How Much Power Does a President who Lost the Popular Vote Really Have?

The founding fathers couldn’t quite agree on who should elect the president. Some wanted the people to decide, others wanted it to be up to Congress. The arguments for either side were numerous, and in the democratic spirit of the times they settled on a compromise which would ultimately leave the decision up to the states and local representatives elected by the people. The presidency today is a much more powerful institution than it was in its original form, largely thanks to presidential elections becoming more democratic and the office becoming less beholden to the various other branches of the federal government, as well as political parties.

This raises the inevitable question of just how powerful a president who won the presidency, but lost the popular vote, would be. Just how much of a commander-in-chief’s power really does come from the people who either did or didn’t elect them? The elections of 1824 and 2000, as well as the subsequent presidencies of John Quincy Adams and George W. Bush serve as fascinating test cases for the relationship between a president’s popular election and the job he does.

In 1824, the presidential election came down to candidates John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, William H. Crawford, and Henry Clay. None of the four men managed to win even a hundred electoral votes, with Jackson winning the most electoral and popular votes out of the bunch. As were the founding fathers’ intentions, the undecided contest went to the House of Representatives where speaker Henry Clay tipped the balance in favor of Adams who eventually won. Clay was later named secretary of state with Jackson and his supporters crying “corrupt bargain!” as the son of the second president became the sixth.

The 1824 election ultimately ends up sharing some controversies with the next time the United States put a former president’s son in power, the 2000 presidential election. That year, despite Democrat John Kerry winning the majority of the popular vote by over 500,000 votes he ultimately lost the electoral college to Republican George W. Bush, the son of former president George H.W. Bush. The election came down to the swing state of Florida, particularly a recount ordered by the state’s Supreme Court which the SCOTUS then ruled unconstitutional under the fourteenth amendment, effectively giving the presidency to Bush.

A 5–4 split court decision determining the fate of the executive branch in favor of the popular loser can’t help but be reminiscent of the “corrupt bargain” within the House that so many decried when Adams was named president. Naturally, the next question becomes one of measuring just how much this matters. Things are still a little fresh to claim an objective historical perspective on the second Bush administration, although Adams’ single term in office would seem to provide a clearer answer. Marred by constant opposition from Jacksonians in Congress, Adams failed to get almost any of his ideas off the ground.

He wanted to invest heavily in infrastructure but his opponents insisted that this exceeded the power of the federal government, attempting to halt his actions wherever possible. Like his attempts to create Native American territories out west, Adams’ second presidential campaign was a failure and he lost badly to populist rival Andrew Jackson. Having never gotten much done as President, it’s almost impossible to see Adams’ time in the White House as any kind of success, especially for a man who achieved so much more in his previous career thus far. As ambitious, successful, and qualified as Adams may have been his presidency was doomed before it began, thanks to how it began.

George W. Bush, on the other hand, did manage to get elected a second time. This would seem to be the next logical conclusion to make, that while a lot of people might not like him but this should at least mark a clear difference between the two political dynasties. Paying all due reverence to the tragic attacks of September 11, 2001 as a significant paradigm shift in American politics, their role in the Bush presidency is a can of worms definitely worth opening. According to polling, Bush’s popularity peaked at 90% following the attacks and then gradually declined (with fluctuations) until the end of his presidency.

His first term average approval rating came out to 62%, while his second term was a whopping 37%. To put it another way; he may not have been the president we elected, nor the one we deserved, but he was the one we needed. Hypothetically of course, were one to erase the 9/11 spike from the overall timeline of Bush’s presidency his decline in popularity would have come much sooner, at least forcing one to wonder if he would have been re-elected had the country not undergone such dramatic events. Adding in the staggeringly low approval rating of his second term paints a picture of Bush’s time in office not unlike that of Adams’.

A lack of success, for lack of a better term, undoubtedly takes different forms in the presidencies of Bush and Adams. Adams was unable to accomplish much at all while Bush put up a “Mission Accomplished” banner, cut taxes, and passed the Patriot Act. What is undeniably clear in both cases, however, is that by the time their terms came to an end the people were sick and tired of both Adams and Bush. Although not nearly as clear cut as my question originally may have implied, the idea does seem to hold true here that in both cases the president’s power came from the people who either did or didn’t support them. When Bush hit that peak of 90% popularity is undeniably when he had the most power, that’s when almost everybody in the country regardless of partisan politics was looking to him for leadership.

Similarly, populist candidates like Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders ride their campaigns out entirely on the power given to them by their supporters. As former Obama strategist David Axelrod has noted, he was the one who told the young senator from Illinois in 2006 that the most important politician in the 2008 election would be George W. Bush. While a candidate might think that their opponents are the ones they need to differentiate from, history seems to show that the people electing them have an entirely different perspective.

The electorate tends to pick a president drastically different from the departing incumbent, as they chose the younger Kennedy to replace old Eisenhower, the ethical Jimmy Carter to replace Nixon’s vice president Ford, the uncharismatic George H.W. Bush to replace Reagan, and ultimately Barack Obama to replace George W. Bush. These contrasts illustrate perfectly the source of the president’s power, as well as present another theory regarding the rise of Donald Trump. The traits that were initially so valued in Obama, his calm, deliberative demeanor and his evenly paced, articulate tone of voice have now become despised. The people have chosen his loud, brash, orange counterpart and just as they did when choosing Andrew Jackson over John Quincy Adams they have picked exactly who they want for the job.