On November 3, 2020, the American voters fired Donald Trump, as shown in the graph below. The graph, to be sure, tells the truth. But this particular truth is deceptive. Biden’s win was an exceptionally narrow one, and this outcome does not bode well for America and the well-functioning of her liberal institutions. This blog post explains.
Joe Biden won the election, and Donald Trump lost it (to this moment, he hasn’t clearly conceded defeat yet). But it was a narrow victory for the Democrats. The voters did not issue the broad rejection of Trump that Biden’s camp had hoped for. The “blue wave” that the pollsters had expected to sweep across the country never happened. (In fact, almost nothing of what pollsters had expected ever happened). Instead, Trump picked 5m votes more than in 2016 despite four years of scandals, impeachment, and his terrible mismanagement of the coronavirus outbreak that had killed more than 230,000 Americans until election time. The Republicans increased their ranks in the House of Representatives (although control of the chamber still belongs to the Democrats) and appear poised to hold onto the Senate if they win in January 2021 the two runoff elections in Georgia.
To appreciate how narrowly did the Democrats win this election, let’s do some simple math.
To the most recent count (shown in pic above), out of the about 152 million Americans who cast a vote, Biden won 78,678,763 votes (or 50.8% of total) and Trump won 73,116,708 votes (or 47.2% of total)—that is, a margin of 5,562,055 votes in favour of Biden. With some good will, this looks like a rather convincing difference, right? Wrong! The first reason that invalidates the previous positive conclusion is California.
If you look at the map and data above, you immediately see that California voted overwhelmingly for the Democrats. Now look at the data box and what you notice is that Biden won this state (and its 55 electoral votes) by an impressive margin of 5,009,648 votes. If you subtract this single state-level margin from the Democrats’ nationwide margin, we are left with only 552,407 votes in favor of Biden that determined the electoral outcomes in all other states of the country. Which brings me to the second reason that makes the prima facie optimistic view of the US election results look more distressing than initially thought. This is the very, very thin margins with which Biden won a number of battleground states.
Trump lost four states with less than 1% of the vote cast in them. Specifically, Biden carried Arizona (11 E.V.s) by about 10,000 votes, or 0,31% of state total; Georgia (16 E.V.s) by slightly more than 14,000 votes, or 0.28% of total; in Wisconsin (10 E.V.s), Biden won by just 20,546 votes, or 0.62% of state total; and in the crucial state of Pennsylvania (20 E.V.s), Biden’s lead amounted to just 68,207 votes, or 0.97 of the total statewide. Taking into consideration that, one, Trump (who won 232 electoral votes) was only 38 E.V.s short for winning the Presidency and, two, the four states above controlled among them 57 E.V.s, it is easy to imagine a different electoral outcome than what we finally got.
What is to happen next? Of course, there still will be nasty legal battles is battleground states Biden won with only tiny majorities, and Trump will offer nothing but obstacles during the 10-week transition period until inauguration day. But the main point is this: In a situation like the present one, the mandate of the electorate for a progressive agenda is weak, or at least diffuse, while illiberal populism has displayed extraordinary strength. This is not a good omen for the future.
Biden will be an exceptionally weak President for at least three reasons: the Senate, his own party, and social polarization. Regarding the Senate, it is still possible if they win the run-off elections for the remaining two seats in Georgia in early January that the Democrats gain control of it. But the chances of winning are slim. Assuming that the Senate remains in Republican hands, Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, will try to kill every major White House initiative. He will also try to block top job appointments that do not meet Republican approval.
Biden will find it almost impossible to gain control over his party. This will become immediately obvious when, in order to pacify the Republican opposition, Biden may nominate one or two moderate Republicans to top positions while keeping at bay more progressive left Democrats. How Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — the leaders of the Democratic left on Capitol Hill — are going to behave is anybody’s guess.
Thirdly, it will be very difficult for Biden to restore unity in a country split into two, almost equally-sized tribes. Trumpism has anything but been repudiated. Nor has Trump himself.
Even if he lost the election, he most likely will remain a power to be reckoned. He has a huge power base, a 88-million strong Twitter account, and an extraordinary database of information about his supporters —a real war chest for fighting the 2024 race. Angry at defeat and keen to seek revenge on his adversaries, Trump will not quietly go away. I see these as possible scenarios: (1) Trump bids for re-election; (2) Trump is made kingmaker among rising Republicans and tries to reshape the part in his image. He passes the baton to someone like him or to a member of his family; Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Ted Cruz of Texas are two other candidates for receiving Trump’s populist mantle. (3) Trump will in any case remain a disruptive force in American politics. It remains strong and kicking, and only time can tell how it may behave in the future.
While you are here you might be interested to read the following blog post which, in early September 2020, forecast that the presidential election would not be an easy walk in the park for Biden, as the pollsters were predicting and most journalists and other pundits believed. Rather, it was to be a bloody war at the trenches. Which is what it was. The post explains the reasons for that.
