As Trump's lead in popular vote shrinks, does he really have a 'mandate'?

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

55% : Whatever the popular vote, the Hoover Institution's Chen argues, Trump is in a strong position because he can count on GOP majorities in both houses of Congress.
54% : For example, while Trump won strong backing for his broad immigration plan, with 57% supporting a "national program to find and deport all immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally," the poll showed far less support -- 40% -- for his plan to use the military to carry out deportations.
41% : That's particularly true of Trump, who has long reveled in hyperbole.
39% : The latest tally from the Cook Political Report shows Trump winning 49.83% of the popular vote, with a margin of 1.55% over Vice President Kamala Harris.
37% : "If Trump doesn't do that -- if he acts like he believes his own story -- then we're in a different, more Trumpian kind of place."
34% : When Trump exaggerates his presidential mandate, he is not an outlier but drawing from bipartisan history.
34% : The question is whether Trump can garner significant public support to push through his more contentious administration picks and the most radical elements of his policy agenda, such as bringing in the military to enforce mass deportations.
33% : "There's no mandate here," Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) said last week on CNN, noting Trump had suggested using "recess appointments" to get around Senate hearings and votes for his nominees.
32% : When Trump speaks of his supposed mandate, he is not an outlier, but is drawing from bipartisan history.
30% : Democrats say that the results fall short of demonstrating majority public support for Trump and that the numbers do not give him a mandate to deviate from precedent, such as naming Cabinet members without Senate confirmation.

*Our bias meter rating uses data science including sentiment analysis, machine learning and our proprietary algorithm for determining biases in news articles. Bias scores are on a scale of -100% to 100% with higher negative scores being more liberal and higher positive scores being more conservative, and 0% being neutral. The rating is an independent analysis and is not affiliated nor sponsored by the news source or any other organization.