Presidents often claim mandates − especially when they want to expand their power or are on the defensive

Shortly after the 2024 election was called in Donald Trump’s favor, he declared that voters had given him “an unprecedented and powerful mandate.”

As the popular vote margin shrinks, however, this claim seems less plausible. But it puts Trump squarely within the historical tradition of how presidents – and those around them – have claimed electoral mandates.

These claims don’t necessarily tell anything meaningful about the election results. More often, they reflect dynamics of presidential power and other political forces.

Scholars of American politics have expressed skepticism about mandates. Does a mandate mean that the election carried a special message? How do we know what voters were thinking as they cast ballots? Are some elections mandates and others not? If so, how do we know? What’s the popular vote cutoff – is it a majority or more? Who decides? One scholar has flatly declared, “There’s no such thing as a mandate.”

The possible objections to the entire idea of an electoral mandate are endless. But the idea remains attractive to politicians and commentators. It was with this in mind that I conducted research into how this language is actually used and has changed over time.

For my 2014 book “Delivering the People’s Message: The Changing Politics of the Presidential Mandate,” I looked at how presidents, their communications teams and the news media have talked about election results and linked them to presidential decisions. I read through about 1,500 presidential communications from 1929 through 2009, including news media interactions, speeches and some written documents, and I drew on archival research from the Franklin Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson, Nixon, Carter and Reagan libraries. The history of how presidents have claimed mandates actually sheds a lot of light on today’s mandate claims.

I found that recent mandate narratives are sometimes successful. But often, they are not. They’ve been increasingly employed by politicians in weak positions, in response to polarized politics and flagging legitimacy.

But they have also historically been connected to unprecedented expansions of presidential power. This could be a recipe for overreach, as it often has been for modern presidents. Or it could be a way to give an unchecked executive the veneer of following the popular will.

Here are some specifics from my research:

1. Mandate claims accompany expansions of presidential power

Early uses of presidential mandate claims date back to Andrew Jackson, who often pushed at the boundaries of what presidents were supposed to do.

His decision to destroy the Second Bank of the United States was justified through his insistence that the 1832 election was a mandate for his position on the issue. Jackson ordered his treasury secretary to remove deposits from the Bank, and dismissed him when he refused, rationalizing his actions by claiming the president enjoys a special popular endorsement – a mandate.

Not quite a century later, Woodrow Wilson articulated the idea that the president was specifically given power to act by virtue of his election and spoke for the “whole people.” This formed the basis for the idea that the president should play a greater role in policy leadership than presidents had up to that point.

This conception of the president as a popular leader and main spokesperson for his party’s agenda – a common view now – came after decades of presidents pushing at the boundaries of the office and expanding its authority.

As I note in my book, Wilson’s vision of himself as a “prime ministerial” party leader anticipated the modern, legislatively active presidency.

That paved the way for Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the significant expansion of presidential power during his lengthy tenure in office, including expansion of the administrative state through the New Deal.

The most recent turning point I identified in my research came after Watergate and Vietnam, in which the presidency went through a period of overreach and public backlash.

What I found was that in response to the public skepticism about executive power that emerged in the wake of these developments, presidents began to emphasize elections and campaign promises as a way of highlighting transparency and accountability to the public. Emphasis on the presidential mandate came at a time when presidents sought popular legitimacy to support expanding executive power.

Trump is testing the checks and balances of the Cabinet confirmation process – and thereby attempting to assert unilateral power, unchecked by the Senate – by asking the Senate for recess appointments. Yielding to Trump’s wish, I believe, would dramatically transform the governing landscape, shifting even more power from Congress to the president.

2. Presidents use mandate claims when on the defensive

In addition to the rise of mandate claims in the post-Watergate period, presidents have been more apt to highlight the differences between their ideas and those of their opponents.

Obama repeatedly referred to the 2008 election as a rejection of Republican ideas. When meeting with Republican congressional leaders in 2001, George W. Bush – after losing the popular vote – noted: “I also want to remind members of both parties that I am able to stand before you as the President because of an agenda that I ran on. I believe the fact that I took specific stands on important issues is the reason I was able to win.”

The period after 1980 also saw an increase in presidents talking about “the reason I was elected.” A few days after his 1993 inauguration, Bill Clinton was asked by a journalist whether the “controversy” over the proposal to lift the ban on gay and lesbian military personnel had “given the American people the wrong idea of what your priorities are.”

Clinton responded: “I have not, frankly, spent very much time on it compared to the time I’m spending on the economy, which is what I was elected to do.”

The Trump team is riding high on a presumptive popular vote victory. But as the administration pursues a controversial policy agenda, including possible mass deportations and tariffs, we might expect the election, and its implied mandate, to come into play as a justification for these choices.

3. Conservative and Democratic mandate claims diverge in focus

Since the 1970s, both Democratic and Republican presidents have referred to election results and campaign promises more often than in the past. But the way each party has done it has been different.

Democrats tend to connect mandate claims to a wide variety of policies and ideas – the environment, the economy, good governance – often focusing on fairly small agenda items.

Republicans, in contrast, have zeroed in on a few policies or ideas: Reagan insisted that the 1980 election was a mandate for a conservative turn, while George W. Bush stressed that low taxes and Social Security reform powered his election, although his efforts to change Social Security didn’t convince even his own party.

It’s not hard to imagine Trump following the conservative playbook, repeatedly framing the election as a mandate for Trumpism: severe anti-immigration measures and consolidation of presidential power.

But others may advance competing narratives: Trump appointee Vivek Ramaswamy has said that Trump has a “mandate for unifying the country,” an idea which sounds counter to Trump’s divisive proposals.

Still others might see Trump’s election as an opportunity to push their own pet agenda items, such as attacking diversity, equity and inclusion measures or pulling back federal support for vaccines, muddling the focus of Trump’s narrative.