Voter Action: Politics 2025
The Voter Action group focuses on the political life of our county. Every election year, we work i to provide accurate, actionable information to voters. We organize postcard-sending events, blanket the area with information about candidates, register voters and fight back against disinformation.
GOTV signup:
If you are interested in getting involved in the Virginia campaigns, please write about your interest in volunteering to 50waysrockbridge@gmail.com
Getting to know her:
Join the Spanberger campaign
Click the image to read the New York Times story about her written before Jan. 20
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​​​​​Click the image to visit her campaign website​​
So-called mandate a "small-potatoes"
win, when Trump numbers are analyzed
From a letter to the editor by board member Chris Gavaler:
How “huge” was the GOP win?
This isn’t a political question. It’s a mathematical one. Rank all the presidential elections of the last 60 years by the winner’s vote percentage. Only two break 60 percent:
1964, Johnson: 61.1%, by 16 million votes; and 1972, Nixon: 60.7%, by 18 million votes. Nixon won by more votes but a smaller percentage than Johnson.
Most fall in the 50s percentile range:
1976, Carter: 50.1%, +1.7 million votes 984, Reagan: 58.8%, by 17 million votes
1980, Reagan*: 50.7%, by 7.5 million votes over Carter (Anderson with 5.7 million votes)1988, Bush: 53.4%, by 7 million votes
2008, Obama: 52.9%, by 9.5 million votes
2020, Biden: 51.3%, by 7 million votes
2012, Obama: 51.1%, by 5 million votes
2004, Bush: 50.7%, by 3 million votes
Reagan’s first election needs an asterisk because if you combine Carter and the third-party candidate, Reagan’s vote count advantage drops to 1.8 million, barely above Carter’s from the previous election. But also note that Reagan’s vote count advantage from his second election is above Johnson and Nixon, though his percentile isn’t.
Now for the below 50 percentile winners:
2024, Trump: 49.8%, +2.3 million votes
1996, Clinton*: 49.2%, +8.2 million votes above Dole (Perot with 8 million votes)
Clinton’s second election needs an asterisk because his vote count advantage drops to .2 if Dole and the third-party candidate are combined, making Clinton the thinnest majority winner of the last 60 years.
The next two presidents are non-majority winners. They both lost the popular vote:
2000, Bush: 47.9%, -.5 million votes
2016, Trump: 46.1%, -2.9 million votes
And the bottom two are plurality (rather than majority) winners due to the two historically strongest third-party candidates:
1968, Nixon: 43.4%, +5 million votes above Humphrey (Wallace with 9.9 million votes)
1992, Clinton: 43%, 5.8 million votes above Bush (Perot with 19.7 million votes)
So of the last 16 elections, Trump is at number 11: the smallest majority winner of two-candidate races in the last 60 years.
Of the seven presidential races of the 21st century, he beat only his own and Bush’s popular-vote losing victories.
2024 marks no mandate, no major electoral shift. Historically, Trump’s victory is the smallest of potatoes.