Define “Landslide”

The True Scope of Trump’s 2016 Electoral Victory

I created this graph four years ago after Trump’s surprise victory, which he declared a “massive landslide.” I knew he had lost the popular vote by a few million and his Electoral College margin didn’t seem that substantial, so I compared the electoral margins from all the presidential elections of the past 100 years to get some context.

As you can see, Trump’s win is on the low end of things. Ranking 22nd of the past 25 elections (placing him in the 16th percentile) puts Trump in the company of only Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush as having the lowest electoral margins of the past century.

So while Trump and his surrogates made (and in some cases are still making) claims of his win being a “blowout” and “very, very large” and “one of the biggest Electoral College victories in history” and “one of the biggest victories ever,” the numbers actually show a president who pulled a fairly close Electoral College win while also losing the popular vote. While his election was indeed historic, it was not due to his margin of victory.