They Are Not The Majority

I tweeted about this yesterday or the day before — one thing about Republicans that does truly get under my skin is how they have this unshakeable belief that a majority of Americans perpetually share their political and social views, which isn’t true. It’s just not true.

In 2016 when this “MAGA” movement began (insulting America by saying it’s not great now) Republicans found themselves without a mandate to govern. Donald Trump won the Electoral College but lost the popular vote. That’s what that means, a majority of Americans voted for somebody else but we got stuck with this guy anyway.

After that, they called themselves the “silent majority”, Americans who apparently had not spoken or made themselves heard in the past who made their voice heard now and whom had always made up a majority of the electorate. Except they weren’t the majority, the people who voted for Hillary Clinton were. Clearly and inarguably, by a very large margin. And Republicans have a tendency to make this bizarre claim after every election, that “America remains, fundamentally, a center-right nation.” Even after elections where they get walloped.

We can’t ever know if truly in their hearts, Americans see the world the way the GOP does, always has, and always will. But we can take a pretty good guess by just looking at the way Americans have voted for president in the modern era.

Since 1992, a span of 28 years, the Democratic candidate for president has won the popular vote 7 times, while the Republican candidate has only won it once: George W. Bush in 2004.

The popular vote result looks like this:

1992: Bill Clinton (D)
1996: Bill Clinton (D)
2000: Al Gore (D) (lost the electoral college to George W. Bush, 271-266)
2004: George W. Bush (R)
2008: Barack Obama (D)
2012: Barack Obama (D)
2016: Hillary Clinton (D) (lost the electoral college to Donald Trump, 304-227)
2020: Joe Biden (D)

Only once, in 2004, has a Republican received the most votes for president, in the past 28 years (and that will be 32 years once Joe Biden’s first term expires.)

If you look at public polling (disregard if you wish, it’s been correct and accurate far more than it’s been wrong in the past 30 years) you’ll find a majority of Americans support the primary pillars of the Democratic Party’s official policies today: $15/hr minimum wage, universal healthcare, abortion legal, same-sex marriage legal, weed legalized, etc.

Maybe America is a center-right nation some years, and a center-left nation others. But for absolutely certain in 2016 and again in 2020, the majority was Democrats, not Republicans. (And I think we all know how arguable is the idea that Republicans — especially Trump supporters — are ever silent. One of their defining traits it they never stop talking, and in fact don’t have minimal common sense about when the stop, even when it’s reflecting poorly on them.