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  1. #1
    Senior Member Judy's Avatar
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    Donald Trump’s political mandate is historically small

    Donald Trump’s political mandate is historically small

    By Aaron Blake November 28 at 12:20 PM

    Donald Trump is pretty sore that he’s going to lose the popular vote by as much as two percentage points. So he’s lashing out, launching baseless accusations of large-scale voter fraud to explain why he lost the popular vote even as he managed to win the electoral college.

    It’s unusually petty and strange for a president-elect to do this, yes. But there is actually good reason for Trump to be concerned about his share of the popular vote. After all, the current tabulation suggests that 53.5 percent of Americans cast ballots for someone not named Donald Trump, and politicians are generally stronger when they have demonstrated popular support. That translates to political capital and an easier time pursuing your agenda. It makes your opponents — and perhaps even skeptical congressional Republicans, in Trump’s case — less likely to stand in your way. (Witness President Obama’s mandate in the wake of the 2008 election, for example.)

    Trump, though, has a historically small mandate. And if you compare his election to the 57 previous presidential votes, that reality begins to come into clearer focus.

    As of now, Trump’s deficit in the popular vote — 1.7 points — is the third-largest on record for an election winner and the second-biggest for an electoral college winner. The only bigger deficits came in the 19th century, when Rutherford B. Hayes won the 1876 election by one(!) electoral vote despite losing the popular vote by three points, and when John Quincy Adams was declared the winner by the House of Representatives despite losing the electoral vote and the popular vote to Andrew Jackson by more than 10 points. (It was a crowded race, and Jackson was shy of a majority of electoral votes.)

    Trump is also taking less of the popular vote — 46.5 percent — than all but seven previous winners. That number is likely to creep down closer to 46 percent as the remaining votes get counted, but he is still likely to finish eighth from the bottom (next lowest is Grover Cleveland in 1892 at 46.02 percent).

    Among those seven winners who took less of the popular vote, though, six faced a third-party candidate who was formidable enough to actually win a state, and the seventh was Bill Clinton, who also faced a formidable third-party candidate — Ross Perot — who took 19 percent of the national vote but didn't quite carry a state. Clinton took just 43 percent of the vote but won the popular vote by six points over Bob Dole George H.W. Bush.

    The strongest third-party showing in the 2016 election was from Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson, who is taking slightly more than 3 percent of the vote right now. The worst third-party showing in any of the other races was 8.5 percent, which is what Populist Party candidate James B. Weaver took in 1892 as a regional candidate who won five Western states. The leading third-party candidate in every other race won at least double digits.

    In other words, there was far less splitting up of the vote in the 2016 election than in the seven elections that produced a winner with a smaller share of the vote. While those seven candidacies can all credibly point to a third-party candidate diluting the vote, Trump really can’t. Yes, Johnson set a record for a Libertarian candidate’s share of the vote, but he was ultimately a non-factor in the race.

    Does that mean Trump is sunk as president? Of course not. The vote is one thing. From here, it’s about how he handles the presidency and builds his political capital. The best indicator of that will be his approval rating, which hasn’t been measured since he won the election. His favorable rating — which is more about his personal appeal than job performance — bumped up after his election but still stood at just 42 percent, according to Gallup. That’s lower than any president-elect on record and is notably less even than his 46.5 percent of the vote.

    But for now, Trump’s political mandate is very, very small. He will probably succeed in getting some of his priorities through Congress thanks to the GOP’s congressional majorities, but the American people are skeptical of their president-elect, even as they elected him president.

    The popular vote doesn’t technically matter when it come to electing presidents, but popular appeal does matter when it comes to how presidents can govern. And the idea that a majority of Americans still don’t like our president-elect is eating at Trump — as it probably should.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...rically-small/
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  2. #2
    Senior Member Judy's Avatar
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    Oh you poor dumb petty writer, Aaron Blake. Trump's victory was a landslide because he won 30 states. It was HUUGE!! It was the most exciting election night of my life. Unbelievable. The biggest comeback ever. Against all odds, all predictions, all the establishment, media, DNC and crooked Clinton Machine. It was a womp, a wallop, a slap in the face, the little kid rising from the ashes of a school yard to beat the ass off the big bullies trying to kick him to the curb, a home run with bases loaded when you're 3 behind in the bottom of the ninth inning in the last game of the World Series, it was a Knock-Out greater than any in sparring history.

    The 2016 Presidential Election will go down as the greatest Presidential election in US history for the people of the United States and I expect our World. Not only was it unexpected by all except his Trump Supporters, it was decisive, wins in every state he won far beyond the threshold for automatic recounts. And where is our Affirmation on this? Well, it's everywhere. It's Wall Street, the Stock Market, Consumer Confidence, all breaking every record there is on record. It's the optimism, the joy you see on the streets from ordinary people, it's the hope you feel when Americans pass each other on the street or in the hall at the office building or between the assembly lines in what remains of US factories, it's in Ford Motor Company who will not move any portion of its Louisville plant out of the United States now and it's in Carrier AC who is open to reversing its decision to relocate its Indiana plant to Monterrey, Mexico, and in every other Board Room across this nation. It's in France, it's in Russia, hell, it's even in Cuba. It's everywhere.

    The election of this dear man to President of the United States has ignited good to defeat evil, to promote right over wrong, to insist upon fairness over cheating, to protect the citizens of their countries over drug cartels and oligarchs.

    The positive impact Donald J Trump has had on both our citizens and the world already exceeds the cumulative impact of the last 5 US Presidents combined, and he's not even taken office yet. He rode in on his own horse mostly on his own money with his own words, his own message, and cut the noose in time to save our country from hanging itself. He's a Hero pundits and historians will be writing about from now until the end of time.

    And that Aaron Blake is just a simple fact that's going to eat you up. You'll likely end up one of these crazed losers locked up in a room in a psych facility with padded walls and a slit in the door to give you your tray. Jealousy and envy will do that to people. Meanwhile, Donald J Trump will be bouncing from one unpredictable press-defying wonder dog move to another to fix our country and more likely than not, most of the world in the process.

    Why? Because in his own words, he loves what he's doing.

    Merry Christmas!!

    Last edited by Judy; 11-29-2016 at 04:08 AM.
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