Trump demands apology from 'DUMB AS A ROCK' Kamala Harris for calling the 2024 elections 'closest race' - Do the numbers back her up?
&imwidth=600&imheight=450&format=webp&quality=medium "Trump demands apology from 'DUMB AS A ROCK' Kamala Harris for calling the 2024 elections 'closest race' - Do the numbers back her up?")
US President Donald Trump Photograph: (Reuters)
Kamala Harris claimed the 2024 presidential race was the century’s closest, prompting Donald Trump’s angry denial. Experts highlight that her claim is false, citing wider vote margins compared to earlier US elections.
Former vice president Kamala Harris told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show on Monday night that the 2024 presidential contest had turned out to be “the closest presidential election in the 21st century.” The comments came as Harris promoted her new book, 107 Days, which recounts her short-lived 2024 campaign. She did not explain how she reached the conclusion, but her description quickly caught Donald Trump’s attention.
How did Trump respond?
On Wednesday, US President Donald Trump hit back on Truth Social, calling Harris’s line “a total lie” and demanding an apology. “Kamala Harris, who is DUMB AS A ROCK, is going around and using, as a standard part of her speech on why she lost the election, that 2024 was the ‘closest Presidential Election in the 21st Century.’ Everyone knows this is a lie,” he wrote.
Trump pointed to his Electoral College margin of 312 to 226, victories in all seven battleground states, and his claim of winning the popular vote “by millions” while again falsely alleging that California’s mail-in ballots were “rigged.” He also cited his large county margins and posted a mostly red map that did not reflect population density.
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Was 2024 really the closest race?
By several measures, Harris’s description does not hold up. Of the seven elections held since 2000, the 2024 Electoral College margin was the fifth smallest. The popular vote gap, 1.5 per cent, was also wider than in 2000, when Al Gore won the popular vote by just 0.5 per cent but lost the presidency to George W. Bush.
