According to the current (13 Nov 2004) count, President Bush received 59,459,765 votes on Tuesday. This is, as anyone can tell, the largest number of votes a Presidential candidate has ever received. Of course, since there are approximately 295,000,000 Americans, it's only about 1/5th of the population, but many of the rest can't vote, and those that didn't care, don't count.
What's interesting is that John Kerry received 55,949,407 votes. That puts him at second in the Presidential sweepstakes, just ahead of Ronald Reagan in 1984 (54,455,075), and somewhat further ahead of Al Gore (50,999,897) and Bush-2000 (50,456,002).
Even if we don't add in the Nader and other votes, it's apparent that more people voted against the winner of this election than have ever voted against a President before.
Given that little nugget, any claim to a mandate would be highly exaggerated.
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