Certainaly there are no rules for what is a blowout or a mandate... But we can look back and see Reagan won all but one state, and say yeah, that was a blow out, and Reagan had a mandate.
IMHO, if you don't win in any of your opponent's stronghold states, it's not much of a blowout. Yes, it was a win and any win gets you the whole four years, so it doesn't really matter what you want to call it, but it's yet another gaslighting IMHO.
To be clear, I don’t think it was a blowout or a landslide or anything like that. I’m just saying it’s not as close as the PV would make it seem. Harris’s campaign said their internal polling never showed her ahead, and the result was consistent with that.
In particular, he wiped out two decades of immigration-driven leftward shift in the electorate, which was how Biden was able to win traditionally red states like Arizona and Georgia. Trump won Nevada, which is now under 45% white, by more than Bush did in 2000, when it was 65% white. He lost New Jersey by less than six points, doing better now that the state is only 55% white than Bush did in 2004 when it was 70% white. He won Texas by a similar margin to Bush in 88 and Florida by more than Reagan did in 1980.
IMHO, if you don't win in any of your opponent's stronghold states, it's not much of a blowout. Yes, it was a win and any win gets you the whole four years, so it doesn't really matter what you want to call it, but it's yet another gaslighting IMHO.