CNN's John Berman and Harry Enten pointed out President-elect Donald Trump's shrinking popular vote gap over Vice President Kamala Harris—and shared a statistic about his former opponent Hillary Clinton's popular vote margin that Trump isn't going to like one bit.
News Central anchor Berman and Enten, the network's senior political data reporter, noted that Trump currently holds 49.9% of the counted votes, edging out Harris, who has 48.2%. However, not only does this mean Donald Trump did not win 50% of the vote, but this 1.7% margin is narrower than the 2.1% popular vote lead Clinton had over Trump in the 2016 election.
Berman said:
"What do Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have in common? The answer? Their popular vote victories are really similar. In fact, as of right now it looks like Hillary Clinton's popular vote victory in 2016 is bigger than Donald Trump's popular vote victory in 2024, something I’m sure Trump world is thrilled we just said out loud."
He turned it over to Enten, who concurred with Berman's observation that Trump's "popular vote margin is shrinking":
"The case that Trump's mandate isn't all that. If you look, historically speaking, Donald Trump is now under 50% in the national popular vote. I want to compare his popular vote victory to those, historically speaking, of the last 200 years."
"His popular vote victory ranks 44th out of 51. That ain't exactly strong. Some might argue that is weak. In fact, his popular vote win at this point is the weakest [since] all the way back in 2000 to find a smaller popular vote victory than Donald Trump currently has."
"So yeah, Donald Trump has won the popular vote but it ain't all that, dear friends."
Berman noted:
"George W. Bush had a bigger popular vote in 2004 and if you're looking at a combination of popular vote and electoral college votes, Obama twice had bigger popular vote and electoral college votes as well. ... Joe Biden's popular vote victory was twice as big, his electoral college victory was a little smaller."
You can hear what they said in the video below.
And people knew Trump, ever so obsessed with numbers, would not be happy to hear this.
With the narrative that Trump somehow has a "mandate" slipping away, we expect an angry late night post from Trump on Truth Social any minute now.
@realDonaldTrump/Truth Social
@islamoradalover/Bluesky
@hillbillybluedog/Bluesky