The Graph That Explains The Election

Occam's razor suggest we don't need to overcomplicate it.

Sorry to write again so soon—but I am finding people are hungry for useful ways to make sense of what has happened.

I found a piece of information perfectly illuminates something I’ve referred to in my last couple reflections.

This morning, I could have rattled off a more than a half dozen governments that have lost power or lost a lot of seats this year. I knew it was a serious, secular trend.

What I didn’t realize is that it was nearly universal.

According to the Financial Times, every single elected government in the “developed world*” lost seats this year, for the first time in recorded history.

The graph below goes back to WWII, but apparently this has been tracked back to 1905. The author’s claims this is actually the first time this has happened since the onset of universal suffrage.

American Exceptionalism

The shift for the Democrats’ vote share is represented by the red dot above. As you can see, it is one of the best performances by an elected government in the entire world.

In this context, the Democrats actually kicked ass. Or Donald Trump performed extremely poorly.

It sure doesn’t feel like it.

But the billions raised, brat summer, the talented politician and her awesome VP—the broad popular front that included progressives, moderates, centrists and institutionalist right-wingers—your phone banking and donations and posts and my 817 knocked doors and the millions of doors knocked by everyone else—together made a huge difference.

They stymied the losses and they prevented a blowout in state and local elections, strengthening the bulwark that is needed to face the onslaught that may be coming out of Washington DC.

(It’s also worth noting that Washington State was one of the only places to totally defy this shift. More on that later!)

Could we have done better? Sure.

It is true that there are questions to ask about how to rebuild the coalition and what to do about young men. It is also true that Joe Biden should have stepped aside earlier. It is true that we need to better understand how to navigate a very different information and often disinformation ecosystem.

But it very unlikely that self-reports from people who don’t like Democrats, or your friend’s pet theory of what Democrats need to do differently that happens to match their own policy preferences—holds a candle to this global trend in terms of explanatory power.

Just to be clear, none of this undercuts the gravity of the situation. The dangers are all still just as real and vigilance will be required.

But understanding what happened is part of how we think about the path to protecting our communities in the meantime and rebuilding power.

*An earlier version of this post said every elected government, which was incorrect. The party governing in Mexico (Morena) increased its vote share in transitioning from AMLO to Claudia Sheinbaum, and apparently Mexico does not meet the Financial Times’ definition of “developed."