In politics, a mandate is the authority granted by an electorate to act as its representative. Elections, especially ones with a large margin of victory, are often said to give the newly elected government or elected official a mandate to implement certain policies...I am doubtful that our next president has, despite the wishes of media commentary, achieved a mandate by way of his election. His margin of victory of less than 53% of the popular vote as well as the exit polling data that has come out since the election should convince any objective viewer that Obama's election, though decisive particularly at the electoral college level, was not what would be traditionally called a mandate.
The case could be made that the combination of congressional elections since 2006 along with Obama's election have a sort of mandate aura to them, until one delves into the particulars of the Democrat's gains in those elections, particularly at the House level. At the local level and remember "all politics is local" the electorate is far less to the left than the election results may casually appear.
It is doubtful that any presidential election since Regan in "84" was actually a mandate and Regan's election in "80" was probably the only election since Roosevelt in "32" which was a mandate for change. Even the so called Regan Revolution that started in 1980 was more a post election phenomena, people voted for change in 1980 as much to be rid of Carter as any profound acceptance of Regan's policies.
In that respect Obama's election is more like Regan's first victory than his second. Just as Regan's victory was more the result of a repudiation of Carter, so too is the Obama election more a rejection of Bush than any overwhelming acceptance of Obama policies. After all, the main theme of Obama's campaign was almost exclusively based on tieing McCain to Bush and running against that image rather than any sharp contrast in policies. Americans were given very little depth as to what the change an Obama administration would bring, so the vote was more a vote for style rather than substance, not to mention the historic nature of the Obama candidacy. In 1980 Americans knew that Ronald Regan's policies fundamentally differed from Carters, with Obama we are not so sure, he is either a pragmatic centrist or a far left liberal he is not well defined. Regan made no secret of where he stood on issues whereas Obama's campaign was sort of an election by subterfuge.
So, what is a mandate? I will give you my definition. First I am going to ignore the electoral college, it can skew the entire idea of the will of the people so I'll stick with the popular vote. An election mandate would be winning at least 55% of the popular vote or by 10% or more over your primary rival.
Based on my criteria there have been quite a few mandate elections since 1900 but they have grown rarer as time goes on. They were 1904,1912,1920,1928,1932,1936, 1952,1956,1964,1972, and 1984. Notice Regan's 1980 is not on the list barely but if you look you will see why and it obviously belongs on the list.
So using my criteria of what a mandate is, let's get to the actual point of this post. What policies and issues do Americans overwhelmingly agree on? Remember Wiki tells us that part of a mandate is authority granted by an electorate to act as its representative....to give the newly elected government or elected official a mandate to implement certain policies...
Using recent (past year) Rasmussen, Gallup and other polling data let's see where there is a mandate by the American people on some important issues. In other words our President and representatives would be truly representing us if they implemented certain policies and followed what the American people believe to be in the countries best interest. This is not how our system of government is set up, we are not a pure Democracy, we have decided to let ourselves be represented by others in whom we place our trust to do what is best for us. However a government that does not take into account the overwhelming desire of the governed better have a good reason for it and should explain it to the citizens, that is why we hire them, they work for us.
I think of this as a score card. I will be updating this regularly and posting the updates as they occur.
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