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So only about 27% of all eligible voters actually voted for Trump. The remaining 43% voted for 'I'll take whoever wins'. So, ~72% of the eligible voters can be

So only about 27% of all eligible voters actually voted for Trump. The remaining 43% voted for 'I'll take whoever wins'. So, ~72% of the eligible voters can be held accountable for him becoming president. Those are the rules for democracy, so he is the legitimately elected president. Definitely, it is legitimate, even if we don't like the outcome ;).

laGrenouille 9y ago
Not really a fair statement given the oddities of the electoral college. I know a lot of people in big coastal cities (New York, Boston, LA, San Fransisco, Seattle) who don't vote but are very anti-Trump. They know it doesn't matter because their states were always going to go strongly for the Democrats.
- sgift 9y ago
  I'm not from the U.S., so my knowledge here is a bit sketchy, but wasn't one of the problems Clinton had exactly that some states which always voted for the Democrats fell to the Republicans this time?
  - rco8786 9y ago
    Not really. Both bases stayed pretty true to their colors.
    - dagw 9y ago
      That's a slight simplification. There where over 200 counties that voted for Obama twice and now voted for Trump.
      - rco8786 9y ago
        Right i wasn't including those in the "bases". 200 counties represents about 6% of the total number of counties in the country, and few of them are from states that "always vote for democrats"
  - Pxtl 9y ago
    Well, sort of. There were several states that Democrats traditionally won federally, but those weren't the "safe" ones like new York and California. The big thing Trump took from the Democrats was the Rust Belt states - the old industrial places like Michigan, which usually vote for Democratic Party presidents but have strong Republican contingencies and often have Republican governors.
  - Spooky23 9y ago
    The difference is that the Democratic party "rebased" itself. They've basically removed blue collar white people as a constituency that they focus on. This created a problem, as the get out the vote efforts from groups like unions and others were tepid as a result, and the GOP isn't stupid and courted these voters pretty heavily. The other thing is that the Democrats over-relied on minority voters as a key base, which didn't work out for a variety of reasons. I think strategically they missed the fact the ethnic voting requires an ethnic candidate. They also missed that certain key platform positions alienate ethnic factions of their voting base. In the old days, the Irish-Catholic political machines didn't run aging teetotaler baptists as candidates for a good reason! Basically, Mrs. Clinton ran a campaign that was divided, disorganized and poorly administered, which crippled her ability to make appropriate decisions. Trump's opportunism, marketing savvy, and tight team made his campaign agile and tightly focused on the objective. When the campaign had internal divisions, he purged the dissenters and moved on.
    - xienze 9y ago
      No, no, no, she lost because of Russian hacking! /s
- Sacho 9y ago
  It seems like those people didn't feel the electoral college was problematic. Otherwise, voting would have exposed the vast discrepancy between popular opinion and the college. Even if Hillary had won, that demonstration could be used to spur reform of the election process.
  - tertius 9y ago
    Say the majority went up to 55%... We'd still need a lot more than that to change the electoral college. And honestly, having big states control who becomes president just because of their population, given how independent states should function, is a cornerstone of the electoral college.
    - SimbaOnSteroids 9y ago
      A presidential candidate can win the election with only 21.91% of the popular vote. Something closer to that might be enough. However, I don't think that the electoral college could be changed because the parties responsible for changing it would be decreasing their electorates influence in the government which might be unpopular with said electorate.
      - tertius 9y ago
        > A presidential candidate can win the election with only 21.91% of the popular vote. That's great and might seem scary to some, but nothing close to that has ever happened.
        boomboomsubban 9y ago
        From John Q. Adams' 31% win to Clinton's 43% win, it depends on what you call "close."
    - bluejekyll 9y ago
      > having big states control who becomes president just because of their population, given how independent states should function, This used to be true, but as more government control has been ceded to the federal government I don't believe this to be the case. The President is not all powerful either, this should be a fully democratic election. Also, the electoral college was broken when states started alotting their votes in a winner take all manner.
Mithaldu 9y ago
> The remaining 43% voted for 'I'll take whoever wins'. Or they lived in some of those insane regions where only a single voting office served thousands of people and couldn't affording standing outside for 8+ hours, or they couldn't get a tuesday off (sane countries allot a whole weekend for voting), or they couldn't afford to get sufficient id to satisfy their state's demands. (Yes, i know, mail-in voting is a thing, but i'm sure there are good reasons to keep people from using that as well.) There's plenty of reasons otherwise eligible voters didn't vote beyond "didn't care" and many of them are "they were prevented from doing so by institutional problems".
- mamon 9y ago
  only a single voting office served thousands of people and couldn't affording standing outside for 8+ hours Really, that's how it is in US? Any semi-decent country is responsible for creating comfortable conditions for anyone to vote. Here in Poland there were 28k voting offices for 30 million of potential voters, so there's on average little more than 1k voters per office. It is almost impossible to be waiting in line for more than 5-10 minutes, even in the most crowded offices.
  - dashundchen 9y ago
    It's one of many voter suppression tactics in urban areas. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/25/opinion/long-lines-at-minority-polling-places.html https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/25/opinion/long-lines-at-min... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_suppression_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_suppression_in_the_Unite... Elections are mostly regulated at the state and county level, which causes a lot of disparities in registration law and polling place funding. Invariably every election during the non-stop coverage, you'll see the pictures of the long lines wrapped around blocks in cities throughout the country, but especially in Republican controlled swing states. I think it's an utter failure of our society that we can't hold elections with fair and accessible voting methods.
  - bluejekyll 9y ago
    Sadly, yes, but it's not everywhere. Jerrymandering is used by both parties to lock-in districts for particular candidates. Then voter suppression is used to keep people away from the polls, mostly used by the old Jim Crowe states, this nonsense dates back to slavery from which the US is still recovering. 'Democracy in America', by Alexis de Tocqueville is still about as valid today as when it was written. In that he describes this scene where townspeople literally shoot at a farmer to keep him away from the polls. Not all that different than the gun toting individuals who show up to polling places today to 'protect' the vote.
Vivtek 9y ago
You know, "I'll take whoever wins" might very well be the best way I've ever seen of putting that.
- randallsquared 9y ago
  It isn't a very good way, because it describes everyone who did vote, as well, no matter who they voted for.
plandis 9y ago
Blaming people who didn't participate is an interesting standard. Youre assuming at everyone eligible to vote can vote.

laGrenouille 9y ago

Not really a fair statement given the oddities of the electoral college. I know a lot of people in big coastal cities (New York, Boston, LA, San Fransisco, Seattle) who don't vote but are very anti-Trump. They know it doesn't matter because their states were always going to go strongly for the Democrats.

sgift 9y ago
I'm not from the U.S., so my knowledge here is a bit sketchy, but wasn't one of the problems Clinton had exactly that some states which always voted for the Democrats fell to the Republicans this time?
- rco8786 9y ago
  Not really. Both bases stayed pretty true to their colors.
  - dagw 9y ago
    That's a slight simplification. There where over 200 counties that voted for Obama twice and now voted for Trump.
    - rco8786 9y ago
      Right i wasn't including those in the "bases". 200 counties represents about 6% of the total number of counties in the country, and few of them are from states that "always vote for democrats"
- Pxtl 9y ago
  Well, sort of. There were several states that Democrats traditionally won federally, but those weren't the "safe" ones like new York and California. The big thing Trump took from the Democrats was the Rust Belt states - the old industrial places like Michigan, which usually vote for Democratic Party presidents but have strong Republican contingencies and often have Republican governors.
- Spooky23 9y ago
  The difference is that the Democratic party "rebased" itself. They've basically removed blue collar white people as a constituency that they focus on. This created a problem, as the get out the vote efforts from groups like unions and others were tepid as a result, and the GOP isn't stupid and courted these voters pretty heavily. The other thing is that the Democrats over-relied on minority voters as a key base, which didn't work out for a variety of reasons. I think strategically they missed the fact the ethnic voting requires an ethnic candidate. They also missed that certain key platform positions alienate ethnic factions of their voting base. In the old days, the Irish-Catholic political machines didn't run aging teetotaler baptists as candidates for a good reason! Basically, Mrs. Clinton ran a campaign that was divided, disorganized and poorly administered, which crippled her ability to make appropriate decisions. Trump's opportunism, marketing savvy, and tight team made his campaign agile and tightly focused on the objective. When the campaign had internal divisions, he purged the dissenters and moved on.
  - xienze 9y ago
    No, no, no, she lost because of Russian hacking! /s
Sacho 9y ago
It seems like those people didn't feel the electoral college was problematic. Otherwise, voting would have exposed the vast discrepancy between popular opinion and the college. Even if Hillary had won, that demonstration could be used to spur reform of the election process.
- tertius 9y ago
  Say the majority went up to 55%... We'd still need a lot more than that to change the electoral college. And honestly, having big states control who becomes president just because of their population, given how independent states should function, is a cornerstone of the electoral college.
  - SimbaOnSteroids 9y ago
    A presidential candidate can win the election with only 21.91% of the popular vote. Something closer to that might be enough. However, I don't think that the electoral college could be changed because the parties responsible for changing it would be decreasing their electorates influence in the government which might be unpopular with said electorate.
    - tertius 9y ago
      > A presidential candidate can win the election with only 21.91% of the popular vote. That's great and might seem scary to some, but nothing close to that has ever happened.
      - boomboomsubban 9y ago
        From John Q. Adams' 31% win to Clinton's 43% win, it depends on what you call "close."
  - bluejekyll 9y ago
    > having big states control who becomes president just because of their population, given how independent states should function, This used to be true, but as more government control has been ceded to the federal government I don't believe this to be the case. The President is not all powerful either, this should be a fully democratic election. Also, the electoral college was broken when states started alotting their votes in a winner take all manner.

Mithaldu 9y ago

> The remaining 43% voted for 'I'll take whoever wins'. Or they lived in some of those insane regions where only a single voting office served thousands of people and couldn't affording standing outside for 8+ hours, or they couldn't get a tuesday off (sane countries allot a whole weekend for voting), or they couldn't afford to get sufficient id to satisfy their state's demands. (Yes, i know, mail-in voting is a thing, but i'm sure there are good reasons to keep people from using that as well.) There's plenty of reasons otherwise eligible voters didn't vote beyond "didn't care" and many of them are "they were prevented from doing so by institutional problems".

mamon 9y ago
only a single voting office served thousands of people and couldn't affording standing outside for 8+ hours Really, that's how it is in US? Any semi-decent country is responsible for creating comfortable conditions for anyone to vote. Here in Poland there were 28k voting offices for 30 million of potential voters, so there's on average little more than 1k voters per office. It is almost impossible to be waiting in line for more than 5-10 minutes, even in the most crowded offices.
- dashundchen 9y ago
  It's one of many voter suppression tactics in urban areas. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/25/opinion/long-lines-at-minority-polling-places.html https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/25/opinion/long-lines-at-min... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_suppression_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_suppression_in_the_Unite... Elections are mostly regulated at the state and county level, which causes a lot of disparities in registration law and polling place funding. Invariably every election during the non-stop coverage, you'll see the pictures of the long lines wrapped around blocks in cities throughout the country, but especially in Republican controlled swing states. I think it's an utter failure of our society that we can't hold elections with fair and accessible voting methods.
- bluejekyll 9y ago
  Sadly, yes, but it's not everywhere. Jerrymandering is used by both parties to lock-in districts for particular candidates. Then voter suppression is used to keep people away from the polls, mostly used by the old Jim Crowe states, this nonsense dates back to slavery from which the US is still recovering. 'Democracy in America', by Alexis de Tocqueville is still about as valid today as when it was written. In that he describes this scene where townspeople literally shoot at a farmer to keep him away from the polls. Not all that different than the gun toting individuals who show up to polling places today to 'protect' the vote.

Vivtek 9y ago

You know, "I'll take whoever wins" might very well be the best way I've ever seen of putting that.

randallsquared 9y ago
It isn't a very good way, because it describes everyone who did vote, as well, no matter who they voted for.

plandis 9y ago

Blaming people who didn't participate is an interesting standard. Youre assuming at everyone eligible to vote can vote.