Fifty Percent Plus One Is Not a License to Kill

Winning an election with 50% plus a few (or many) voters does not imply the normative conclusion that the winner is justified to impose policies that significantly harm the other 49% (or less).

In a free society, the political majority rule has three main justifications. First, it allows to change the rulers when their exercise of power is repudiated by a significant proportion of the population—to throw out the rascals. Second, it represents an approximation of unanimity, which is ultimately the only normative justification of democracy. (See respectively William Riker’s Liberalism Against Populism and my review of the book in Regulation; and James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock, The Calculus of Consent as well as my Econlib review.) Third, as argued by Buchanan and Tullock, an approximation of unanimity is necessary only to prevent holdouts from blocking in bad faith widely desired change.

One implication of this approach is that a president elected with 50.1% of the popular vote (the tally of the November 5 election as of November 14) does not acquire a license to kill or even to do everything he may have promised. It strains credibility to believe that Americans could, in a virtual social contract à la Buchanan, unanimously agree to a constitutional rule granting such power to the president or even to an elected assembly. As Milton Friedman wrote about majoritarian democracy, “the believer in freedom has never counted noses” (see Chapter 1 of his classic Capitalism and Freedom). The president is not an elected king or dictator.

A credible argument along these lines is that a president or an elected assembly has no mandate to significantly harm anybody in his lifestyle or in the net benefit he derives from living in the relevant society and under its government. The “significantly” covers an area of disagreement that ranges from classical liberalism to different shades of minimal state and anarcho-capitalism.

If the above is anywhere near the truth, politicians and pundits who believe in the omnipotence of a numerical majority are mistaken. House Speaker Mike Johnson declared (“Republican Euphoria Punctured by Tough Math in the House,” Wall Street Journal, November 12, 2024 [from two earlier versions]):

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.), at a press conference Tuesday, said Republicans “are ready to deliver on America’s mandate in the next Congress.”

[He] said that GOP control of Washington could “result in the most consequential Congress of the modern era,” and that lawmakers will “need to begin delivering for the people on day one.”

This thinking seems to be prevalent in political circles. Karoline Leavitt, the Trump-Vance Transition spokeswoman, said (“Trump Draft Executive Order Would Create Board to Purge Generals,” Wall Street Journal, November 12, 2024):

The American people re-elected President Trump by a resounding margin giving him a mandate to implement the promises he made on the campaign trail. He will deliver.

An ally of the president-elect and former administration official spoke of “a landslide mandate” (“Trump Sends Shock Waves Through Washington With Gaetz Pick,” Wall Street Journal, November 14, 2024).

Fifty percent plus a few tens of a percentage point (the tally gave 50.3% a few days ago) does not look like a “landslide” or a “resounding margin,” and even a resounding margin would not give an elected official the license to follow any promise or whim. The 58% of the Electoral College that the president-elect won (312 out of 538 electors) partly reflects the federalist ideal and the suspicions of the American founders toward numerical democracy: it does not give carte blanche either. No rational individual would grant 58% of electors unlimited power over him. I am not speaking as a constitutional lawyer, which I am not, but from the viewpoint of constitutional political economy (see Geoffrey Brennan and James Buchanan, The Reason of Rules: Constitutional Political Economy, as well as 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).

In this perspective, a mandate to the president or Congress is less grandiose: it is not from “America” nor from “the people,” but from a majority of voters. The two halves of the voters are made of individuals who often strongly disagree with the other side. Moreover, these two halves of the voters become two-thirds of the electorate as one-third do not vote. Note also that “delivering” does not mean what it means 0n the market. In politics, it mainly means delivering the preferred interventions of some at the cost of others, a negative delivery for the latter. Customs tariffs favorable to shareholders, managers, and workers of some firms, to the detriment of all consumers who will pay higher prices provide a paradigmatic example.

Deciding which third of the electorate (or which half of the voters) will impose their desiderata and lifestyles on the other two-thirds is not the only alternative. The other alternative is to let all individuals live as they want, except for a few specifically justified limits. Equal individual liberty is economically and morally superior to collective choices, that is, to collectivism of the left or the right. There is no moral or economic equivalence between letting individuals free and the domination of some by others. Or at least, this is what the liberal tradition argues in one way or another.