CNN
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The Democrats’ reaction to Donald Trump’s victory in 2024 is, to say the least, very different from their reaction to his victory in 2016. Instead of massive demonstrations in the streetsDemocrats have been mostly silent.

Indeed, the consequences of the 2024 elections almost seem to belong to a bygone era. This is the first presidential election in at least a decade where almost all of the losers have reached the fifth stage of grief: acceptance.

Take a look at recent polls from Reuters/Ipsos. When asked whether Trump’s victory was legitimate, about 94 percent of voters said yes. This includes 64% who agreed that Trump’s victory was legitimate and supported his presidency and 30% who accepted Trump’s victory but indicated they would oppose his presidency.

Only about 6% of registered voters said they did not consider the results legitimate.

Democrats feel basically the same way. About 90% said the results were legitimate, while very few (about 10%) said they were not.

Compare that to where we were four years ago, in the aftermath of the 2020 campaign. Quinnipiac University Survey found that 60% of voters said Biden’s victory was legitimate, while 34% said it was not. Among Republicans, more than two-thirds (70%) said Biden’s victory was illegitimate.

The high percentage of Republicans who thought Biden’s victory was illegitimate has remained virtually unchanged since. Trump, of course, inflamed these beliefs by never conceding to Biden and constantly claiming the election was rigged. Trump’s claims were, of course, baseless.

This yearUnlike four years ago, the losing candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris, conceded, and the losing side, Biden, welcomed the winning side to the White House.

But what makes what’s happening this year so interesting isn’t just the comparison to 2020: It’s also the comparison to 2016, when another Democrat lost to Trump.

At the time, Hillary Clinton conceded defeat. President Barack Obama welcomed Trump at the White House.

Yet despite these signals from above, some Democrats persisted. movement to stop Electoral College electors to vote for Trump. A few Democrats opposed it to Trump’s certification to Congress – although much less than the Republican congressmen who did the same with Biden four years later.

Most notably, massive protests took place in the streets.

This showed up in the polls. A third of Clinton supporters in mid-November 2016 ABC News/Washington Post Poll said Trump’s victory was not legitimate. Overall, 18% of adults said Trump’s victory was not legitimate, three times higher than the numbers for the 2024 election.

As of April 2017, the percentage of adults viewing Trump as an illegitimate president had increased to 32% in 2017. Gallup poll. The percentage of Democrats who think this way has become a majority (56%).

The 2016 election wasn’t the first time Democrats thought a Republican president wasn’t winning legitimately. After George W. Bush’s narrow victory in 2000 and a narrow victory in 2004, 76% and 25% of Democrats respectively said his victories in those elections were not legitimate according to the CBS News poll. More than 40 percent of all Americans agreed that his victory in 2000 was illegitimate, while a much smaller 14 percent said so about 2004. A number of Democrats in Congress objected to the official certification of the two victories.

The Democrats’ response in 2024 looks a lot more like what you may have seen from Republicans in 2008 or 2012.

In those two years, no poll I could find questioned whether Obama’s victories were legitimate. It was just considered a foregone conclusion, which is what most people would say.

No congressional Republicans objected to the certification of Obama’s victory, neither in 2009 nor in 2013. Obama’s two victories were the only two times in the 2000s when no one on either side of the aisle objected. aisle opposed a president’s victory in Congress.

This is not to be said there there was no effort to delegitimize Obama’s presidency in the eyes of some Republicans. Some, including Trump, have falsely claimed that he was not a natural-born citizen and therefore ineligible to run for president.

Still, the percentage of Americans and Republicans who thought Obama was born in another country was quite low.

The question going forward is whether this era of acceptance continues. Recent history suggests that this is unlikely to be the case. Democrats may have accepted Trump’s victory, but he risks greatly upsetting them during his presidency.

Then again, we don’t know how Trump’s second term will actually play out. We are already facing a paradigm shift as Trump is the first president to win non-consecutive terms since the 19th century. Maybe something unusual will happen again.