Talk Elections

What's with all the 'Bush Mandate' spin?  Since when is 51% considered a mandate?  For those who think that the 3.5 million popular vote margin was a grand display of popular broad-based support, consider this regional statistic:

Bush won the South* by 5 million votes.
Kerry won the remaining 39 states (and DC) by 1.5 million.

It certainly is a mandate from the Bible Belt.

*South defined as 11 states that made up Confederacy.

Ok then, I have a question

At was % would you considered a mandate then?

Shut up Brutus



And put that knife down... you could give yourself an injury

Republicans talk about how Bush has a mandate and America rejected the far left values etc etc etc..

Well they are forgetting that the "Liberal Massachusetts Senator" got 48% of the vote.

Ok then, I have a question

At was % would you considered a mandate then?


I don't have a specific percentage to define it, but Reagan in '84, Nixon in '72, and Johnson in '64 are good examples.

Winning by 10% is a mandate.

I agree, President Bush does not have a mandate. But he was relected President and he has the right to push his agenda through congress. Whether or not it succeeds is another story.

All of this talk of a mandate is stupid.  I agree with Troy-Bush won and he will try to push his agenda.  Clinton won twice with just a plurality and that did not stop him from pushing his agenda.

Guess how much difference there would likely be in Bush's second term had Bush won 61%-38%?  My guess is absolutely zero.  For better or for worse, Bush is not apt to think about public opinion when he does something.  He's said numerous times that he works from his gut, not from polls.

For that reason, arguing over whether or not Bush has a mandate is silly.

I was just about to say that. Great point.

Time Magazine even ran a headline proclaiming the Clinton mandate.  Who cares about a mandate.  Kerry lost.  He was a loser.  He did not prevail.  He accomplished second place.  Who EVER remembers who came in second?

We history buffs do!

zach...yeah, I guess Goldwater/Miller remembered that they got wiped out for about 10 minutes.

Considering that we have a poster whose screen name is dedicated to the loser in 1964, I would wager that a fair number remember.

A mandate is not an either/or thing.

Practically speaking, every president has a mandate to do what he can get Congress to approve.  Nothing more, nothing less.

If Congress balks, and strong public opinion is behind the president on a certain issue, then the president can appeal to the public to put pressure on their representatives to vote for the measure that the president is proposing.

If a president overreaches his mandate, he'll find out soon enough.  President Clinton's first term is a good example of this.  He was elected with a 43% plurality, and he pushed his health care agenda as well as a tax increase, rather than the middle class tax cut he campaigned on.  Although he surely had no mandate for a tax increase, Congress approved it, but they shot him down on health care, which was something he did campaign on.

Therefore, it makes no sense to argue about whether or not Bush has a mandate.  Besides, I would bet that a lot of people who now say Bush doesn't have a mandate thought Clinton got one in 1992, with his 43% of the vote.  Let's just see what he can get through Congress, where Republicans don't have full control.

Many people don't realize it, but Bush actually has a bigger share of the popular vote this time than Reagan did in 1980!

Bush 2004:      51.04%
Reagan 1980:  50.75%

I would say Bush has a mandate, after all the Republicans did better across the board on election night than almost anyone predicted

i don't know.

probably when the so-called "liberal" media claimed it was.

even though clinton won by a wider margin yet that was not considered a "mandate".

Clinton got 49%. Bush got 51%. The margin is meaningless.

The Democrats didn't have majorities of both houses of Congress, and they didn't sweep the Senate while picking up seats in the House.

And by the way, they did call it a mandate.

um, clinton never ran against w. bush.

Bush got a majority, Clinton didn't.

um, clinton did win the popular vote.

he won both ky. and ill. both times.

He won the popular vote. That's not the same as getting a majority.

then who had the mandate???

bob dole???? BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAAH

Either no one or Clinton.

But if Clinton had one, Bush definitely does as well.

that bush does not have as he only won by 3.

clinton won by 6 to 8. and he was a better guy anyway.

Because there was another candidate in the race.

That victory margin is irrelevant. 

 During the 1996 election, 49 percent voted for Clinton and 51 percent for everybody else.  Meaning that the majority of voters chose somebody other than Clinton.  Their votes were merely spread out among several candidates

George Bush on the other hand won 51 percent of the electorate.  The majority of the voting public voted for him and his leadership verses 1996 when the majority actually voted against Bill Clinton.  Also the higher turnout reflects positively on the president, especially given that this was supposed to be a situation favorable to Democrats.

The bottom line is George W. Bush turned a popular vote loss in 2000 into a mandate.  He certainly has one now.

god, how non-sense can you republicans get?
the reason for clinton getting 49 percent is because there was a strong third party candidate ross perot getting over 6 percent of the vote. clinton had a 9 point advantage over bob dole.
bush won 51 percent, well kerry got 48. because there was no strong third party candidate pushing the winner behind the 50 percent line.

clinton swept the electoral college in 96, bush definetely did not sweep anything whatsoever.