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Presidents often claim their election victories give them a mandate. How true is that in this hyperpolarized era when President-elect Trump didn't win 50% of the vote? NPR's Domenico Montanaro explores that question.
DOMENICO MONTANARO, BYLINE: President-elect Donald Trump has a lot that he wants to get done - mass deportations of immigrants in the U.S. illegally and extending his tax cuts, for example. To do those things, it helps to have the support of voters.
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DONALD TRUMP: America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate.
MONTANARO: That was Trump during his victory speech in November after winning the 2024 presidential election. He's the first Republican in 20 years to win the popular vote, but it's hard to claim a mandate when you get less than 50% as Trump did.
JULIA AZARI: We're seeing this fit into a typical pattern where presidents kind of know they're going to be embattled.
MONTANARO: That's Julia Azari, a professor at Marquette University and author of a book about presidential mandates.
AZARI: They know that their viewpoints will be controversial, 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.
MONTANARO: Trump did win the Electoral College fairly handily, and Republicans will control both the House and Senate. But Trump's popular vote victory was the second closest margin in the last 60 years. In reality, presidents almost never come into office with overwhelming mandates, and that's because elections are rarely about one thing. That hasn't stopped past presidents from claiming mandates, though.
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MONTANARO: Franklin Delano Roosevelt's first inaugural address in 1932 is famous for this line.
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FRANKLIN D ROOSEVELT: That the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
MONTANARO: But at the end of his speech is this...
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ROOSEVELT: In their need, they have registered a mandate that they want direct, vigorous action.
MONTANARO: The needs at the time were great. The country was in the midst of the depression, and FDR was proposing a massive expansion of government to address it, from regulating Wall Street to passing Social Security. Lots of presidents, past and present, followed suit.
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RONALD REAGAN: The American people gave the elected representatives in Washington an overwhelming mandate to rescue the economy from...
BILL CLINTON: I think there's no question that there was a mandate in this election.
GEORGE W BUSH: I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it.
MONTANARO: That was Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Four years ago, President Biden did it too.
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PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: They've given us a mandate for action on COVID, the economy, climate change, systemic racism.
MONTANARO: That would be quite the mandate. Others thought the mandate had sweeping power, too. Richard Nixon hoped it could save him from Watergate.
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RICHARD NIXON: If you want the mandate you gave this administration to be carried out, then I ask for your help to ensure that those who would exploit Watergate in order to keep us from doing what we were elected to do will not succeed.
MONTANARO: Not every president, though, has been comfortable using it. George H. W. Bush in 1988.
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GEORGE H W BUSH: Well, I don't know whether I want to use the word mandate.
MONTANARO: Later in the same news conference, though, he adjusted his stance, pointing out...
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GEORGE H W BUSH: I do feel that the vote was convincing enough and the margin great enough and the numbers of states carried big enough that it gives a certain confidence to the executive branch of the government.
MONTANARO: After winning reelection in 2012, former President Barack Obama was asked whether he thought he had a mandate. He said he was cautious about second-term presidential overreach, but...
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BARACK OBAMA: I didn't get reelected just to bask in reelection.
MONTANARO: When it comes to Trump, he's charging full steam ahead, using the idea of a mandate to try and build support for his agenda before he's sworn in. Professor Azari says presidents have used the word more in hyperpolarized environments and when they want to test the limits of their power.
AZARI: Presidents do this in these defensive postures. They do this when they're trying to expand out their power in new ways, and we see plenty of evidence that Trump has designs to do that.
MONTANARO: Presidents are well aware that they have a limited amount of time until the shine of an election wears off. Take it from one who got a lot done - Lyndon Johnson here in 1967.
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LYNDON B JOHNSON: The president's mandate rarely lasted longer than six months, and I hope that we could get most of the pledges we made in our platform enacted as soon as possible.
MONTANARO: Rarely lasted longer than six months. That's going to mean if Trump wants to accomplish his ambitious agenda, he's likely going to have to pick and choose and get it all done as quickly as possible with or without a mandate.
Domenico Montanaro, NPR News, Washington. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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