Trump Does Not Have a Mandate

The big lie Donald Trump told after the 2024 election was that he had won a “strong mandate” from the American people. He didn’t do that, and neither did the MAGA movement. The United States is definitely a divided nation. But the majority of Americans who voted in the 2024 presidential election actually agreed on one thing. That means we don’t want Trump as president. Nearly all the votes were counted, with about 50.2 percent going to someone other than Trump. This is an anti-Trump minority, but the incoming president has taken great pains since election night to cultivate the illusion of “a political victory unlike anything our country has ever seen, nothing like it.” It’s enough to irritate the president. ” His right-wing allies have similarly made the outlandish claim that America has gone completely MAGA.

Why are Republicans so eager to claim they secured a “landslide” when the results show this presidential election was one of the closest since World War II? I wonder if it is? Because they know something that Democrats sometimes forget. In short, politics is about perception, and a president who is perceived as having overwhelming support from voters is in a much better position to change not just policy but the trajectory of politics. That’s what happened with Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s and ’40s and Ronald Reagan in the ’80s.

FDR and Reagan had the numbers they needed to claim the mandate. Mr. Trump is not like that. That’s why, as he prepares to re-enter the Oval Office, it’s important for progressives to unpack the story of the election that got him there. Yes, Trump defeated Kamala Harris. But not by much. And the narrowness of the Republican advantage means that for Democrats, along with a shrinking but potentially decisive cadre of rational Republicans, the worst of a president with only a majority of the popular vote. It’s an opportunity to block appointments and the most dangerous policies.

Want to crunch some numbers?

Trump’s lead was historically close. The president-elect’s 1.5-point lead over Harris was “the fifth smallest of the 32 presidential elections held since 1900,” according to a post-election analysis by the Council on Foreign Relations. Trump received 4 million fewer votes than Joe Biden in 2020. Had some 120,000 voters in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania switched their preferences in 2024, Harris would have won the Electoral College and the presidency.

Voters rejected the Senate’s rubber stamp passage. Republicans took back the Senate with a 53-47 majority, largely due to the advantage of small states in their favor. Nationally, 1.4 million more voters voted for Democratic Senate candidates than Republicans. In key battleground states, Democratic candidates won all but one district, even though Harris lost every race in the battleground district. That reality will weigh heavily on the minds of the 20 Republican senators seeking re-election in 2026.

My house is very close. The 118th Congress began with the Democratic Party holding 213 seats. They will begin the 119th Congress with 215 seats. They probably would have regained power if not for the extreme partisan gerrymandering in North Carolina. “The only mandate that exists is for Congress to work together,” said House Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. But if the past two years are any indication, House Republicans may not even be able to work with each other. A special election, brought about in part by President Trump bringing House members into his Cabinet, could narrow the Republican Party’s slim 220-215 lead and perhaps even cede the chamber to Democrats. .

“We have no obligation to shove far-right policies down the throats of the American people,” Jeffries said. He’s right. The poll, along with results from “red” states such as Missouri and Alaska, show voters support higher wages and populist economic policies promoted by progressives like Bernie Sanders. It shows that. As former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich put it, the real charge from voters is “fighting the wealthy forces that manipulated the economy to their advantage.” That is the mission that the Democratic Party must champion.