I know I'm a day late on this but I think it's important to weigh in on this notion that Donald Trump somehow won a mandate on Tuesday night. He did not.

This notion was proffered by House Speaker Paul Ryan on Wednesday, who said that the president-elect had "earned a mandate," a notion seconded by Kellyanne Conway, Trump's campaign manager.

On one level, this is of course a fairly rote argument: Incoming administrations always claim a mandate. And conversely oppositions always decry them – as Steve Benen points out, four years ago when Barack Obama scored a victory which was by virtually any measure more impressive than Trump's, Ryan said that Obama had not gotten a mandate. (Ryan's logic, that Republicans had also retained control of the House, was undermined by the fact that Democrats won a majority of votes cast in House races that year, even if it only earned them a smaller proportion of seats.)

But nevertheless it's worth briefly laying out the case against a Trump mandate, since starting next year it will no doubt be used to justify enacting the GOP's pernicious agenda.

The most obvious and important point is that Trump didn't win the most votes. As of this writing, Hillary Clinton leads Trump by more than 200,000 ballots in the national total, and that number figures to keep growing. That alone should put an end to the idea that this election was a massive rebuke to Clinton, President Barack Obama (who voters approve of by a 53-45 margin, according to exit polls) or Democrats – winning the most votes may not get you the White House but it ought to spare you in the court of conventional wisdom from being deemed a scolded loser. Donald Trump is president because of a quirk in the system – that doesn't undermine his legitimacy but it does demolish the idea of a mandate. (Election night chronology plays a role in the development of conventional wisdom here: Clinton ran up her vote in the Pacific coast states but since their polls close later he led in popular vote for much of the evening until he'd clinched in the Electoral College; the frame through which we view the election would be different, I think, if the west coast came in first and she had led in the popular vote from the start.)

It's also worth digging down into the exit polls a little bit to examine this question. Trump wasn't much for policy specifics (a fact which in itself undercuts the idea that he has a program which received the people's endorsement), but without question his signature issue was building a wall on the U.S.-Mexican border. Perhaps that has a mandate – maybe it got majority support among voters even if its candidate not? Nope: Exit polls show that 41 percent of voters support building a wall while 54 percent oppose it. Similarly, while Trump advocated total deportation of people in the U.S. without legal documentation (even if he was occasionally muddled and incoherent on this point), 70 percent support legal status for those 11 million people while only 25 percent want them deported.

Trump was clear on a few other issues, even if they were not as central to his campaign as the wall. He styled himself a "law-and-order" candidate, making it clear that as regards the justice system his sympathies were entirely with the police and not at all with the "Black Lives Matter" movement – but more voters (48 percent) told exit pollers that the justice system treats blacks unfairly than said that it treats everyone fairly (43 percent).

Trump also ran on repealing Obamacare, something Republican congressional leaders have made clear will be an early priority. But voters were far from clear on this. While 47 percent said that the law went too far, 48 percent said either that it did not go far enough (30 percent) or that it was just about right (18 percent). Remember that statistic when the GOP repeals (and, let's be clear, does not replace) the Affordable Care Act and we're subjected to a lot of sanctimonious drivel about fulfilling the will of the people.

This isn't to suggest that exit polls reflect a consistent rejection of Trump and the GOP. Fully half of voters think that government does too much and only 45 percent think it should do more; and 48 percent want the next president to be more conservative while only 45 percent want him to be more liberal (and almost a quarter of the "more liberal" voters supported Trump, because rationality apparently has no place in politics).

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But "mandate" implies clarity, not muddle. And the voters were muddled. So easily the most important issue facing the country was the economy (52 percent thought so, with terrorism next at 18 percent), and Clinton won among "economy" voters by 10 percentage points (52-42) ... but voters overall thought that Trump would handle the economy better by a 49-46 margin. Conversely Trump demolished Clinton among those who identified terrorism as the country's most pressing problem, 57-39; but by a margin of 52-43 voters overall thought that Clinton would handle foreign policy better and 49-46 voters thought she would make a better commander-in-chief.

Oh and asked whether Trump is qualified to serve as president, 60 percent of voters said no. (Though nearly 1 in 5 of that 60 percent voted for him anyway).