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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.
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.
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.
They also threw out over 2 million mail in ballots this year and black voters were nine times more likely than white voters to have their mail in ballots rejected.
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 would argue the fault lies entirely with the political party that alienated their constituents to such an extent that some of them actually withhold their vote knowing 4 years of lunacy could be the consequence.
Hard to pretend people that felt conflicted about genocide are the villains here, even if I wish they would have made the smart choice.
I would argue that being a single issue voter who is willing to make everything worse, including that single issue they are so fixated on, is just as fucking stupid as being conned into voting for Trump directly.
Yes, FFS. This.
Not only that, but the Republicans are highly likely to be far, far worse on foreign policy in general, and about Gaza/Israel in particular. Demanding a pretty pony and when it doesn't show up, ceding the field to the likes of donvict is criminally stupid.
Well, it wouldn't have been an issue if Biden and Harris hadn't supported it.
They chose to continue their support for Israel's slaughter (and immigration crackdowns, and pro-corporate policies, and just about anything they could use to fuck over the average American) even though polling told them they were going to lose. They knowingly handed the government over to Donald Trump (a second time) and Elon Musk and you're sitting here telling people they're fucking stupid for not being on board with all that. That sounds pretty fucking stupid to me.
You're just giving them cover to go even further right next election and who will you blame when they lose yet again with their watered down right-wing policy that appeals to no one?
I've said it a thousand times but it's always worth repeating: the election is about damage control. You choose the least worst option available to you. If you don't like the choices you see, you have to get off your ass and do something about it before the election. Whining about after the fact will accomplish nothing.
"Damage control" means both candidates are damaging to varying degrees, so what do you expect people to do once they realize that it doesn't make much difference who gets elected? Why do you think a majority of people don't even bother to vote anymore?
How does the rubber meet the road with this strategy exactly? I'm guessing it just means you blindly support the Democratic party regardless of the candidate and their policies, no? They can force on us a geriatric candidate who can't even get through a single debate or make hard right shifts like they did this election and you just cheer them on and give a thumbs up, correct? Those that don't offer blind support get turned off by this and the Democrats lose yet another election and allow Trump back into office a second time and you still blindly support the direction of the party? That's insanity.
Who exactly do you think is whining here? I knew this was coming. The polls showed it was coming. You guys are the ones whining and trying to blame everyone else except for the party and their candidates who keep losing. I've been preaching this same shit since 2016, while an army of sycophants have emboldened the DNC leadership into adopting worse and worse policy even though it backfires on them (and the rest of us by extension) every single time.
Here we are before the next election and what are you doing to change things other than pledging unconditional loyalty to a nearly thrice losing strategy. What do you think you're accomplishing with this?
Even if the single issue is being complicit with crimes against humanity?
The choices available were "not doing enough to stop it" and "actively participating". In this instance, not voting was equivalent to choosing the latter.
No the choices were "loudly support" or "quietly support" crimes against humanity.
You're not the first one to argue the fault lies (entirely or mostly) not with the candidate and party aligned with doing the bad things but with the candidate and party who didn't do enough to stop the ones aligned with doing the bad things.
So, you're not alone in being wrong.
I'm saying the election loss isn't the fault of people that boycotted the vote because of the genocide, but it's instead the fault of the party that is supposed to represent them but chose to represent genocide instead.
I kind of feel like you are trying to twist my words here?
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 is that alienating anyone?
Also I don't think most of them can be convinced of anything that will improve tomorrow.
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.
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.
Fair point.
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.