Trump’s return to the White House has reignited debates about the dynamics of American democracy. While his Electoral College win is being portrayed as a decisive mandate, the election’s margins tell a more nuanced story. Post-election statistics reveal an intriguing detail: if just 130,000 voters had changed their minds on the way to the polls, the result could have swung in favour of Kamala Harris and the Democrats.
Yet, this narrow margin was influenced by the complexity of the US electoral system, which was designed by the Founding Fathers to accommodate a vast and diverse nation. As a result, the final results used to take months to finalise, a delay that was largely due to the system’s reliance on the “winner-take-all” approach. Under this system, a candidate who wins a narrow margin in a state can claim all of that state’s electoral votes, regardless of how small the victory may be.
Therefore, Trump won the Electoral College, securing the presidency despite a narrow win in several states — sometimes by just a few thousand votes. Under the winner-takes-all system, this allowed him to claim all of that state’s electoral votes. However, only two states, Maine and Nebraska, allocate electoral votes proportionally, based on the popular vote within each congressional district, while the rest of the states follow the winner-take-all system.
Trump’s victory, therefore, was not just a result of popular support but also a consequence of these systemic dynamics..