This is an adapted excerpt from the Nov. 19 episode of “All In with Chris Hayes.”
It’s been just over two weeks since the election and, because of the pace at which California counts votes, it’s only now that we almost have the final vote tally for the entire election. And guess what?
Yes, Donald Trump won the election. He will be the next president. There’s no question about that. But it’s also one of the narrowest popular vote wins in U.S. history. He got less than half the votes cast, winning a plurality but not a majority of the popular vote.
In 2016 and 2020, Democrats didn’t win any Senate races in states Trump won. This time they won four.
Trump won by about 2.5 million votes out of more than 150 million cast. That means his lead over Vice President Kamala Harris in the popular vote is down to about 1.6%. In fact, when comparing Trump’s margin of victory to every presidential election going back to 2000, the president-elect boasts the smallest margin of anyone who’s actually won their election and the popular vote.
Sure, he got a higher share than Al Gore, who lost in 2000, but he also won the popular vote by less than Hillary Clinton did in 2016.
Not only was Trump’s victory historically narrow, but Democrats also did surprisingly well in down-ballot races for a “losing” side. Yes, they lost three Senate seats in Ohio, West Virginia and Montana — states that Trump won by huge margins. That’s the sort of result you expect. But Democrats also managed to eke out four Senate victories in swing states that Trump won: Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada and Arizona. That’s not what you’d expect.
In 2016 and 2020, Democrats didn’t win any Senate races in states Trump won. This time they won four. It seems Trump didn’t really offer Republicans much in the way of coattails to ride.
Just look at the House, where the balance of power is going to remain essentially unchanged. In fact, if the current House results hold and Trump succeeds in getting confirmation for his Cabinet nominees who sit in Congress, the Republican Party is on track for the smallest House majority since there have been 50 states.
So take a step back and keep all of this in mind when you hear Trump and his supporters suggest that the election was this enormous wave in which a transformation swept across the country, in which Americans were just begging for a MAGA makeover.
That is the line Republicans are selling — and lots in the mainstream media are granting it in various ways — but it’s just plainly not true. And we’ve gone through this all before. Just compare all the postmortems in the past two weeks about “what the American people really wanted” when Trump won by 1.6 points nationally to the postmortems we got in 2016, after Clinton beat him by 2.1% nationally, but lost in the Electoral College. It’s all the same stuff.
Back then, it was all about how the real Americans wanted Trump and how Democrats were so out of touch. And now, we’re hearing the same things, about Americans wanting Trump and everyone else — the other half of the country — is just out of touch. It’s all ludicrous.
Because what we’re talking about was essentially down to tiny portions of the electorate switching votes at the last minute. And again, those voters matter: They’re what gave Trump a victory and it’s why he’ll be the next president. Generally, what we know is that people felt like the country is on the wrong track. Late deciders did not like higher prices, they felt squeezed, and they wanted something different. But it is ludicrous to read that as a mandate for the absolute avalanche of insanity that Trump and Republicans are planning for his second administration. There was no mandate in this election for an enemies list. There was a mandate for cheaper gas and cheaper eggs. From the plan to use the military to forcibly expel millions of migrants from the country — and possibly imprison people in blue states who don’t comply with their deportations; to getting rid of birthright citizenship, which is written into the 14th Amendment; to using and abusing the Justice Department as a tool for retribution against perceived political enemies; to using the Federal Communications Committee to threaten media that’s critical of Trump; to threatening the health and well-being of trans people and women; and to driving the prices of virtually everything up with tariffs on the goods people buy every day. Kamala Harris had a line in her campaign speeches about how she would start on Day 1 with a to-do list and Trump would start with an enemies list. She was right. And yes, ultimately, she lost but there was no mandate in this election for an enemies list. There was a mandate for cheaper gas and cheaper eggs. But Trump has no policy plan for cheaper gas or cheaper eggs. What he has plans for is to let an unelected Elon Musk run roughshod over the government, along with every other crazy radical Project 2025 right-wing fever dream, all while Trump pursues his own personal grievances. At a certain point, there’s going to be a reckoning about the distance between what the swing voters who gave Trump this majority were voting for and what they’re about to get. Allison Detzel contributed.
Chris Hayes hosts “All In with Chris Hayes” at 8 p.m. ET Tuesday through Friday on MS NOW. He is the editor-at-large at The Nation. A former fellow at Harvard University’s Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics, Hayes was a Bernard Schwartz Fellow at the New America Foundation. His latest book is “The Sirens’ Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource” (Penguin Press).
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