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Why Democrats Can’t Learn Much from the 2024 Election

May 29, 2026 · 7:41 am ET · Leave a Comment

G. Elliot Morris: “Donald Trump won the ‘tipping-point’ state (the one whose electoral votes push the winner past 270, if you order the states by Democratic/Republican vote margin) by just 1.7 percentage points in 2024. Trump defeated Kamala Harris by just 120,000 votes in Pennsylvania. The excess electoral votes he won in Michigan and Wisconsin were decided by 110,000 votes — a fifth of the size of the smallest state.”

“The problem this presents for election analysts is that every campaign decision becomes potentially decisive for the outcome. There were 152 million votes cast in 2024, but the contest was decided by just 230,000 in those three states above — or 0.15 percent of all voters. When a race is that close, almost anything plausibly mattered.”

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Taegan Goddard

Taegan Goddard

Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire -- which for more than two decades has been one of the nation's most influential political news sites.

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