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As Trump’s lead in popular vote shrinks, does he really have a 'mandate'?

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As Trump’s lead in popular vote shrinks, does he really have a 'mandate'?

In his victory speech on Nov. 6, President-elect Donald Trump claimed Americans had given him an “unprecedented and powerful mandate.”

It’s a message his transition team has echoed in the last three weeks, referring to his “MAGA Mandate” and a “historic mandate for his agenda.”

But given that Trump’s lead in the popular vote has dwindled as more votes have been counted in California and other states that lean blue, there is fierce disagreement over whether most Americans really endorse his plans to overhaul government and implement sweeping change.

The latest tally from the Cook Political Report shows Trump winning 49.83% of the popular vote, with a margin of 1.55% over Vice President Kamala Harris.

If there ever was a mandate, this isn’t it.

— Hans Noel, Georgetown University

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The president-elect’s share of the popular vote now falls in the bottom half for American presidents — far below that of Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson, who won 61.1% of the popular vote in 1964, defeating Republican Sen. Barry Goldwater by nearly 23 percentage points.

In the last 75 years, only three presidents — John F. Kennedy in 1960, Richard Nixon in 1968 and George W. Bush in 2000 — had popular-vote margins smaller than Trump’s current lead.

“If there ever was a mandate, this isn’t it,” said Hans Noel, associate professor of government at Georgetown University.

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Trump’s commanding electoral college victory of 312 votes to Harris’ 226 is clear. And unlike in 2016, when he beat former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, he won the popular vote and the needed support in the electoral college.

The question is whether Trump can garner significant public support to push through his more contentious administration picks and the most radical elements of his policy agenda, such as bringing in the military to enforce mass deportations.

Democrats say that the results fall short of demonstrating majority public support for Trump and that the numbers do not give him a mandate to deviate from precedent, such as naming Cabinet members without Senate confirmation.

“There’s no mandate here,” Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) said last week on CNN, noting Trump had suggested using “recess appointments” to get around Senate hearings and votes for his nominees. “What there certainly should not be is a blank check to appoint a chaos Cabinet.”

GOP strategist Lanhee Chen, a fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution who ran for California controller in 2022, rejects such framing by Democrats. He argues that Trump’s victory was “quite resounding,” in large part because it defied expectations.

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In an election that almost all political pundits expected would be close and protracted, he reversed Democrats’ 2020 gains, won all seven battleground states and even made inroads with voters in blue states such as California. Republicans also will take control of the Senate and retain their control of the House.

“Look, if the popular vote ends up having him at 49.6% versus 50.1%, do I think it’s a meaningful difference?” Chen said. “No, I don’t.”

Scholars of American politics have long been skeptical of the idea of a presidential mandate.

The first president to articulate such a concept was Andrew Jackson, the nation’s seventh president, who viewed his 1832 reelection — in which he won 54.2% of the popular vote — as a mandate to destroy the Second Bank of the United States and expand his political authority. In arguing he had the mandate of the people, Jackson deviated from the approach of previous presidents in refusing to defer to Congress on policy.

In “Myth of the Presidential Mandate,” Robert A. Dahl, a professor of political science at Yale University, argued the presidential mandate was “harmful to American public life” because it “elevates the president to an exalted position in our constitutional system at the expense of Congress.”

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Even if we accept the premise of a mandate, there is little consensus on when a candidate has achieved it.

“How do we know what voters were thinking as they cast ballots?” Julia R. Azari, an assistant professor of political science at Marquette University, wrote in a recent essay. “Are some elections mandates and others not? If so, how do we know? What’s the popular vote cutoff — is it a majority or more? Who decides?”

In “Delivering the People’s Message: The Changing Politics of the Presidential Mandate,” she argues that it’s politicians in weak positions who typically invoke mandates. This century, she wrote, presidents have cited mandates with increasing frequency as a result of the declining status of the presidency and growing national polarization.

That’s particularly true of Trump, who has long reveled in hyperbole.

In 2016, he bragged that he’d won in a “massive landslide victory,” even though his electoral college win of 304 to Clinton’s 227 was not particularly dramatic by historic standards and he lost the popular vote by 2 percentage points.

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Four years later, he refused to accept he lost the electoral college and the popular vote to Joe Biden, falsely claiming he was the victim of voter fraud.

When Trump speaks of his supposed mandate, he is not an outlier, but is drawing from bipartisan history.

In the last four decades, no president has won the popular vote by double digits, but politicians including George W. Bush and Barack Obama have increasingly tried to justify their agendas by invoking public support.

When Democrat Bill Clinton defeated Republican President George H.W. Bush and Ross Perot, an independent, in 1992, his failure to win a majority of votes did not stop his running mate, Al Gore, from declaring they had a “mandate for change.” Five days after Clinton was inaugurated, he announced he was creating a task force to devise a sweeping plan to provide universal healthcare.

“In my lifetime, at least,” Clinton told reporters, “there has never been so much consensus that something has to be done.” The effort ultimately failed for lack of political support.

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The fake news is trying to minimize President Trump’s massive and historic victory to try to delegitimize his mandate.

— Karoline Leavitt, incoming White House press secretary

Four years ago, Biden also declared a “mandate for action.”

And while Biden prevailed in the electoral college 306 to 232, his share of the popular vote was 51.3%, hardly a dominant performance.

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As mainstream news outlets have reported on Trump’s shrinking popular margin, Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s incoming White House press secretary, has lashed out at the media.

“New Fake News Narrative Alert!” Leavitt posted on X, adding a red warning light emoji. “The fake news is trying to minimize President Trump’s massive and historic victory to try to delegitimize his mandate.”

Trump’s victory is not by any objective measure “massive or historic.” But Republicans say that news outlets have subjected him to a different standard than they apply to Democratic presidents.

After Clinton won in 1992 after 12 years of GOP presidents, some Republicans note, Time magazine put his face on its cover with the headline “Mandate for Change.”

Clinton won just 43% of the popular vote, one of the lowest shares in U.S. history.

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Presidents sometimes bolster their claims of a mandate by cherry-picking polling results.

On Sunday, Trump’s transition team highlighted new polling from CBS News, claiming it showed “overwhelming support” for his “transition and agenda.”

But even though the poll indicated that 59% of Americans approved of Trump’s handling of the presidential transition, it did not show overwhelming or even majority support for many parts of his agenda.

For example, while Trump won strong backing for his broad immigration plan, with 57% supporting a “national program to find and deport all immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally,” the poll showed far less support — 40% — for his plan to use the military to carry out deportations.

Whatever the popular vote, the Hoover Institution’s Chen argues, Trump is in a strong position because he can count on GOP majorities in both houses of Congress.

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“He’s going to be able to do, from a legislative perspective, largely what he wants to do,” Chen said.

But several GOP senators have already emphasized the importance of requiring FBI background checks for Trump’s more contentious nominees.

It also appears he lacks public support for pushing through his picks without Senate approval. More than three-quarters of respondents, according to the CBS poll, believe the Senate should vote on Trump’s appointments.

Noel, the Georgetown professor, said that Trump’s rhetorical strategy aside, the president-elect might have to move past the “‘I won, so everybody get out of my way’ kind of politics” and work behind the scenes to seek common ground with moderate Republicans and maybe even some Democrats.

“In the past, people have made strong claims about mandates, but then they’ve coupled that with more cautious policymaking,” Noel said. “If Trump doesn’t do that — if he acts like he believes his own story — then we’re in a different, more Trumpian kind of place.”

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Capitol Police arrest suspect after allegedly assaulting Rep Nancy Mace

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Capitol Police arrest suspect after allegedly assaulting Rep Nancy Mace

Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., said she was physically accosted on Capitol grounds Tuesday night, and the suspect has since been arrested.

The U.S. Capitol Police said that just before 6 p.m. the office of a member of Congress, later identified as Mace, reported an incident in the Rayburn House Office Building.

House division officers and agents with the Threat Assessment Section of the police department tracked down the suspect, identified as 33-year-old James McIntyre of Illinois.

NANCY MACE’S EFFORT TO BAN TRANSGENDER DELAWARE DEMOCRAT FROM CAPITOL WOMEN’S RESTROOMS GAINS SUPPORT

Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C. (AP Photo/John McDonnell/File)

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Police interviewed McIntyre and ultimately arrested him on the grounds of assaulting a government official.

“I was physically accosted tonight on Capitol grounds over my fight to protect women. Capitol police have arrested him,” Mace said in a post on X. “All the violence and threats keep proving our point. Women deserve to be safe. Your threats will not stop my fight for women!”

Mace has been vocal about her opposition to transgender individuals using bathrooms not assigned to their biological gender.

MACE FACES BACKLASH OVER EFFORT TO BAN TRANSGENDER MEMBER OF CONGRESS FROM WOMEN’S BATHROOMS

Trans protesters in Washington

 A transgender rights supporter takes part in a rally outside the U.S. Supreme Court. (Getty Images/File)

She led the charge against allowing Rep.-elect Sarah McBride, a Democrat from Delaware, to use the women’s restrooms on Capitol Hill. McBride is a biological man who identifies and presents as a woman.

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Mace said last month she was receiving death threats, adding that she was being “unfairly targeted.”

Mace also drafted resolution H.R. 1579, which would prohibit members, officers and employees of the House from using facilities other than those corresponding to their biological sex.

Mace’s office did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.

Fox News Digital’s Charles Creitz contributed to this report.

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Trump names Kimberly Guilfoyle as ambassador to Greece

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Trump names Kimberly Guilfoyle as ambassador to Greece

Kimberly Guilfoyle has been nominated to serve as United States ambassador to Greece, President-elect Donald Trump said Tuesday.

Guilfoyle, a former Fox News host now deeply enmeshed in the broader Trump orbit, was married to California Gov. Gavin Newsom when he was mayor of San Francisco. The former prosecutor announced her engagement to Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. in 2022, though questions about the couple’s current relationship status dogged tabloid headlines on Tuesday.

Guilfoyle was a prominent surrogate for Trump during the 2024 campaign.

“For many years, Kimberly has been a close friend and ally,” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social website, praising her “extensive experience and leadership in law, media, and politics” and her “sharp intellect.”

The post, which requires Senate confirmation, is currently held by Biden appointee George Tsunis.

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Guilfoyle said Tuesday on X that it “was the democratic values born in Greece that helped shape the founding of America,” adding that she looked forward “to delivering on the Trump agenda, supporting our Greek allies, and ushering in a new era of peace and prosperity.”

She also once worked in the San Francisco district attorney’s office with future Vice President Kamala Harris, and the rumored frosty relationship between the ambitious up-and-comers was the topic of San Francisco gossip early in their careers.

Guilfoyle and Newsom — who famously posed together on a rug in a glamorous Harper’s Bazaar profile that declared them “the New Kennedys” — divorced in 2006, the same year she joined Fox News.

The former first lady of San Francisco portrayed the city in dystopian terms during the 2020 Republican National Convention.

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Wisconsin mom mulls lawsuit alleging school district is pushing 'horrifying' race-based policy: 'Problematic'

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Wisconsin mom mulls lawsuit alleging school district is pushing 'horrifying' race-based policy: 'Problematic'

FIRST ON FOX: A Wisconsin parent is mulling legal action over a situation where she alleges her son was passed over being given the extra learning attention he needed due to language on the school’s website that says it prioritizes additional help for students based on race.

Attorneys for the Wisconsin Institute by Law & Liberty to the Green Bay Area Public School District, argue on behalf of their client, Mrs. Colbey Decker, that a “troubling” and “unlawful” policy in the district “explicitly prioritizes reading support resources based on race, thereby violating the U.S. Constitution and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,” according to a letter obtained by Fox News Digital.

“Mrs. Decker’s child, who suffers from dyslexia, has received different (and less favorable) services because he is white,” the letter states. “If he was Black, Hispanic, or Native American, Mrs. Decker’s son would have been treated more favorably and received different services.”

Decker told Fox News Digital that her son had been receiving one-on-one reading services in another district and that she assumed he would continue receiving that when he moved into the current district in January 2024 but that he was waitlisted for that additional help. 

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Colbey Decker told Fox News Digital she believes her son was discriminated against by his Wisconsin school district (Fox News Digital)

Decker explained that she learned of the policy while looking at the school’s website.

I asked them point blank, does he receive less services or is he less of a priority because he’s white?” Decker said. “And even asking that question made me extremely uncomfortable because to think that someone isn’t getting the services they deserve because of the color of their skin is just horrifying. So the principal did respond to me, and much to my surprise, he was very excited to explain to me the work they do in these priority groups.”

The letter alleges, citing the school’s website, that the “district’s literacy policy establishes ‘priority groups’ race—namely, Black, Hispanic, and Native American students—and states that the school will conduct intentional work educating our focus students, prioritizing additional resources to First Nations, Black, and Hispanic students.”

“This policy is in effect and has been applied to Mrs. Decker’s son, according to multiple district employees.”

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SCHOOLS ACROSS COUNTRY DISBANDING DEI PROGRAMS IN DROVES; EDUCATION EXPERT EXPLAINS WHY

classroom file

A Wisconsin mom said every parent ‘just wants their child to be treated equally’ (iStock)

The language on the school website also states next to an asterisk at the bottom of the page that, “Priority performance goals are established based on data that shows us we are meeting the needs of some student groups better than others.” 

“Focusing on a priority performance group of students will elevate our skills as educators and ultimately benefit all students.”

The letter to the district asks that the policy, known as the King Elementary School Success Plan, be rescinded in favor of a “colorblind approach” to resource allocation along with “immediate and adequate support” to Decker’s son “who has been unfairly excluded from the opportunity to receive necessary resources.”

“Seeing a policy that explicitly prioritizes resources based on race is really troubling, both morally and legally,” WILL associate counsel Cory Brewer told Fox News Digital. “The law demands that Colbey’s son and any child be treated equally to other children, regardless of their race. There should not be special treatment based on skin color. And the fact that this district is embracing the idea that they need to treat children differently based on race is really problematic.”

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“We are asking the district to rescind its discriminatory policy immediately to implement a colorblind approach to how it allocates resources, focusing on the needs of the individual student. And we’re also asking the district to provide Colby’s son with the resources that he needs,” Brewer continued. “There’s no reason it should be taking this long for him to get that support. If the district does not change its discriminatory policy, the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty will pursue all legal avenues to protect the rights of Colbey’s son.”

Fox News Digital reached out to the Green Bay Area School District for comment and received the following statement on Tuesday, “The District received the letter from WILL yesterday and we are investigating the allegations. However, we can state unequivocally that the District does not have a policy that includes the language included in the letter.” 

“All District policies must be approved by the Board of Education and no such policy language exists.”

The spokesperson added that the language in the School Success Plan is “developed to outline the school’s goals toward continuous improvement, but would not be considered Board (District) policy” which the spokesperson called an “important distinction.”

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Decker told Fox News Digital that other parents she has spoken to “can’t believe” the situation when told about it and every parent “just wants their child to be treated equally.”

“Any time a parent or a grandparent advocates for a child, I know that their sincere hope is that that child is just treated equally,” Decker said. “And that’s not what’s happening when someone is a priority. If someone is more of a priority than someone else’s child has to be less of a priority. And I don’t think that’s the way most of America wants to move forward with education.”

“I think everybody wants us to just be completely color-blind and look at children as simply being children. My son is in the 17th percentile in the state for reading, and there are children who are performing at a higher level than him that are more of a priority only because of their skin color. And I don’t think most parents want anything like that to ever happen in any educational setting ever.”

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