Opinions Trump did far worse in the election than we should have expected
When I woke up in South Africa last Wednesday morning and checked Twitter, I actually thought that President Trump had won reelection. “The results have turned out to be a damning repudiation of [Joe] Biden,” a left-wing pundit tweeted. “Team Trump looks very happy, and they should,” a Republican pollster said. Thousands of people circulated a left-of-center writer’s article in the Week called, “The Left Just Got Crushed.”
These sentiments — that even if Biden won, he should have won more “resoundingly” and that last week’s true, dark-horse winner was “Trumpism” — remained in place up until, and after, the election was called on Saturday for Biden. “Win or lose, Donald Trump wins,” one journalist declared. “Should have been a trouncing,” a Brookings Institution analyst lamented, while a Democratic House member warned her peers that the results show that Democrats “will get … torn apart” in future races. The dark mood lifted some on Saturday when networks called the race, but it’ll be back. The overall “message” of the election, the Associated Press said on Sunday — a day after Biden became president-elect — is that Trump “won more votes for president than any other candidate. Except Biden.”
But the truth is that Trump did far worse in last week’s election than he should have, and that his reelection campaign was a historic failure. Incumbency is a far greater advantage, this year, than it has been made out to be. And during an ongoing crisis, American voters tend to choose the devil they know over the one they don’t. It’s really hard to overstate the incumbent advantage in U.S. politics. In most cases, incumbent presidents not only win reelection, but also substantially increase their popular-vote margin. Twenty-one American presidents have served a second term. Among these, only three were unable to grow their vote share significantly in their second election. Between their first and second elections, Thomas Jefferson, Ulysses S. Grant and Ronald Reagan doubled their popular-vote margins over their opponents. Franklin D. Roosevelt improved his by 80 percent, and Bill Clinton by 50 percent.
But the truth is that Trump did far worse in last week’s election than he should have, and that his reelection campaign was a historic failure. Incumbency is a far greater advantage, this year, than it has been made out to be. And during an ongoing crisis, American voters tend to choose the devil they know over the one they don’t. It’s really hard to overstate the incumbent advantage in U.S. politics. In most cases, incumbent presidents not only win reelection, but also substantially increase their popular-vote margin. Twenty-one American presidents have served a second term. Among these, only three were unable to grow their vote share significantly in their second election. Between their first and second elections, Thomas Jefferson, Ulysses S. Grant and Ronald Reagan doubled their popular-vote margins over their opponents. Franklin D. Roosevelt improved his by 80 percent, and Bill Clinton by 50 percent.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/opinions-trump-did-far-worse-in-the-election-than-we-should-have-expected/ar-BB1aQ867?li=BBnbfcL
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