Today the Trump administration ends. The first time a President has failed to win re-election since 1992. The first time the Republicans have spent just four years in the White House since 1892. And America’s first President to have been impeached twice. No one, as Donald himself might say, has ever seen anything like it.
The incoming President and his team, meanwhile, have been remarkably lucky in the cards they now hold. While Biden won the popular vote by 7 million and 4.4 percentage points, he only scored an Electoral College victory thanks to 42,844 votes across three states (Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin), a fraction of the total cast. His party will take the majority in a now tied Senate not just because of the Georgia result, but by having won New Hampshire in 2016 by just 1,017 votes.
These are not the sweeping victories of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama when they entered office.
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