When Donald J. Trump won the presidency eight years agorby63, it was easy to cast his victory as a narrow one — or even dismiss it as a fluke.
Not this time.
Despite Jan. 6, the end of Roe v. Wade and a felony conviction, Mr. Trump won a clear victory. He is on track to win all seven battleground states. He made gains in every corner of the country and with nearly every demographic group: If you look at The Times’s map of what has changed since 2020, you’ll see a sea of red.
According to our estimates, Mr. Trump is also on track to become the first Republican to win the national popular vote in 20 years.
At the same time, the scope of his victory shouldn’t be overstated. This was no landslide. A one- or two-percentage-point victory in the national popular vote with roughly 312 electoral votes is not unusual. It’s not as large as Barack Obama’s modest win in 2012, and falls far short of “change” elections like Mr. Obama’s in 2008 or Bill Clinton’s in 1992.
But Mr. Trump is not any ordinary candidate. As a consequence, an ordinary victory says a lot more than it usually would. A felon who sought to overturn an election wouldn’t usually be considered viable in a presidential election. But not only was he viable — he won somewhat convincingly.
Despite his victory, most voters found Mr. Trump to be an unappealing candidate. CNN’s exit poll found that just 44 percent of voters had a favorable view of him, compared with 54 percent who had an unfavorable view. A majority of voters, 55 percent, said his views are too extreme. Obviously, there are many aspects of Mr. Trump’s appeal that these simple questions do not easily measure. But Mr. Trump’s victory may say more about the Democrats and the public’s desire for change than it does about the president-elect himself.
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