A Brutal Truth: Trump Really Did Win

Theories about stolen elections damage democracy

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Throughout the entire Biden administration, Donald Trump and many of his supporters claimed that the 2020 election had been stolen from him. He never conceded defeat, even though he had lost by seven million votes and a decisive Electoral College margin of 306 to 232. Despite dozens of court rulings upholding the election results, and studies that failed to turn up any evidence of fraud, he never admitted that President Joe Biden had been legitimately elected.

No losing presidential candidate had challenged the results since the 19^th century. Doing so was seen by virtually all political scientists and historians as outrageous, not just because there was no evidence to support Trump’s claims, but especially since a gracious concession of defeat followed by a peaceful transition of power is at the heart of our political system. Republicans Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford lost by far smaller margins, but both swiftly conceded the morning after. Democrat Al Gore didn’t concede for weeks in 2000, but in that case, thanks to numerous flaws in Florida’s election machinery (remember ‘hanging chads?) nobody knew who had really won.

However, even Gore, who like Hillary Clinton had won the popular vote, conceded immediately once the U.S. Supreme Court stopped the recount in December, 2000. Only Donald Trump refused to accept his defeat.

But in recent weeks, I’ve been getting messages from Democrats who think this election was stolen. Maureen, a writer in her 70s who lives in Southfield, thinks Elon Musk used his Starlink Internet Service to somehow manipulate the results. In an eerie mirror image of how Republicans thought in 2021, other readers, many of whom did not want to give their real names, blamed computers, crooked election officials, and the complicity of the “mainstream media” for stealing the election that they claim Kamala Harris really won.

Well, guess what. Donald Trump really and legitimately won the 2024 election. I’ve been covering campaigns nearly half a century, and have analyzed reams of returns from elections even before that; I can tell you why Franklin D. Roosevelt won Ohio and lost Michigan in 1940, and lots of other things that help make sure I don’t get invited to parties. And I am convinced, based on all the data I’ve seen, that Trump won. By the way, in the interest of full disclosure, I did not want him to win. I have voted for presidential candidates from both parties, and think of all the contenders I’ve seen, he was by far the most unqualified and unsuited to be president.

But he won. How do I know that? For one thing, the election returns show that Trump did better than he did in 2020 in every single state of the union. Not much better in many cases, but better in every single state.

I don’t know of another single modern presidential election where that has happened. Anyone trying to manipulate election data wouldn’t bother to spend time and resources on deep red Kentucky or deep blue Washington state, but Vice President Harris ran slightly behind Mr. Biden’s 2020 performance in both – as she did everywhere, including her home state of California.

Also, the inconvenient truth for conspiracy theorists is that American elections are really quite clean. Yes, there are occasional arithmetical errors, but thanks in large part to the media and increased federal oversight, it is close to impossible to steal a major election. I do think that more people in Florida meant to vote for Al Gore than George Bush in 2000, but that doesn’t mean Republicans deliberately stole the election. The fact is that the state’s election systems were a mess; besides the punch card fiasco, Palm Beach County used what was called the “butterfly ballot,” in which more than 2,000 people who meant to vote Mr. Gore had their votes counted for right-wing third-party candidate Pat Buchanan instead.

That mess caused not only Florida, but other states, to reform their voting systems. Michigan has had remarkably clean voting systems for decades. In 2000, Democrat Dianne Byrum was favored over Republican Mike Rogers in a race for Congress, but the results showed him winning by 160 votes out of 290,000.

She asked for a recount, but conceded defeat before it was over when it was clear it wouldn’t change the outcome.

There’s no harm in asking for recounts in close elections; some states automatically do them when the margin is less than half a percent. But to claim fraud when there’s no evidence of it is not only wrong; threatening our belief in the honesty of elections is danger to democracy itself. Democrats, who claim they are trying to save democracy, should know that most of all.

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