Answering all your biggest post-election questions.

I’m Isaac Saul, and this is Tangle: an independent, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported politics newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from across the political spectrum on the news of the day — then “my take.”

Setting the table.

This election has drawn a ton of reader interest and a lot of questions.

We answer one question from a reader or listener in every newsletter and podcast, but that is hardly enough to keep up. So, on days like today, we try to get to as many questions as we can. Typically, we pick ones that we see a lot of people asking, or ones that we think open up unique and interesting conversations. That is basically our only criterion. 

In that vein, one note about today’s reader mailbag: The vast majority of questions we got in the last few days have been from readers I suspect are liberals, which I think is due to America’s left being much more concerned about the outcome of this election while also doing a lot of soul searching about the future. Reminder: You can ask a question by replying to emails or filling out this form.

Without any more throat clearing, let’s get into today’s reader mailbag!

Your questions, answered.

Q: In 2020, Donald Trump won roughly the same number of popular votes and LOST the election. That same year, Joe Biden won an astonishing 81 million votes. There is a difference of 10 million votes between 2020 and 2024. Where did those 10 million votes go?  

— Tom from Missouri

Tangle: I’ve gotten this question from so many people that I’ve lost count. It seems people on the right are pointing to this number to claim 2020 was “obviously stolen” while people on the left are pointing to it because they believe Democrats’ votes were somehow thrown out in 2024. 

Neither is true.

The answer is very simple: Votes are still being counted. As of Thursday, roughly 10% of the vote was uncounted, including in very populous states like California and New York. When it’s all said and done, we are likely to be just shy of the raw vote count from 2020. Given that the population grows every year, this would mean voter participation probably came down by about one or two percentage points. 

Which, for whatever it is worth, is totally unsurprising to me. Do you remember the pandemic? Politics was everything. Much of the country was still on some kind of lockdown or social distancing, and we were all fighting over the election and the Black Lives Matter movement. Also, because of the pandemic, many states instituted temporary mail-in and early voting measures, which made it very easy for people to vote — which millions took advantage of (I voted by mail in 2020 for the first and only time). 

So, no. Those votes didn’t disappear. 2020 wasn’t stolen. There are just a lot of votes slowly being counted, and slightly fewer votes than last time.

Q: Hi Isaac, I am a recent subscriber after your appearance on the "A Braver Way" podcast and then the "This American Life" story sold it for me. So far, I've really liked the newsletter. I would like to understand upon what evidence you based point 8 of "your take"? The one about democracy not collapsing? Why do you believe that he won't try to seize extra-democratic power? Or if you don't believe he won't try, what do you think is the most likely path to prevent it from happening? 

Let's assume Republicans take the House. (Which looks reasonably likely.) What prevents a power grab? Congress? The judiciary? An uprising of protesters? (And how would that play out?) The American electorate? Does 2 years just not give him enough time to successfully consolidate enough power to seriously hamper our democratic processes? … I sent this issue out to many of my friends and family as a source of comfort and reason. Upon later reflection, the biggest comfort I took was from point 8. But when I reread it, I realized it's completely unsupported. That's very unusual for you. So I really want to know how you came to that conclusion. Thanks!

— Adam from Seattle, WA

Tangle: Of all the points I made on Wednesday, I think this was the one that drew the biggest response. Let me start by saying that it’s not as if I don’t have reservations; not just about the future, but our present moment. For instance, we desperately need reforms to address problems in our country like gerrymandering, which is the most undemocratic part of our current system. I’m also very worried about our current information ecosystem, whose corruption is often the first step toward the erosion of democracy. 

On the “extra-democratic” side, I’m concerned about Trump’s worst tendencies: The last time he was in office, he refused to concede an election he lost, he attempted to pressure state leaders to “find” votes or overturn results, and numerous former high-ranking officials have said he did all of this while being restrained by the people around him. This should be worrisome to everyone, even the staunchest Trump supporters, and here at Tangle I’ll certainly spare no words about Trump’s contempt for the basic norms that have kept this country stable and free for so long. 

My biggest concerns about Trump are that he’ll spend too much time in his first few years focused on settling scores with media outlets, politicians, or left-wing protesters rather than improving the quality and standard of life for most Americans. It isn’t hard to imagine a world where Elon Musk is banning news outlets from X, Trump is trying to punish Jeff Bezos with overbearing regulations to hurt The Washington Post, or some political opponent is suddenly facing charges from the Justice Department. I also fear Trump would react to any civil disobedience (i.e. protesters in Washington, D.C.) with a lot of force, which could get ugly pretty quickly.

But there are plenty of reasons to think he won’t go that route. For one, he just started by naming Susan Wiles his chief of staff, who is well respected and trusted both in MAGA world and the old guard establishment. Her appointment was praised by everyone from Charlie Kirk to Jeb Bush. Second is JD Vance, who I think is quite obviously trying to position himself to be the long-term leader of the MAGA movement. In a world where Trump does attempt all the things liberals are worried about, Vance, like Pence, will be considering his own political future and may attempt to limit Trump’s excesses. Also: I give equal odds to Trump breaking from current allies like Musk as I do to them teaming up to do a bunch of anti-democratic stuff long into the future.

Now, in a forward-looking sense, why am I not deeply concerned about the collapse of our democracy? A few reasons. First, and most importantly, every two years our country gets a chance to check a president’s power. That is not going to change between now and 2026. Even if Trump has a successful and normal first two years (which I hope he does), I suspect Democrats will flip the House back in 2026, which would be an immediate check on his power. And if we keep getting thermostatic elections, we could have a Democratic president in 2028.

Could Republicans at the state level institute policies like voter ID laws or reduce the use of mail-in ballots and early voting between now and 2026? Yes, they could. Do I think the response to that will be many millions fewer people voting, such that Republicans are assured continuous power and majorities? No, I don’t. There is not a great deal of evidence voter ID laws even work as a suppression tactic, and expansions of mail-in and early voting are a relatively new phenomenon. Even in cases where Republicans get every election reform they want in every state imaginable, Democratic voters would still swarm the polls on Election Day. They aren’t  going to magically disappear.

Which leads to my second point: I think the left genuinely underestimates how much Trump wants to be loved by the vast majority of the country. Stretching the power of the executive or taking authoritarian actions is the surest way for him (and Republicans) to prompt massive demonstrations now and an electoral backlash in a few years (and remember, I do not think that voting power is going away). To understand this, you really have to take a historical step back. In 2008, a lot of people thought Republicans would never win a national election again. In 2004, a lot of people thought Bush was going to usher in exactly the same kind of authoritarian, voter-restricted era Trump critics are anticipating now, when really Bush’s re-election was the beginning of the end for the old Republican Party. Our understanding of how history is unfolding in real time is often wrong.

Shoot, even in 2020 we were told that “voter suppression” by Republicans in Georgia was going to steal the election from Democrats and Biden. Instead, we ended up with massive turnout, two Democratic senators in Georgia, the outspoken Republican secretary of state and governor disputing claims of election fraud, and a narrow Biden win in the state. 

Finally: Elections are run at the state level. Even if everything you believe about Trump were true, he can’t just flip a switch and do what he wants in every state. Democratic governors are in power in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, and many other states — and in many cases are very popular. Democrats still have majority or at least considerable minority power across many of the swing states. Democrats won or ran ahead of Harris in Senate races in every battleground except Pennsylvania. And despite losing the majority of governorships this year, Democrats will still be the chief executives of 23 states. Harris really only lost this election by a few hundred thousand votes in the Blue Wall, and Trump’s popular vote margin is on track to be thinner than Biden’s, Obama’s, Bush’s, Bill Clinton’s, and maybe even Hillary Clinton’s. 

Republicans simply do not have a broad mandate for major actions that are going to upset moderate and centrist voters.

Meanwhile, voter turnout, voting access, and election integrity in many of the critical (for the electoral college) Republican-led states like Florida, Ohio, and Georgia is either quite strong or pretty average. Yes, Trump looks set to have a House, Senate and Supreme Court with conservative majorities, but we still have a divided country, with divided power between the federal and state governments (and among the states), and history assures me that power is going to swing back toward Democrats in the coming years. 

All this is to say, even in liberals’ absolute worst-case scenario, we’re looking at: Trump running wild with the help of stupidly rich billionaires controlling the information ecosystem, an ideologically captive Supreme Court, majorities in the House and Senate completely absent of any conscience, and a Trump admin focused on nothing but retaining long-term power (the only one of these characterizations that I think is true is that billionaires are controlling the information ecosystem)... In four or eight years we might be in the position of a country like Poland, which has had a scary and tumultuous few years under an autocratic leader. But, notably, the opposition just cleaned house in a single election after the government went too far trying to restrict abortion access.  

So, yes, I’ll be watching closely for warning signs of Trump’s worst instincts. But I’m not going to sit here and tell readers I fear the collapse of democracy when I genuinely don’t.

Q: You don't address how Harris being a woman may have impacted her success. My take after being in the workforce for 40 years is that many men and many women do not want a woman in leadership. This in my mind was a huge factor back in 2016 and again in 2024. Please comment. Our country would choose any man over even the most competent woman.

— Lisa from Lombard, IL