Analysis demolishes Trump’s 'mandate' claims as poll numbers collapse

05 March

During his 2025 State of the Union address on Tuesday night, March 4, President Donald Trump repeated his claim that he enjoys a huge "mandate" for his agenda.

Trump and many of his allies continue to use words like "historic" and "landslide" to describe his narrow victory over then-Vice President Kamala Harris in the United States' 2024 election. But Trump won the popular vote by only 1.5 percent compared to actual landslides like President Ronald Reagan's 18 percent victory over Democratic Walter Mondale in 1984, when The Gipper picked up a whopping 525 electoral votes — or 1932, when Democratic then-New York Gov. Franklin Delano Roosevelt ousted incumbent President Herbert Hoover by 18 percent. FDR won 472 electoral votes compared to only 59 for Hoover.

In a biting article published on March 5, Mother Jones' Michael Mechanic tears apart the exaggerated claims that Trump continues to make about the size of his 2024 victory.

During Trump's speech, Mechanic observes, he "absurdly" claimed that November's election outcome "was a mandate like has not been seen in many decades."

Trump and his "minions," according to Mechanic, are taking the "mandate concept" to "outlandish extremes."

"In fact, Trump won less than half of the popular vote — which, given the turnout, amounts to less than one-third of registered voters," Mechanic notes. "His margin of victory was the tightest since 2000, the fourth tightest since 1940."

Mechanic points out that many of Trump's policies are unpopular, which is hardly a "mandate."

"Subsequent polling showed solid majorities opposing his tariff plans, birthright citizenship ban, withdrawal from the Paris climate deal, January 6 pardons, and the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico. People hated that," according to Mechanic. "Even Trump's own supporters deemed it unacceptable for him to impose loyalty tests on federal workers, 58 percent, or to pardon friends or supporters convicted of crimes, 57 percent. And this polling came before Trump unleashed Musk and his post-pubescent underlings on federal agencies like a swarm of diseased locusts."

Terry Royed, a political science professor at the University of Alabama, doesn't consider Trump's 2024 win a "mandate" either.

Royed told Mother Jones, "In the U.S., usually claiming a mandate is done when a victory has been particularly large. Trump's popular vote margin was not large."

Read Michael Mechanic's full article for Mother Jones at this link.

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