Title: There's No Such Thing as a Presidential Mandate - Foundation for Economic Education
Headings: There's No Such Thing as a Presidential Mandate
There's No Such Thing as a Presidential Mandate
What Is a Presidential Mandate?
Votes Are Not Policy
No Consensus among Trump Voters
The Myth of Democratic Socialism
Even Voting with Dollars Is Hard to Interpret

Content: The idea that one could tease out a particular approval or disapproval from this cacophony of concerns is laughable. At a state or federal level, it’s even more absurd. Even Voting with Dollars Is Hard to Interpret
The difficulty of running a grocery store helps us fully appreciate how difficult it is to tease out policy from election results. Like elections, customers “vote” with their dollars. Unlike elections, grocery store managers and owners have even better information because they have daily data not just on how many customers they had and how much each customer spent, but what times of day they came in and what they spent their money on. They get regular and detailed feedback not based on cheap talk, but by individuals using their own money to buy food for themselves. Customers who, literally, put their money where their mouth is. Politicians don’t even get monthly, let alone daily, feedback. But if sales of produce were to stall, it’s not obvious what the store should do about it. Is the quality of their produce slipping?