US Politics, numbers and perspectives

In politics, statistics are elements that always get my full attention. I wish Democrats were more attached to these data and able to spin them to their advantage, instead they don’t, and let Republicans get away with all kinds of falsehoods and lies. 

Let's start first with the percentage of registered voters per party. Personally, my wife and I are registered “Independent” while in fact we almost always end up voting Democrat. In the US, as you know, numbers are always breaking down into “Republicans, Independents and Democrats”, each time no one knows which percent of these categories go into our eligible electorate. 

Intuitively, I always thought their numbers broke down respectively into 40%, 20% and 40%. As you’ll see on the table, it’s not at all the reality, as Independents are more than 50% than both of these two main parties. This means that when we’re told that 88% of Republicans approve of Trump, it’s in fact less than25% of the entire voting population!

Another huge misrepresentation is that Trump “got a mandate” in 2024. Wrong! The man got 77million votes while Joe Biden got 81 million four years before! In fact, in 2024, Harris got almost one million more votes than Trump did in 2020.Finally, participation was greater in 2020 than in 2024, with 66% of the eligible voters casting their votes versus only 64% in 2024. 

Democrats who supported Biden in the 2020 election didn’t bother to get out and vote or mail their ballots as they felt their candidate was just too old and his replacement (Harris) wasn’t up to the task and worth voting for. All this to say that only 31.9% of the eligible voters supported Trump in 2024, a far cry for “an overwhelming mandate” as opposed to 33.9% for Biden in the 2020 election, a much stronger mandate! 

Yes, numbers if not discussed and clearly explained can be very deceiving!