Comment by rexpop | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rexpop | Hacker News Reader

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> blowout

Trump won 49.8% of the popular vote, compared to Harris's 48.2%, giving him a margin of 1.6% (approximately 2.3 million votes).

This margin ranks as one of the smallest in modern history, smaller than Joe Biden's 4.45% margin in 2020 and smaller even than George W. Bush's narrow win in 2004 (2.46%).

Trump won 312 Electoral College votes to Harris's 226, marking a margin of 86 votes.

This is larger than his 2016 victory (304-227) and Biden's 2020 win (306-232), but it does not approach historical landslides like Reagan's 1984 victory (525-13) or Lyndon B. Johnson's in 1964 (486-52).

Trump's popular vote margin is the fifth smallest since 1960, ie #12 in the last 17 largest, #13 by vote % margin.

> Trump did not win by a little bit.

Yeah, he did.

0. https://infogram.com/untitled-1hnq41on3mjwp23

1. https://infogram.com/untitled-1h0n25oz3rxjz4p

The President is not elected by popular vote, and I should hope that the polling probabilities take that into account.

312 to 226 (58%/42%) was the final electoral college count. Do you know what the Polymarket odds for the race were at 11:30pm on November 4th, the day before election day? 59.8% Trump, 40.2% Harris. Yes, actually, seriously, go look them up, they didn't just correctly predict the winner, the odds themselves were within an incredibly accurate margin for the actual electoral vote share. The Robinhood election market odds were similarly placed. The Harris campaign said recently that they basically knew they were going to lose very early on. This information was out there, everyone knew it, except the "professional pollsters" who are now begging/pleading that their 50-50 models aren't worth giving up on.

You don't need to white knight the pollsters. They're selling a defective product. The marketplace for their product will punish them in 2026 and 2028 far more than any of our comments on HackerNews will.

It was who he won that mattered. Democrats are using 1.5% to justify a "we didn't do that badly" attitude and yes, they did do badly. Trump won demographics he had no reasonable right to win and He took all of the swing States. He won the popular vote that no Republican has been able to do since 2004.His Electoral College win was resounding. That and the Republicans winning the House and Senate. The Democrats really really need to rethink things.

Again, Reagan's 1984 victory (525-13) and Lyndon B. Johnson's in 1964 (486-52) were electorally "resounding," not Trump's margin of 84.

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