18.5M |
|
2008 |
McCain |
59.9M |
45.7% |
173 |
22 |
61.6% |
-2.1M |
+9.4M |
|
2012 |
Obama |
65.9M |
51.1% |
332 |
26+DC |
58.6% |
-3.6M |
+6.9M |
|
2012 |
Romney |
60.9M |
47.2% |
206 |
24 |
58.6% |
+1.0M |
-1.1M |
|
2016 |
Trump |
63.0M |
46.1% |
304 |
30+ME2 |
60.1% |
+2.1M |
+3.1M |
|
2016 |
Clinton |
65.9M |
48.2% |
227 |
20+DC |
60.1% |
+0.0M |
-3.6M |
|
2020 |
Biden |
81.3M |
51.3% |
306 |
25+DC+NE2 |
66.6% |
+15.4M |
+15.4M |
|
2020 |
Trump |
74.2M |
46.8% |
232 |
25+ME2 |
66.6% |
+11.2M |
+14.2M |
|
2024 |
Biden |
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2024 |
Trump |
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