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Coming from Australia, which has a more sensible electoral system, I instinctively think about "preference flows" of the minority candidates when I look at these numbers. Trump was 316,571 short of majority, Harris was 2,601,538. Neither party gained an absolute majority because 2.9 million out of 155.2 million voters picked third-party candidates: 862,049 Green, 756,393 RFKJr, 650,126 Libertarian, 171,786 PSL, and 477,755 "other". One of the many failings of the US electoral system is that it effectively ignores these 2,918,109 million voters. But, if forced to state a preference between the two majority candidates, how do you genuinely think they would've gone? I don't think there's any question that, even just among the 756,393 people who voted for a guy actively campaigning for Trump, there are 316,571 people who would prefer a Trump presidency over a Harris presidency. That in itself - if 100% of Greens and 100% of Libertarians, and 100% of PSL, and 100% of "other", and the other 58.14% of RFKJr voters ALL prefer Harris - is enough to grant an absolute majority to Trump. If you plug more realistic guesstimates into preference distributions for the minor candidates, I don't think there is a plausible run-off result below 50.5-49.5 Trump out of those numbers. |