Donald Trump is being a sore winner once again.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump claimed to have one the “biggest mandate in 129 years.” As Republicans Against Trump says on X, that simply isn’t true.
“Trump’s margin of victory in the popular vote is one of the smallest in U.S. history” the Never Trumper group writes. “His win ranks behind those of Obama, Reagan, and several other presidents in recent history.” Despite what the president-elect would have you believe, his historic “mandate” is historically small.
According to the latest tally by the Cook Political Report, the president-elect won by less than 50% of the popular vote. At 49.80%, he beat his opponent Kamala Harris by razor thing margin, slightly over 1%. To suggest that this represents a history making landslide wind is patently ridiculous. When compared with the true landslide presidential election victories of the last 129 years, Donald Trump doesn’t even come close.
According to The New York Times, Donald Trump’s margin of victory is the third smallest since 1888. When compared to true landslide victories, Trump’s win doesn’t even come close. In 1936, Franklin Delano Roosevelt won 60.8 percent of the popular vote and 523 electoral votes. Lyndon Johnson won 61.1 percent of the popular vote and 486 electoral votes in 1964. Richard Nixon claimed 60.7 percent and 520 in 1972. Ronald Reagan won 58.8 percent and 525 in 1984. Trump’s victory doesn’t even measure up to his 21st century competitors. His “mandate” represents the slimmest win since the famously contested Bush vs. Gore election in 2000.
This is hardly the first time that Trump has claimed one of his victories was a historic “biggest.” In the aftermath of the 2016 election, Trump claimed that he was awarded “the biggest electoral college win since Ronald Reagan.” Both Bushes, Clinton, and Obama beat him in this regard.
According to Julia Azari, a professor at Marquette University, Trump isn’t the only president in history to make undeserved mandate claims. It’s somewhat of a trend. Azari believes that presidents claim mandates when they know that their tenure in office is going to be controversial. “We’re seeing this fit into a typical pattern where presidents kind of know that they’re going to be embattled,” said Azari, “and so they use the mandate to try and suggest, all right, it’s OK for me to do this or my critics are ultimately not just critics of me, but they’re critics of the popular will.”
With regard to Trump’s presidency, “embattled” is putting it likely. The president-elect is set to enact an extreme far-right agenda starting on day one of his term, and is expected to face similarly extreme pushback from his critics. Trump and his “border czar” Tom Homan intend to enact their “mass deportation” plan on Trump’s first day in office in an effort to fulfill a campaign promise to remove millions of undocumented migrants from U.S. soil. Democratic state officials have pledged to impede Trunp’s plans at every step – California Governor Gavin Newson and his allies are currently working to “Trump-proof” the state.
Trump’s grandiose claims of a mandate are nothing more than a shield that he is using to hide the weakness of his political rule. Weakness that, in the coming battles that he will face against political opponents while in office, he can’t afford to show.
