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this post was submitted on 02 Feb 2025
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That 49.8% is misleading - it implies that 49.8% of the country support him, but it counts only the votes that were actually cast. He only got votes from about 30% of eligible voters.
Of course we can't know who all those non-voters wanted to win, but I'd rather not imply that nearly half of all americans voted for him.
Who gives a shit? Those non-voters made an active choice to not matter. Makes sense to respect that choice and ignore their existence.
People always bring this up as if it's some indication that things arent quite as bad as they seem. Why? Americans chose this in every way that matters.
Keep in mind that quite a lot of those people are lower class citizens who can’t afford to take a day off work to vote. If you’re living paycheck to paycheck, not getting one day of pay can be crippling.
Sure, it’s easy to say they should bear the cost to save the nation, but none of us are feeding their kids or paying their bills. And it isn’t us who go homeless because they voted.
While I’m sure this is true for many, where I live early voting is super easy and convenient. I’m willing to bet the vast majority of people that did not vote could very easily have done so, they just didn’t for non logistical reasons.
I wouldn't be so sure. It's a time honored tradition for red states to make it significantly more difficult to vote. Shutting down voting locations in busy (so blue) areas, not accepting mail in votes, etc.
The red state I live in does not do this. Anecdotal of course
You don’t think there’s any problem with using only your viewpoint and experience as a guide for judging the entire nation?
Yep, which is why I pointed out that it’s anecdotal. But I’m also seeing a bunch of comments that are just generalizations with no actual sources. So my anecdote has some value at least.
Regardless of that; another shenanigan exists for those who did make it to the polls; Gerrymandering.
Yes; it's horrid as it sounds and it limits the voting power of lower class people, as well as the power of people who are considered to be "ethnic minorities" by the party in power. If there's a neighborhood of blacks next to a poor neighborhood; well both find themselves districted together and their cumulative votes are diminished by how the votes are counted by district such that a 2-3 victory for Democrats; is actually counted as a 2-3 victory for the Republicans...all because the Republicans were already in power somehow and managed to re-district the place so that the vote result never changes anything...unless the unlikely event that all three neighborhoods choose to vote the same way occurs.
Yet another shenanigan exists where voting rolls are frequently "purged" due to false assertions of fraud and onerous and routine registration becomes necessary, which isn't a problem if you don't work full-time in the USA; but good luck getting a day off work if you do work full-time and need to vote. (Hint: YOU DON'T; OR ELSE YOU GET FIRED WITH NO RECOURSE!)
Even if that wasn't enough already; many times the voting times, locations, dates and even rules change from year-to-year, and sometimes even month-to-month.
What worked this time might not work next time. From ID requirements to ballot order manipulation or even other flat out shady practices like misleading or leading poll questions on the ballot are all employed.
The media is even worse; and frequently spouts simple and blatant lies. they could literally be absolutely passionate about their issue in particular and still end up being misled or lied to; as there's no accountability for this. This would result in mistakenly casting a vote for the wrong candidate who would then go on to not represent the will or needs of the citizens voting for them once they're in power.
The average American, just simply can't always be on top of every one of these things 24/7. It's easy to get taken by any one of them by surprise.
where i live, voting is not necessarily easy or convenient for folks relying on public transport. that much harder if they are, say, a working single parent living below the poverty level. and my work involves talking to people like this every day - there are millions like them.
Those non-voters matter a lot because Trump is acting like he has some kind of enormous overwhelming mandate, and there is no evidence to back that up.
Trump is acting like Trump. Talk of a 'mandate' is piffle, like almost anything he says.
Piffle
Thanks for the new to me word!
So what? Play it out. What, the GOP Congress invoke the 25th and remove him ? They'll impeach him? He does need a mandate. He won the last election he'll ever need to. Media is controlled by a few billionaires who all support him. How people feel doesn't matter anymore.
If the peole believe he has an overwhelming mandate, they will be a lot slower to kick him in the teeth. It will soon be too late.
Half of voters are in his cult. They will literally eat shit before they abandon him in the way you're implying. Stop acting like you're dealing with rational actors.
They're just trying to cope with the situation by playing games with statistics. You're absolutely right though, non-voters don't matter and there's no point in talking about them as much as we do.
I agree that talking about non-voters in that context isn't useful but we definitely should talk about non-voters more in regards to why they didn't vote. Is it cause in a number of states voting access is really hard? Is it due to not liking either party and not feeling like there are good candidates? I think understanding that more could really give a better understanding of this block of people, is it really just people who don't care about politics and would never care enough to vote or is it people who just don't have the time to deal with navigating the system to be able to vote.
This is the same percentage of the population it's been for 50 years. Any question you could want to ask has been asked many times already. How many more times do we need to ask them before we're satisfied with the answers?
100 million people being armed with guns matter. Their families will die if they fight for or against another.
"I didn't vote" doesn't protect your family from bullets, it makes them fodder for both sides. (I think the Democrats are shit, but by no means would I ever think ANY Republican has been better than the average Democrat
People that didn't vote also supported him
Life's more complicated then that, try not to alienate the people that need convincing.
No, they have blood on their hands too. Sure they aren't covered in it like MAGA Carrie, but they didn't take 30 minutes out of their day to vote to stop this.
I would add one big caveat to that: voter suppression. Voting day isn't a holiday, many MANY people have to work, and between Republicans doing all they can to make mail-in ballots inaccessible and closing polling stations to the point where people are standing out in the heat for upwards of 4 hours to get into a place to vote, let alone purging voting rolls so close to the election that there wasn't enough time for people to register again (and nonsense voter ID requirements), I can't blame some people for outright not having the ability to vote.
Anybody who had the ability to and chose not to? Yeah, blood is on their hands. The time to push for the changes that everybody wants is not 3 months once every 4 years, but the time leading up to those 3 months.
Voting isn't a holiday in Canada either but we make it work. Vote early, vote by mail. You can use whatever excuse makes you feel better but taking an hour or 2 out of your day once every 4 years is a small price to pay for democracy.
To be fair, you guys have a parliamentary system. It's a bit different, and you don't have any one election that's equal in scale and importance to our Presidential election.
Not making excuses, just saying that it's not a 1:1 comparison.
I don't really understand what your point is. Do you mean our election campaigns don't last 4 years? Y'all could plan to book voting day off 20 years in advance because it's not a surprise, ours can pop up any time with a month's notice. And by importance do you mean our PM generally doesn't have the power to crater the world economy in a matter of days? Or are you saying ours are more important because we vote for the entire government on 1 day and you just pick one guy?
Nah, that's a shit take. If you didn't vote, you're at least okay with the prospect of another Trump presidency, or you didn't care enough to vote against him. You're complicit either way.
I don't know - in some parts of America, getting out and voting is made more difficult. On purpose.
We all saw that voting by mail can work during Covid. The qons want to claw that back.
Some things that are necessary are also hard. If you don't do something necessary because it wasn't as easy as you thought it should be then you're a piece of shit. Nothing will change until Americans collectively decide to make good choices in spite of the difficulty and you're making that take longer by helping people feel justified in taking the lazy way out.
Hard disagree. Those who didn't vote said exactly what they stood for. Dems had the power, and completely ignored it and didn't get voted in as a result.
If you're blaming non-voters you're just causing unnecessary division amongst the left. The US has been fascist for a long time. And everything happening has been a long time coming. Trump is a symptom, not the cause.
Also, in many states, the Republicans insist on making voting more difficult, especially for certain people.
We should have vote by mail, everywhere, with ballots sent out well in advance. And people should be automatically registered to vote when they get something like a driver's license.
How about a modification to the statement like this: People that didn't vote for him let those that did decide to vote for them.
How is that alienating anyone?
Also I don't think most of them can be convinced of anything that will improve tomorrow.
Those who could vote but chose not to are at the same level, they actively chose to not participate, which means they at best aggree with whatever is happening. At least trump cult is way out there mentally, and there is no more humanity in those creatures, so they couldn't do otherwise. Non-participators had something in them to prevent the worst, but they chose not to. That's agency, that's responsibility.
Regardless, the words "only 49.8%" in this context, is so beyond absurd, that it must be comedy.
And only 22% of the total US population, including children etc., but still the people of the nation. Very few people voted (or abstained) to make this terrible thing happen.