The GOP’s stunning election triumph is the latest sign that 21st century elections, with rapid reversals of fortune and small victory margins, are quite different than the 20th century, where we saw longer-term stability coupled with large voter swings. We need to look back much further to the 19th century to find a comparison.
Donald Trump’s margins of about 1.6% in the popular vote and 86 votes in Electoral College joins all 21st century presidents in not being impressive by 20th century standards, where 18 of 25 elections saw a larger popular vote victory margin than the biggest this century, Barack Obama’s 7.27% victory in 2008.
Five of the 20th century margins were 20+% blowouts. And these wins were nationwide, not a small group of swing states — 17 saw victory gaps of more than 200 Electoral College votes. Only Obama has even topped 100 since.
The swing in the vote margin is revealing. No 21st century election has seen as much as a 10% point voter swing between elections (Trump’s is less than a 7% swing from 2020). Compare this to the 1964-1976 time period, where each election saw a head-spinning 20%+ party swing. In the nine changes in party control races in the 20th century, all saw at least an 11% swing, and five topped 20%.
As a result, fewer states are competitive. From 2000-2024, all but 15 states voted for the same party in every election. By comparison, in just the four elections from 1988-2000, only 25 states flipped their vote, and, in a time of great dislocation, the seven elections from 1948-1972, every single state switched at least once, with 38 switching twice.
It is not clear why the mass of voters have decided since 2000 that they need to stick to their party. Though voters may speak about how the two parties are too similar, and that they are independent from either party, the actual election results say otherwise. There are high-profile changes in the electorate, such as working class voters and minorities moving towards the Republicans while educated white women moved to the Democrats, but these swings in the electorate may be canceling each other out.
The interesting result of this statis is near parity in politics and those few swing voters create a different dynamic — regular change in control.
The presidency is regularly changing hands. No party has won three straight presidential elections since 1988. In the 20th century, the Republicans pulled that feat off three times and the Democrats once, winning five straight.
Congress is feeling the impact. Change in control was rare in the House — it happened once in the years from 1954-2006. In the last 18 years, there have been four flips. Additionally, outside of 2008, no party has hit the 20th century norm of 250 seats.
There have been five split Congress — where opposing parties control each house — since 2001. This phenomenon occurred five times total in the 20th century.
We need to look back to the late 19th century Gilded Age, where close elections were a constant. None of the six elections saw a 5% margin and there were “wrong winner” elections — where the popular vote and electoral vote diverge. The swing between the parties was minuscule — from 1876-1892, not even for 4% difference. And in four straight elections, there was a change in presidential party control, which has not happened since.
Interestingly enough, like in that time period, the same wedge issues — tariffs, immigration and Civil Service — are back in vogue, voter turnout is up, greater income disparity plagues the populace and the richest members of society rank among the most prominent celebrities of the era.
It took a major recession for the Gilded Age’s political paralysis to end and one party to establish lasting control, which began two years after the start of Grover Cleveland’s second non-consecutive term — another feature today shares with that age. Perhaps that happened this Election Day.
But, as we saw in other recent races, the desire to claim a lasting political realignment is great, but with a close division, little in the way of voter movement, and no significant electoral victory in hand, there is good reason to think that our political world will be stuck dancing to the same (18)80s music for the foreseeable future.
Spivak is a senior fellow at the Hugh L. Carey Institute for Government Reform at Wagner College and a senior research fellow at the Berkeley Law’s California Constitution Center.
