I am trying to understand what happened in our 2024 Presidential election. The narrow margin of victory for Donald Trump in Blue Wall states was not on everyone’s radar screen. Is his victory a mandate? I think given the narrow margins the answer is no. However, winning all seven battle ground states certainly appears to be a mandate.

Here is a broad overview. It compares data from the three “blue wall” states: Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, which account for 44 electoral votes.

Notice in 2020, Biden carried these three states by narrow margins, 0.6-2.8%. While Trump in 2024, carried these three states by a slightly narrower margin, 0.9-1.5%. Translating these cumulative percentages into actual votes in the three states, Biden won by a cumulative margin of 256,000 votes. Trump won by a cumulative margin of 245,000 votes. The point being the margin of victory for Trump was quite slim for the blue wall. Harris needed to replicate what Biden accomplished in 2020. If she did, she would have ended with 270 electoral votes. She would have won the White House (226 + 44 electoral votes from the blue wall). It came down to the blue wall.

Trump won 245,000 more cumulative votes in the three blue wall states. This number, as a percentage of the total votes cast in the three states, amounted to about 1.5%. That appears to be a very slim margin that determined the election’s outcome.

So what are reasons for why Harris did not perform as well as Biden did in the blue wall states.

• “the economy stupid”
• immigration concerns
• the Hamas-Israel conflict
• there are probably others as well

Finally, as of Friday, November 8, Trump received 73.5 million votes (50.7%), while Harris received 69.2 million votes (47.7%). Certainly, not a landslide or mandate. Nevertheless, Trump was victorious and with the GOP flipping the Senate and poised to remain in control of the House, a mandate seems like a reasonable conclusion.