Trump 2.0 - a triumph of populism? What the numbers say

For the past two months, Donald J. Trump, the new President of the United States, has been causing unrest the likes of which had hardly been seen before. In the USA, the Department Of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is carrying out a massive government cutback, with numerous civil servants being forced out of their offices and positions.

Furthermore, the new government is cracking down on immigrants with unprecedented vehemence. At an international level, the new president is withdrawing the USA from international organizations, such as the World Health Organization, and is drastically reducing the USA's involvement in international disaster relief and poverty reduction.

He is also threatening to reduce US involvement in NATO and to stop supporting Ukraine in its defense efforts against the Russian war of aggression.

With these actions, Trump is not only jeopardizing the international reputation of the USA, but also the cohesion of the democratic West and the stability of the international system.

Is there a comparable shift to the right in voting behavior behind this shift to the right in government action?

Unlike in 2016, Trump not only won the majority of voters in the Electoral College (the electoral majority), but also the majority of the electorate (the popular majority). However, this was only a relative and not an absolute majority.

Trump received 77,302,580 votes (49.8%), while 75,017,618 votes (48.32%) were cast for Kamala Haris and 2,918,109 votes for third-party candidates. [ 1]

A majority of voters therefore did not choose Trump. Trump's election victory looks even less triumphant when the number of votes he won is compared to the 244,666,890 eligible voters. Of these, 88,330,197 did not take part in the election. [ 2]

There were therefore more abstentions than votes for Donald Trump and of those eligible to vote, more than two thirds did not vote for him.

However, it could be argued against the significance of such a calculation that voter turnout in the USA (compared to Germany) tends to be rather low anyway and therefore most predecessors in this millennium were also unable to achieve a much larger share of eligible voters. Nevertheless, voter turnout in 2024 was higher than in 2016 [3] and Trump was even able to increase the number of votes compared to his previous election victory.

On the other hand, turnout in the previous election in 2020 was even slightly higher at 66.38% [4] and Joe Biden even managed to collect more votes in this election (81,283,501) [5] than Trump in 2024.

If you compare Trump's election victory with the election victories of predecessors such as Dwight D. Eisenhower, Richard Nixon or Ronald Reagan, his election victory seems rather meagre. These were able to win more than 55%, even 60% of the votes. Even in 2024, Trump is clearly lagging behind with less than 50%. He was also apparently hardly able to change the minds of voters.

According to the results of election day polls published by CNN, [6] only 5% of former Biden voters voted for Donald Trump. [ 7]

This is barely more than the proportion of former Trump voters who voted for Kamala Harris in 2024 (4%). More important for the election victory were probably the approximately 10% of former non-voters, 49% of whom voted for Trump and 46% for Harris. [8]

The election in November 2024 was therefore by no means a landslide victory for Donald Trump. [9]

He can still rely on a fanatically loyal following. However, their share of the electorate has not increased and is still more of a minority, albeit a very vocal one. Against this backdrop, it is hardly surprising that Trump's policies are increasingly meeting with resistance from the population.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidential_election#Electoral_results

[2] https://election.lab.ufl.edu/2024-general-election-turnout/ As there are no civil registers in the USA, the underlying figures are estimates.

[3] https://election.lab.ufl.edu/voter-turnout/2016-general-election-turnout-rates/

[4] https://election.lab.ufl.edu/voter-turnout/2020-general-election-turnout/

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidential_election

[6] https://edition.cnn.com/election/2024/exit-polls/national-results/general/president/0

[7] This refers to those survey participants who voted for Biden in 2020.

[8] However, as always, such figures should be treated with the necessary caution. Unlike academic election studies, such as the American National Election Study (http://electionstudies.org), no precise information is available on selection procedures and weightings. However, the sample size is around 23,000 respondents, so that purely random deviations between the estimated values and the population shares should not be overly significant.

[9 ] I will try to shed light on how Trump's election victory came about in the following articles.