The normative conclusion is that even if an election is won with 50% plus a minority (or majority) of voters, the winner is justified in imposing policies that seriously harm the remaining 49% (or less). It doesn’t mean anything.
In a free society, there are three main justifications for political majority rule. First, if the ruler’s exercise of power is rejected by a large portion of the population, it becomes possible to change the ruler, that is, to oust the villain. Second, it represents something close to unanimity and is ultimately the only normative justification for democracy. (See my reviews of Liberalism Against Populism by William Riker and Regulation magazine, and The Calculation of Consent by James Buchanan and Gordon Tulloch and my reviews of Econlib, respectively.) Third , as Buchanan and Tulloch argue, the unanimity approximation is: It is necessary only to prevent holdouts from maliciously blocking widely desired change.
One of the implications of this approach is that a president elected with 50.1% of the popular vote (as of November 14th, as of the November 5th election tally) will not be able to kill anyone or do anything he has promised. It means that they are not even allowed to do so. It challenges credulity to believe that Americans, in a hypothetical Buchanan-esque social contract, can unanimously agree to constitutional rules that give such powers to the president and elected Congress. As Milton Friedman wrote about majoritarian democracy, “the believers in freedom have never counted their noses” (see chapter 1 of his classic Capitalism and Freedom). The president is not an elected king or dictator.
Credible arguments along these lines require that a president or elected Congress have no right to seriously harm someone’s lifestyle or the net benefits derived from living under the relevant society or its government. There is no authority to do so. This “significantly” covers an area of disagreement, from classical liberalism to various shades of minimalist state and anarcho-capitalism.
If the above is close to the truth, then politicians and experts who believe in the omnipotence of the numerical majority are wrong. House Speaker Mike Johnson declared (“Republican euphoria shattered by tough House math,” Wall Street Journal, November 12, 2024). [from two earlier versions]):
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) said at a news conference Tuesday that Republicans are “ready to fulfill America’s mission in the next Congress.”
[He] He said Republican control of Washington could “bring about the most consequential Congress in modern times” and that lawmakers “need to start acting on behalf of the people from day one.”
This idea seems to be pervasive in political circles. Caroline Leavitt, criticizing the Trump-Vance transition, said (“Trump executive order draft would create commission to purge generals,” Wall Street Journal, November 12, 2024) :
The American people re-elected President Trump by a wide margin and gave him a mandate to carry out the promises he made during the campaign. He will deliver.
An ally and former administration official of the president-elect spoke of a “landslide mission” (“Trump sends shockwaves through Washington with Gates pick,” Wall Street Journal, November 14, 2024).
50 percent plus a few dozen percent (50.3 percent as counted a few days ago) doesn’t seem like a “landslide” or a “significant difference,” and even if there was a significant difference, elected officials would Permission is not granted. To abide by any promise or whim. The president-elect received 58% of the Electoral College (312 of 538 electors), partially reflecting America’s founding suspicions about federalist ideals and numerical democracy, giving him a clean slate. It’s not even a thing. No rational individual would give 58% of voters unlimited power over him. I speak from the perspective of the political economy of the Constitution, not as a constitutional lawyer (see Jeffrey Brennan and James Buchanan’s Reason for Rules: The Political Economy of the Constitution and my Econlib review). Friedrich Hayek would no doubt agree with these broad conclusions (see his Law, Legislation, and Liberty and my Econlib review of Volume 3 of this book).
Seen from this perspective, the mandate for the president and Congress is less grand. It’s not from “America” or “the people,” it’s from the majority of voters. Half of the electorate is made up of people who strongly disagree with the views of the other side. Moreover, one-third do not vote, so these one-half of the electorate become two-thirds of the electorate. Also note that “offering” does not imply a market meaning. In politics, it primarily means achieving favorable interventions for some people at the expense of others, and negative interventions for the latter. A classic example is when tariffs favor the shareholders, managers, and employees of some companies, but disadvantage all consumers who pay higher prices.
Deciding which third of the electorate (or half of the electorate) will impose their wishes and lifestyle on the other two-thirds is not the only option. Another option is to allow all individuals to live as they wish, except for some specially justified restrictions. Equal individual freedom is economically and morally superior to collective choice, or collectivism on the left or right. There is no moral or economic equivalence between freeing individuals and dominating one person by another. At least, this is what the liberal tradition claims in one form or another.
