When it comes to the presidential election of 2016, most of the media are missing the significant story – the continued lack of a clear national mandate indicating a deeply divided nation. Both parties have their spin; for the Republicans it’s states won and the electoral vote count, for the Democrats it’s the popular vote count, but for me a mandate only comes when a clear majority has spoken in both arenas.
Technically, anything more than 50 percent is a majority of the popular vote, but is 50.1 percent – attained by neither Clinton nor Trump – a mandate? Not in my book; for me, a popular vote mandate is more like a minimum of 55 percent and wide approval from different regions of the nation; therefore, I would add to that definition the requirement that one must also win the popular vote in more than half the states.
I came up with my personal mandate formula before I checked the historical results – let’s see how it comes out. Using that definition, there have been seven national mandates in the 22 presidential elections since 1932, inclusive; Franklin Roosevelt in 1932 and 1936, Dwight Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956, Lyndon Johnson in 1964, Richard Nixon in 1972 and Ronald Reagan in 1984.
It’s now been eight election cycles – 28 years or 32 years to the end of Trump’s term – since any president met my 55 percent popular vote mandate threshold, although the winners of those eight elections all carried more than half the states.
In fact, except for two cases, the winner of every election since 1932 carried a majority of the states that existed at the time. The two exceptions were John Kennedy in 1960, who carried 22 states, and Jimmy Carter in 1976 who carried 23 states; neither of them approached 55 percent of the popular vote.
Prior to the last eight elections, the longest run since 1932 without a mandate as I defined it was only three election cycles (12 years from the end of FDR’s second term); Roosevelt in 1940 and 1944 – although he came very close both times – followed by my personal favorite, “Give ‘em Hell Harry” Truman, in 1948.
Obviously, having a closely-divided nation is nothing new, but this current long run in the modern era without a clear mandate says something to me about the major political parties and electorate; it is that is they are singing very different songs. Will someone come along and change the tune? Only time will tell.