The Problem of Minority Party Rule

By Michael Kleen

After each presidential election, partisans and pundits alike are quick to declare an electoral mandate for the winning candidate. In 2004, incumbent President George W. Bush himself told reporters, “I earned capital in this campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it… When you win, there is… a feeling that the people have spoken and embraced your point of view.” Echoing those sentiments, Vaughn Ververs at CBS News called Barack Obama’s 2008 victory “a sweeping mandate for Obama’s campaign mantra of change.” 

But does the winning candidate really have “a mandate” or “political capital” gained from having been chosen by a majority of the electorate? The data suggests otherwise, and the implications for this more accurate picture—that of a highly partisan minority imposing its will on the electorate—are troubling at best. This reality upends the traditional problem of representative government (tyranny of the majority) and calls into question the legitimacy of an activist, centralized state in a democratic republic.