Election results

Biden defeated Trump, but Democrats didn't win a mandate. They ignore that at their peril.

... A centerpiece of these narratives is the claim that President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris won more votes than any other ticket in U.S. history. So far, more than 77.7 million votes had been counted for the Democratic ticket, with some final votes left to count. This does, indeed, surpass the previous record, set by Sen. Barack Obama in 2008, of 69.5 million votes.

However, President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence also beat Obama's record by a healthy margin this cycle, pulling in 72.4 million votes to date, with their numbers also expected to climb. The electoral results do not show that the public is united behind Biden and Harris. Quite the contrary — they show that voters are deeply divided.

About 31.1 percent of voting-age Americans are expected to have cast their ballots for Biden when all is said and done. This is very far from a majority. Nor is it a historic level of support. Lyndon B. Johnson set the record in 1964, pulling in 38 percent of all voting-age adults. And contrary to Pelosi's assertions, Kennedy also pulled in a larger share of the electorate than Biden and Harris are projected to win (31.8 percent) — as did Ronald Reagan in 1984.

The record in terms of sheer number of votes that the Democratic presidential ticket got is a product of population growth. When we control for the size of the electorate, it is clear that the incoming administration does not have an unprecedented mandate.