this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2025
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[–] Duke_Nukem_1990@feddit.org 59 points 5 months ago (14 children)

All the people that didn't vote are partly responsible for this.

[–] ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net 18 points 5 months ago (1 children)

"The overall turnout of eligible voters in the 2024 general election was 63.7%. This was lower than the 2020 record of 66.6% but higher than every other election year since at least 2004."

People did vote. Constantly blaming the small group of disillusioned voters is just weird.

[–] Duke_Nukem_1990@feddit.org 26 points 5 months ago (2 children)

"The small group" of more than one in three people that didn't vote.

[–] ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net 10 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

Oh, you were actually aiming at 100% turnout. Well, that's just silly.

[–] IronBird@lemmy.world 11 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

mandatory voting looks like a small price to pay for a (more) healthy democracy, Australia seems to be doing a lot better than the other British colonies right now

of course with the US, something like that would have to be combined with an extensive overhaul of public education (moving away from the "breed compliant factory workers"-goal), because healthy democracy also requires an educated population capable of knowing when they're being lied too

[–] ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net 10 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Argentina has mandatory voting and they have Milei. How healthy is that?

Argentina also votes on Sunday (a change way simpler than reforming education) and last elections they had 77% turnout. A lot of people simply don't participate in the democracy and there's no way around it. No one serious expect 100% people to vote and blames the 30% that doesn't for the outcomes.

[–] MajorasTerribleFate@lemmy.zip 7 points 5 months ago

No one expects 100%. Australia hovers around 90% turnout.

The rest below is me just working out some numbers, and isn't meant to convince anyone of anything.


There are ~236 million Americans citizens of voting age, of whom 73.6% (174 million) are registered to vote.

Of the 174 million registered voters, 155.2 million voted.

Of the 155.2m, 77.3m voted for Trump, 75.0m voted for Harris, and 2.9m voted for someone else. Not that this is how the system works, but more people voted for "someone other than Trump" than voted for him.

If 90% of the 174m voters had voted, that would have increased turnout by 1.4m voters. Not enough to change the popular vote, even if they were all for Harris (though depending on distribution there is at least some small chance the Electoral College votes would have changed enough).

If 90% (212.4m) of the 236m eligible voters had voted, that's 57.2m more votes to cast.

Pew Research says that polled non-voters went 44% for Trump, 40% for Harris. Applying that to our hypothetical 57.2m voters, it's 22.9m more for Harris and 25.2m more for Trump, bringing our totals to 102.5m Trump, 97.9m Harris, and a new block of 9.2m undecided. Note that two of those figures rounded up, so the apparent total is 212.6m rather than 212.4m.

The difference between Trump-Harris at this point is 4.6m votes. For Harris to tie/win the popular vote on the new undecided block, she would have needed 75% of them (Harris 6.9% vs. Trump 2.3m).

All of that hinges on polls reflecting reality, which lately is much easier to question (not based on misinformation, just with polling managing so often not matching the real vote results).

Thank you for going on this numbers journey with me.

[–] MajorasTerribleFate@lemmy.zip 9 points 5 months ago

90%, 80%, hell, even 70%. The general wisdom (not necessarily as true today) is that the higher the turnout in U.S. elections, the more likely the democrat is to win. That was the driver of the attached:

[–] evilcultist@sh.itjust.works 3 points 5 months ago

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/26/upshot/turnout-2024-election-trump-harris.html

NYT reported that data suggests that nonvoters would have given Trump a larger win.

[–] n0respect@lemmy.world 9 points 5 months ago

Every non-voter in California is responsible for this /s

[–] Fedizen@lemmy.world 7 points 5 months ago (2 children)

At some point we need to tell the "internet people who tell us who to blame" that hillary would have won in 2016 if not for the electoral college. At some point people just give up and that was the entire democratic party in 2024.

Not a single person in the democrats has a plan to fix democracy in the US and until they do the gerrymandering, electoral college and republican rule by minority will continue

[–] MiddleAgesModem@lemmy.world 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

At some point people just give up

Why? They won in 2020....

Did you all fucking forget or something?

Keep waiting for perfection, dumbass. Meanwhile, Republicans are destroying the country.

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[–] Duke_Nukem_1990@feddit.org 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Cool story, would still have been nice to avoid the transgender genocide or killing health insurance.

[–] Fedizen@lemmy.world 7 points 5 months ago (3 children)

I'm sure all the finger pointing at neighbors will help, instead of, you know, taking 5 minutes to understand how we got here and why its going to continue.

[–] return2ozma@lemmy.world 12 points 5 months ago (7 children)

65 million don't vote. "But Trump" is not a legit platform to run on. You have to give voters something to vote for. Dems fucked up

[–] Fedizen@lemmy.world 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

That's exactly it. Dems keep throwing winnable elections and when they do get power they don't attempt to implement any reforms to make it harder for republicans to hold power both electorally and monetarily so their voters get poorer and disenfranchised and leave.

[–] MiddleAgesModem@lemmy.world 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Yeah all that "reform" is really happening now, isn't it?

[–] Fedizen@lemmy.world 1 points 5 months ago

I mean Zorhan is a good sign things might finally be changing.

[–] eugenevdebs@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Noo! The democrats were entitled to your vote! Vote blue no matter who they wanna deport and remove!

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[–] Duke_Nukem_1990@feddit.org 2 points 5 months ago

I can do both, don't worry.

[–] MiddleAgesModem@lemmy.world 1 points 5 months ago

That's EXACTLY what OP is doing.

[–] Aneb@lemmy.world 7 points 5 months ago (2 children)

All the people who did vote for the cheeto are responsible as well. And I think that was the point, marriage equality was on the ballot 14 years after the supreme court ruling

[–] blakemiller@lemmy.world 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

The point I think is that this was largely preventable from within our own ranks. Because we didn’t turn out, the minority was allowed to rule. Yes, the minority is responsible but they were a forgone conclusion. Inaction on the left allowed a preventable outcome to occur.

[–] NauticalNoodle@lemmy.ml 3 points 5 months ago (3 children)
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[–] MiddleAgesModem@lemmy.world 1 points 5 months ago

And those who refused to vote against.

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