Wendy Robinson: Landslide?

In the Dec. 4 Recorder, a letter writer states that the presidential election was an “Electoral College landslide” [“Looking forward to Trump at the helm”]. This claim has been repeated many times, along with claims of the president-elect having a “mandate.” Trump himself has called his win “a political victory our country has never seen before.”

However, the facts do not bear this out. Trump won 312 Electoral College votes, far short of Bill Clinton’s 370 and 379 in 1992 and 1996 and Barack Obama’s 365 in 2008, and still fewer than Obama’s 332 in 2012. And Ronald Reagan (remember him?) won 525 in 1984 — now that was a landslide.

The letter writer also mentions her surprise that Trump won the popular vote, and her surprise is understandable since it’s the first time a Republican has won the popular vote since George Bush in 2004. But it’s also true that more people voted for someone else than for Trump — his 77 million or so votes were less than half of the total cast. And that doesn’t even take into account all the people who stayed home, about 89 million registered voters.

All in all, something like a third of registered voters voted for him. So let’s keep the “landslide” and “mandate” talk in perspective.

Wendy Robinson

Greenfield