How much has the gap between Trump and Harris narrowed in recent days?

Photo: Jeff Kowalsk and Andrew Caballero-Reynolds Agence France-Presse Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris

Sarah Boumedda

Published at 0:00

• United States

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Three weeks after the presidential election, Donald Trump now finds himself with just under 50% of the vote. What explains this discrepancy with the scores initially announced, and what do these results mean? ?

On the evening of November 6, the day after the election, the Republican candidate garnered 50.9% of the American population's votes, compared to 47.4% for his Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris. But since then, the gap has narrowed, and the future president has just lost the majority of the popular vote: for the past few days, he has only obtained 49.9% of the votes, while Harris has climbed to 48.3%, according to Reuters data.

This discrepancy is explained in particular by postal votes, sent by mail before November 5, which take longer to be counted, explains Christophe Cloutier-Roy, deputy director of the Observatory on the United States of the Raoul-Dandurand Chair at the Université du Québec à Montréal. This is particularly the case in California, where this method is very widespread.

“We knew that it would significantly narrow the margin. Even in the first few days, some people were saying that Harris would manage to catch up with Trump,” says the researcher. “Ultimately, we saw very quickly that this would not be the case.” The gap has nevertheless narrowed enough for Trump to flirt with the thin line of 50%, he recalls.

A narrative that is difficult to reverse

Will there be a political recovery of this narrowing margin?? “I don't think so,” says Mr. Cloutier-Roy. The speech emphasizing that Trump had won hands down resonated very loudly — and was therefore adopted by all sides — in the aftermath of the election, among both Republicans and Democrats. “It's going to be very hard to correct that narrative. »

Even though he observes progressive American media trying to come back to this gap in the popular vote, it does not change the results in any way, the expert notes. “If we look at the electoral college, it is still a mandate with 312 electors [for Trump] against 226 [for Harris]. Trump won 31 states out of 50.” Kamala Harris won 19 states and the District of Columbia. In 2016, losing the popular vote did not prevent Donald Trump from claiming that his victory was complete, he who had exceeded 300 electors, recalls the director.

In terms of the number of votes, Donald Trump achieved his best score this year, collecting more than 77 million, compared to 74.6 million for Kamala Harris. She is also far from having equaled the feat achieved by Joe Biden four years earlier: the Democrat had then broken the record for a presidential candidate by obtaining more than 81 million votes. In 2020, Trump had collected 46.8% of the votes: the populist has therefore never exceeded the 50% threshold in three elections.

“The Democrats are faced with the fact that they lost the election,” summarizes Christophe Cloutier-Roy. And this comes after an election campaign in which some supporters expected Kamala Harris to win the popular vote in every scenario, as Hillary Clinton did eight years ago.

The 2016 election is one of only two in the past 50 years in which the winner failed to win a majority of the vote: Trump won with 45.8 percent of the vote, compared to Clinton’s 48 percent. The same scenario occurred in 2000, when George W. Bush defeated Al Gore.

Mr. Trump, however, is the first Republican in 20 years to win the popular vote against his Democratic opponent.

It has happened before that a president was elected without obtaining more than 50% of the vote: Democrat Bill Clinton won his two terms with results below this threshold (42.9% in 1992 and 49.1% in 1996). At the time, a third candidate, independent Ross Perot, had muddied the waters: the billionaire had garnered nearly 19% of the vote in 1992, and more than 8% in 1996.

“What could help the Democrats is the fact that they are no longer in power,” the researcher suggests. This situation would allow them to bet on a protest vote, as was the case in 2020. “When Trump was in power, the Democrats performed very well in the by-elections and midterms. » The unpopularity of the Republican president’s measures — and their consequences — could thus lead to a Democratic victory in 2026, or even 2028.

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Tight fights in some States

The narrow gap in the popular vote is also visible in some states. Looking at the margin separating the two candidates in each state, we see that Trump leads Harris by less than two percentage points in three key states: Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

In Wisconsin, the last three elections have even ended with gaps of less than a percentage point between Democrats and Republicans. “It is considered the ultimate swing state, in that sense. It's not the most important thing in the electoral college, but there really is a kind of balance there” between the two major parties, but also between urban and rural populations, explains Mr. Cloutier-Roy.

“It's also a state where the party bases are very active, in both cases. […] It's a very interesting political laboratory to study, because it's really a microscope of American politics.”

The researcher also thinks that a change could take place in Florida in the years to come. Classified as a swing state since the 1990s, Florida gave Trump the lead this year by just over 13 percentage points.

The president-elect enjoys strong popularity in Florida, the expert says. But what will happen in 2028, once Trump can no longer run for president ? “We will have to see, with generational changes, among other things, if there will be any backlash. […] There may be an opening for Democrats to get elected in the entire state. Democrats would be wrong to completely abandon [the state],” given its weight in the electoral college, namely 30 electors, he concludes.