The size of Donald Trump’s election victory has sparked debate. Was it a landslide? The answer depends on where a person looks for their news outlet.
News outlets with a left-leaning bias, such as The New York Times, referred to Trump’s victory as “the ‘landslide’ that wasn’t.” MSNBC noted Trump “won every battleground state and the popular vote but not by a landslide.”
Meanwhile, right-leaning outlets like National Review reported “Landslide or not, Trump won a mandate.” Breitbart reported, “Trump’s landslide victory moved 48 states to the right.”
It’s been more than two weeks since election night, but the size of Trump’s victory continues to make headlines, especially as several counties, including many in California, have been slow to report results.
The updated vote tally over the past two weeks has narrowed Trump’s lead over his opponent Kamala Harris. However, he remains the winner of the popular vote, becoming the first Republican to do so in 20 years.
Here’s how news outlets are covering the updated numbers that have trickled in since the election.
Left-leaning publications
“By traditional numeric measures, Mr. Trump’s victory was neither unprecedented nor a landslide” The New York Times reported. “In fact, he prevailed with one of the smallest margins of victory in the popular vote since the 19th century and generated little of the coattails of a true landslide.”
The Times focused on Trump hovering around the 50%, with 99% of votes counted. However, some counties are still tallying results.
As of Friday, Nov. 22, Trump had received 50% of the vote compared to Harris’ 48.3%, a 1.7% margin of victory, according the Times election results tally.
The Times also compared Trump’s victory to what they referred to as real landslides, citing Lyndon B. Johnson’s 1964 win by 22.6 points, Richard Nixon’s 1972 win by 23.2 points, and Ronald Reagan’s 1984 win by 18.2 points.
The paper noted in the 40 years since Reagan’s victory, no president has won the popular vote by double digits.
The Times offered an explanation as to why the 2024 election is being classified as a landslide by the right.
“The incoming president and his team are trying to cement the impression of a ‘resounding margin,’ as one aide called it, to make Mr. Trump seem more popular than he is and strengthen his hand in forcing through his agenda in the months to come,” The Times wrote.
Right-leaning publications
On the other side of the political spectrum, the right-leaning National Review offered a different perspective.
“At 76.7 million votes and counting, Trump has now won the second most votes of any presidential candidate in history,” its story said.
The National Review also pointed out Trump won all seven key swing states and six states he lost four years ago.
“If a state was considered in play, Trump won it. If you want to dispute that Trump won a mandate on Election Day, you have to accept that Democrats earned an anti-mandate, a rebuke,” the publication wrote.
Some categories in the 2024 election were unprecedented. Trump garnered more support from Hispanic voters than any other Republican candidate in history, according to an Axios exit poll. Trump also became the first president to be twice-impeached and convicted of a felony to win re-election. He is set to take office again in January 2025.
