Submitted by Dan Quigley
Since the election, the word “mandate” has been used by President-elect Trump and his supporters to describe his victory on November 5. In American political terms a mandate occurs when an election result reflects broad support for a candidate and his/her policy agenda.
With the exceptions of Maine and Nebraska, the electoral college votes in each state are winner take all. As a result, the country has experienced a number of elections where razor thin margins in the popular vote in a handful of battleground states have resulted in candidates winning those electoral votes, but not the overall popular vote. I would argue that, in a presidential election, a broad and decisive win in the popular vote should be the true measure of an election mandate.
Over the last 50 plus years there have been a number of examples of presidential elections that resulted in broad election mandates for the winner. In 1972, Richard Nixon defeated George McGovern by a popular vote margin of 61%-38%. In 1980, Ronald Reagan defeated sitting President Jimmy Carter by a margin of 51%-41%. Reagan bested himself in 1984 winning 59%-41% over Walter Mondale. In 1988 George H. W. Bush won by 53%-45%. In 1996, Bill Clinton won the popular vote by 8.5%. In 2008, Barack Obama won the popular vote by a 7.5% margin. In these cases, the American electorate sent a clear message of support for these presidents and their policy agendas.
President-elect Trump is now below the 50% benchmark in the popular vote. The respected statistician Nate Silver projects that with more than 1.5million votes left to count Mr. Trump will win the popular vote by a slim margin of 49.8%-48.4% (+1.4%). If that happens, Mr. Trump’s popular vote margin will rank as the 7th smallest in US election history. To be fair to Mr. Trump, in 2020 he lost the popular vote to President Biden by 4.4%, so while a 1.4% victory is nothing to ignore, if Mr. Silver is correct, it certainly doesn’t represent the definition of a broad electoral mandate. A strong argument could be made that since 2000 only one election has produced a clear mandate and that was Mr. Obama’s in 2008. Perhaps Mr. Trump’s recent win only seems more important than it actually is due to the string of unusually close presidential elections we have had since 2000. However, a 1.4% win in the popular vote is far from a broad popular mandate and based on the facts, it is patently clear that the American electorate remains almost evenly divided.
Only four times since 1980 has a newly elected President entered office as Mr. Trump will with both houses of Congress under his party’s control. This happened in 1993-95 (Clinton); 2009-11 (Obama); 2017-19 (Trump) and 2021-23 (Biden). In each of the above instances, the House majority party’s popular vote was larger than the President’s. So how successful were these Presidents at leveraging their victories into sustainable political and administrative success? In each instance the President’s party lost control of either the House or Senate (or both) in the next midterm elections. These administrations overreached in pursuit of policies that resulted in a return to divided government.
Before we can determine whether President-elect Trump will buck this trend, it is worth examining his professed agenda. Supporters have hailed it as a panacea for America’s ills. Opponents have warned that its implementation could lead to a dismantling of our democratic institutions and worse. Without going over every professed or alleged executive order, legislative initiative, possible political appointments, or foreign policy decisions, it is safe to say that the President-elect’s MAGA, Project 2025 and deep state initiatives and policies certainly have the potential to be anathema to at least half of the population of the country.
Former presidents Clinton and Obama were unable to sustain their party’s congressional majorities beyond midterm elections despite agendas that were far less ideologically driven or as divisive as Mr. Trump’s. This also proved elusive for President Biden and even Mr. Trump himself. The President-elect will have 16-18 months to enact a MAGA agenda while simultaneously ensuring his Republican coalition does not fracture ahead of the 2026 midterms.
As the new administration takes shape, early signs do not bode well for success. Mr. Trump has nominated several provocative loyalists to fill important cabinet positions for which they are unfit or unqualified. They are MAGA stalwarts, whose loyalty will be to Mr. Trump, not the Constitution. These nominations are particularly dangerous when one considers the President-elect has asked Senate Republicans to abdicate their constitutional responsibility to advise and consent on Presidential cabinet nominations, which would allow him to “appoint” any and all controversial nominees for top cabinet positions via recess appointments. Though Presidents have made use of recess appointments in the past, the process has been reserved almost exclusively for nominees to lower government positions and nas a means to sidestep the Senate. Hopefully, the new Republican Senate majority leader will stand his ground and act as a bulwark against the President-elect.
These developments strongly suggest that Mr. Trump remains totally committed to remaking government in a MAGA image. The purging of longtime civil servants and skirting of established congressional vetting processes are part and parcel to this end. The President-elect is placing fealty to him above competence in his selection of nominees and has grossly misjudged the scope of his narrow election victory by portraying it as an “unprecedented and powerful mandate”. Recent history has shown that those who didn’t support Mr. Trump can have hope that the inevitable MAGA overreach will result in a swift return to divided government when Republicans lose control of Congress in 2026. The big question and great fear is how much damage will be inflicted in the interim?
References
– Historical US Presidential Election Results:
https://www.britannica.com/
– CNN: President-elect Trump’s margin of victory ranks 44th biggest (7th smallest) in election history:
https://dailycaller.com/2024/
– History of Recess Appointments:
https://www.kttc.com/2024/11/
– NateSilver538:
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