Trump's narrow victory margin isn't a mandate to alter our laws and otherwise rule by administrative fiat
In the five weeks that have passed since the presidential election, President-elect Donald Trump and his supporters have spread the word that he won an overwhelming “mandate” and should therefore be free to rule by administrative fiat without any interference from the Republican Congress or the ultra-conservative Supreme Court.
Let's take a look at the dimensions of this supposed mandate. While it takes weeks for California, our most populous state, to count its ballots, we have fairly complete election results by now. At this point, we know that Trump received approximately 77.1 million votes (49.7% of the total votes cast) compared to just 74.7 million votes for Vice President Kamala Harris (48.2% of the total vote).
There were three main alternatives to the major party candidates: Green Party nominee Jill Stein, who received about 800,000 votes, followed by independent (now Trump supporter) Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who received about 700,000 votes despite the fact that he had withdrawn from the race and endorsed Trump, followed by the Libertarian nominee, Chase Oliver, who received about 600,000.
Many of the remaining ballots were write-in votes. South Dakota does not allow write-ins, but many other states do.
Some of us are discouraged by the breadth of Trump's electoral victory. He swept all seven of the infamous and all-important “swing states” (Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada and Arizona) and defeated Harris in the Electoral College by a tally of 312 to 226.
However, he did not win a mandate by any definition, and the final election results show that he did not even win a majority of the popular vote. Barack Obama won hard-fought presidential races in 2008 and 2012, and received a majority of the popular vote each time.
George W. Bush in 2000 and Trump himself in 2016 managed to prevail in the Electoral College, but actually lost the popular vote. Three other presidents finished second but won.
This election provided a narrow plurality winner in the popular vote, coupled with a more comfortable Electoral College win.
Back in 2020, which seems like ancient history today, Trump received 74.2 million popular votes against President Joe Biden, who got over 81.2 million. Jo Jorgensen, the Libertarian nominee, received 1.8 million votes and Green candidate Howie Hawkins got just over 400,000. Biden had a clear majority of the popular vote (51.3%) compared to Trump's 46.9%.
To complete the comparison between this year and four years ago, the total popular vote appears to have declined from well over 158 million to somewhat over 154 million. Since our total voting-age population continues to grow, we know that several million people who have voted for president in the recent past chose not to cast a ballot in the Trump-Harris contest.
Furthermore, the Green Party vote doubled, while the Libertarian vote fell by two-thirds. Much of the increase in the generally left-wing Green Party vote can be attributed not to environmental concerns, but rather to a protest against the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s continuing war against the people of Gaza.
Dearborn, Mich., may be the largest predominantly Muslim city in America, and it voted overwhelmingly for Biden four years ago. This time it went for Trump, and Green candidate Stein received a large portion of the remainder.
We have seen true electoral mandates in modern times. In 1964, Lyndon Johnson received over 43 million votes, compared to just 27 million for his Republican challenger Barry Goldwater. Johnson also carried 44 states, including South Dakota, which has not voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since.
In 1984, Ronald Reagan won a second term as president with over 54 million votes, compared to just 37 million for his Democratic opponent, Walter Mondale, who narrowly won his home state of Minnesota, carried the District of Columbia and won nowhere else.
Kamala Harris suffered from her association with Biden, who is still blamed for post-Covid inflation and other financial woes, and was also widely blamed for the “crisis on the border,” as immigrants continue to press to get into this country from Haiti, Venezuela, Nicaragua and other countries to the south, seeking a better life for their children.
She was only the second Democratic candidate for president in the 21st Century to lose the popular vote. (John Kerry in 2004 was the first.) However, the race between Trump and Harris was competitive right to the end, and the final result could more accurately be termed a squeaker, not a landslide.
OK, the 2024 election is over, and we can stop obsessing about the results and accept the fact that Donald Trump, despite two impeachments and conviction on 34 felony counts, has won the hearts of nearly half of the American people and (most importantly) won the Electoral College by a more substantial margin.
However, when Trump pressures the U.S. Senate to bypass the normal constitutional procedure and go into a prolonged recess so that his troubling Cabinet nominees can take office without going through a vetting and confirmation process, we need to remember that he only narrowly won his election.
When he vows to eliminate birthright citizenship, we need to remember that the plain language of the Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, states that “(all) persons born … in the United States … are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” Surely Trump’s 2.4 million vote plurality does not give him the authority to override the U.S. Constitution.
This country is a democratic republic, not a totalitarian dictatorship. Let’s keep it that way.
Jay Davis is a retired Rapid City lawyer and regular contributor to The South Dakota Standard.
Photo: public domain, wikimedia commons
