In 2024, Trump pulled 75,142,617 votes versus 71,881,183 for Harris.
In 2020, Trump pulled 74,223,975 votes versus 81,283,501 for Biden.
In 2024, Harris pulled 9,402,318 fewer votes than Biden did in 2020.
In 2024, Trump pulled 918,642 more votes than he did in 2020.
If it is assumed that Trump’s additional votes came from people who had voted for Biden, then 918,642 of Harris’s lost votes represent these vote-switchers.
So, more than 900,000 voters switched from Biden/Harris to Trump. Had those votes stayed with Harris, then Trump would have pulled “only” 74,223,975 votes. Harris would have pulled 72,799,825 votes. Trump still would have won the popular votes by 1,424,150 votes. (That still leaves the Electoral College.)
Then, some 8,483,676 people who voted for Biden in 2020, just stayed home in 2024 rather than voting for either candidate.[1]
Throughout the Biden administration, Democratic politicians and many in the media labeled Donald Trump an “Authoritarian” and a “Fascist.” During the Biden phase of the 2024 Presidential election and in the final bit of the Harris-phase of the election, “Donald Trump is a threat to Democracy” played a central role in Democratic messaging.
What is “Fascism”? Fascism is a term for right-radical political movements in the first half of the Twentieth Century. Commonly, they were anti-liberal (in the sense of the 19th Century political ideology); Chauvinistic nationalist; focused on a strong “Leader”; hostile toward minority groups inside and to non-whites outside the Nation; and supporters of traditional values.
Maybe 84.5 million voters WANT “Authoritarianism” and “Fascism.” I don’t know why this would be. Perhaps the terms “Authoritarianism” and “Fascism” aren’t frightening to 84.5 million Americans? Perhaps the meaning for many people is different from what the terms’ users intend? Perhaps Trump’s opponents failed to flesh-out the meaning sufficiently?[2] Deporting illegal immigrants or letting each state decide the abortion question or avoiding foreign entanglements may not sound Hitlerian.
Maybe 84.5 million voters don’t believe that Trump is an “Authoritarian” or “Fascist.” In 1944, George Orwell wrote that “fascist” was a term of abusee used on the left for anyone they didn’t like. Similarly, he said, “socialist” or “communist” were terms of abuse used on the right for anyone they didn’t like.[3] Older voters will recall that “Fascist,” as in “cops are Fascist pigs,” once provided a common epithet on the Left. Wasn’t true then; maybe it isn’t true now?
Perhaps many people think that the current “democratic” political system is broken? The parties have been failing to deal with disruptive change for decades now. Scholars have divided American political history into six “party systems.” Parties exhaust their agenda. Then systems change after a “realigning election” wrecks one or more of the parties.[4]
[1] Unless one accepts the logic of pre-election Democratics that “not voting or voting for a third candidate is a vote for Trump.” That would put Trump’s vote at 83,626,293 to Harris’s 71,881,183. Nearly a 12 million vote edge.
[2] Certainly, 6 January 2021 gave them plenty to work with. A huge audience watched the broadcast of the riot.
[3] “What is Fascism?” https://www.orwell.ru/library/articles/As_I_Please/english/efasc
[4] For an introduction, see Political eras of the United States – Wikipedia Bibliography is weak.
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