For months, the propaganda press insisted that President Trump didn’t win in a landslide. The goal was obvious: strip Trump and Republicans of any claim to a mandate and paint their popularity as inflated. But the narrative just crumbled, with a new report showing just how much ground Democrats lost in 2024.
A New York Times (NYT) analysis found the “Democratic share of the electorate decreased” in thirty states (plus Washington D.C.) between 2020 and 2024 while Republicans “either expanded their advantage or closed the gap with Democrats in all of them.”
The “four-year swing toward the Republicans adds up to 4.5 million voters, a deep political hole that could take years for Democrats to climb out from,” the NYT reported.
The Times’ big takeaways, according to Shane Goldmacher who helped author the analysis, include that Democrats are struggling to attract new voters, battleground states have shifted to the right (with Democrats losing their “registration edge” in states like Florida and New Hampshire), Republicans’ support amongst men “far outpaces the Democratic edge among women,” and that younger voters are flocking to the Republican Party. Goldmacher also noted that “[t]here has been some hope in Democratic circles that the movement away from the party will reverse itself now that President Trump is back in the White House,” but “[t]hat hasn’t happened yet.”
To be fair, registrations among Republicans have surely improved partly because Republicans and the RNC mobilized efforts in the 2024 cycle to turn out new voters, as pointed out in a statement to The Federalist by RNC Co-Chair KC Crosbie.
“Our registration efforts, along with those of our partners, coupled with our commonsense messaging and GOTV efforts have resonated with voters. And it’s not just suburban communities; we have seen significant registration shifts in urban areas. The Republican Party is meeting voters where they are while Democrats double down on dumb,” Crosbie said. “With President Trump fulfilling his campaign promises every day and the RNC working hard every day, I expect more of the same.”
Clearly, Republicans’ efforts to “meet voters where they are” have been popular.
Yet, for weeks after the 2024 election, we were informed by the propaganda press that Trump’s November victory wasn’t a “landslide” or a “mandate.”
The Nation’s Joan Walsh insisted that not only did Trump not win in a “landslide,” but that the results of the election were not a “top-to-bottom repudiation of Democrats as it first looked like.” Walsh insisted the “way to respond is not to launch a civil war within the Democratic Party” because the “single biggest problem” that caused Vice President Kamala Harris to lose was simply that she “inherited a dysfunctional” campaign.
Michael Schaffer wrote on November 22 in Politico: “Trump Won Less Than 50 Percent. Why Is Everyone Calling It a Landslide?” Schaffer questioned why Trump’s “squeaker” win is treated as an “Olympian feat” rather than a “JV-caliber success.”
The clincher, however, was when Schaffer claimed that while Republicans “get to feel like winners,” “they’re really not that popular.”
The New York Times’ Peter Baker said on the same day that “The ‘Landslide’” wasn’t actually there. Baker accused Trump of being “disconnect[ed]” from the American public after Trump called his victory a “mandate.”
According to Baker, Trump and his team were merely “trying to cement the impression of a ‘resounding margin,’ as one aide called it, to make Mr. Trump seem more popular than he is and strengthen his hand in forcing through his agenda in the months to come.”
FiveThirtyEight’s Nathaniel Rakish and Amina Brown wrote days later that the election results were “not a landslide” and that any claims of such a landslide relied on “recency bias and using the wrong measuring sticks.”
The propaganda press insisted Trump’s victory wasn’t a landslide, that Republicans lacked a mandate, and that both Trump and Republicans’ popularity was overstated. But the NYT registration analysis tells a very different story. If the media were right, Democrats would at least be holding their ground. Instead, they’re collapsing across the country, confirming that Trump’s win wasn’t merely a mandate, but a repudiation of Democrat policies.
Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist. Brianna graduated from Fordham University with a degree in International Political Economy. Her work has been featured on Newsmax, Fox News, Fox Business and RealClearPolitics. Follow Brianna on X: @briannalyman2
