Trump’s “decisive victory”
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I did a Lexis search this morning on stories about the presidential election that credited Trump with a “decisive victory,” and came up with 1,858 that used that phrase, although that number certainly includes quite a bit of double-counting of stories that were published in more than one venue. So hey maybe it’s only like 1,200 or something. Here’s one with some quotes from our brave captains of tech industry:
Following the victory of Trump, world leaders congratulated the president-elect and wished him all the success in his second innings. From Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella to some of the big names in the tech industry wishing Trump on his historic feat. Here’s a look at how the tech leaders reacted to the biggest development of the week.
Pichai took to his X account to share an electoral map of the results of the election as seen in Google Search. The map shows Trump with 277 electoral votes and his counterpart Harris with 224. The Alphabet CEO congratulated Trump on his decisive victory. “We are in a golden age of American innovation and are committed to working with his administration to help bring the benefits to everyone,” wrote Pichai in his post.
Congratulations to President @realDonaldTrump on his decisive victory. We are in a golden age of American innovation and are committed to working with his administration to help bring the benefits to everyone. pic.twitter.com/IPX7AJ8VvI
– Sundar Pichai (@sundarpichai) November 6, 2024
On the other hand, Nadella said in his post said that he was looking forward to engaging with the president-elect and his administration to drive innovation. “Congratulations President Trump, we’re looking forward to engaging with you and your administration to drive innovation forward that creates new growth and opportunity for the United States and the world,” he wrote.
Congratulations President Trump, we’re looking forward to engaging with you and your administration to drive innovation forward that creates new growth and opportunity for the United States and the world.
– Satya Nadella (@satyanadella) November 6, 2024
Meanwhile, Meta boss, Mark Zuckerberg shared his wishes on the Threads app. “Congratulations to President Trump on a decisive victory. We have great opportunities ahead of us as a country. Looking forward to working with you and your administration,” wrote Zuckerberg.
Apple CEO Tim Cook congratulated Trump and said that he was looking forward to engaging with the new president and his administration to ensure that the United States continues to lead. “Congratulations President Trump on your victory! We look forward to engaging with you and your administration to help make sure the United States continues to lead with and be fueled by ingenuity, innovation, and creativity,” wrote Cook.
Congratulations President Trump on your victory! We look forward to engaging with you and your administration to help make sure the United States continues to lead with and be fueled by ingenuity, innovation, and creativity.
– Tim Cook (@tim_cook) November 6, 2024
CEO of OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, Sam Altman, in his post wished for his ‘huge success in the job’. Altman also underscored that it was critically important that the US maintain its lead in developing AI with democratic values. “It is critically important that the US maintains its lead in developing AI with democratic values,” he wrote.
congrats to President Trump.
i wish for his huge success in the job.
– Sam Altman (@sama) November 6, 2024
In his post, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos congratulated Trump for his extraordinary political comeback and decisive victory. He wished the president-elect all the success in leading and uniting America. “Big congratulations to our 45th and now 47th President on an extraordinary political comeback and decisive victory. No nation has bigger opportunities. Wishing @realDonaldTrump all success in leading and uniting the America we all love,” read his post.
Big congratulations to our 45th and now 47th President on an extraordinary political comeback and decisive victory. No nation has bigger opportunities. Wishing @realDonaldTrump all success in leading and uniting the America we all love.
– Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) November 6, 2024
Last month, Bezos who owns The Washington Post , had come out in defence of the publication when it declared that it was not endorsing a candidate for President in the US elections.
Here’s a question: When’s the last time that the winner of a presidential election had a smaller margin of victory in national vote than Trump just had over Harris? The answer is . . . 1968. OK this is a bit of a trick question in that it omits the two election “winners” who didn’t actually win the popular vote, but going back all the way to the beginning of the previous century, only four of the 32 presidential elections in the last 124 years have featured a closer popular vote percentage margin than the final 2024 margin, which is going to be about 1.7%. Those would be Nixon’s first two presidential runs, the Supreme Court’s theft of the 2000 election from Al Gore, and 2016.
Interesting side note: Kamala Harris and Hillary Clinton will each have ended up getting pretty much exactly the same percentage of the popular vote: 48.2%. The difference in the two elections will have been that the percentage of votes going to minor parties fell from nearly 6% in 2016 to 2% this year, with almost all of that difference going to Trump, who is going to finish with 49.9% of the popular vote, which some say is less than 50%.
I got a bright idea in the middle of writing this post, which was to check how many news stories in the same data base had used the phrase “decisive victory” to describe Biden’s win over Trump in 2020 in the first 12 days after that election, which as you may recall featured Biden winning by seven million votes, compared to Trump’s 2.5 million vote margin over Harris, to go along with a comparable margin of victory in the Electoral College. The answer is . . . 307, which is 83.5% less than 1,858.