What mandate? Trump's popular vote lead is slimmest since Bush-Gore

Despite repeated claims from GOP corners that the United States gave Donald Trump a "mandate" on Election Day, the president-elect has still not secured a majority of the popular vote.

According to the Cook Political Report, Trump has netted 76.8 million votes to Kamala Harris' 74.2 million votes. Trump's share of the ballots is good for 49.89% of the current tallied vote total. If the current margin of roughly 2.4 million votes holds, it will be the closest margin of victory since the contest between Al Gore and George W. Bush in 2000.

Trump's current lead in the popular vote count is smaller than the one Hillary Clinton put up on him in 2016. Clinton gained 2.8 million more votes than Trump in her electoral loss.

Harris lost both the Electoral College and popular vote outright, and that is unlikely to change as the vote tallies finalize. Still, the initial conception of the election as a landslide in favor of Trump does not appear to be accurate. That hasn't stopped Republican leaders from painting the victory as a clear sign that their agenda is overwhelmingly popular.

House Speaker Mike Johnson has repeatedly brought up Trump's supposed "mandate" while pushing the president's controversial Cabinet nominees. While speaking to Jake Tapper on CNN this weekend, Johnson said that nominees like Matt Gaetz and Kristi Noem were merely a manifestation of the average American's desire for change.

"I think what the American people have believed and what they’ve delivered with the mandate in this election is a demand that we shake up the status quo. It’s not working for the American people," Johnson said when asked by Tapper if the GOP had lost its morals. "They will go into the agencies that they’re being asked to lead, and they will reform them. These agencies need reform."