Trump’s Victory Was Neither a Landslide nor Does it Constitute a Mandate

More than six weeks since the election, President-elect Donald Trump and his team, along with some political pundits in the media, are claiming that his victory was a “landslide” and thus his administration now has a mandate. They are wrong on both accounts.

The Oxford dictionary defines landslide as “an overwhelming majority of votes for one party in an election.” On Dec. 6, the popular vote tally showed that Trump was ahead by 2.3 million votes, or 1.5 percent. Landslide? This barely constitutes a tremor.

Now regarding the mandate. First of all, mandate, as it applies to the result of political elections, is a myth. It is nowhere stated in the Constitution; it is a political concoction used to justify policies and programs, which an administration is determined to push through.

When voters go to the polls, they select a candidate, not an agenda. There are myriad reasons why someone chooses candidate A over candidate B; to assert that they are on board with everything candidate A wants to do is highly presumptuous. And even if the mandate were a legitimate concept, the narrow margin of Trump’s victory would render it invalid anyway.

After eight years of making all sorts of specious claims, we should not be surprised that Donald Trump and his lackeys are claiming that the people have given Donald Trump a blank check for his highly questionable objectives. Nonetheless, we should flatly reject such a claim, especially since he barely received half the popular vote.

Moreover, an extremely thin lead in the House also belies any false notion of a mandate. If Republicans continue to rely on this unfounded claim to ram through a radical and reckless agenda, they may find themselves in for some unpleasant surprises come November 2026.

Emil D’Onofrio

White Plains

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