No, 48% of Americans didn’t vote for Trump

The numbers often get lost in the election coverage, and too often numbers are easily manipulated. As of this post, Clinton and Trump share roughly 48 per cent of the roughly 124 million votes casted (although Clinton is squeaking ahead on the popular vote). According to the latest from Vox, turnout was about 55 per cent of eligible voters.

However, I like to break it down to better reflect what the numbers show.

There are roughly some 325 million Americans with 231 million eligible voters, or 71 per cent of the population – and only 124 million of those (so far) even voted.

As far as gauging public opinion, only 38 per cent (votes actually cast) of the American people spoke up.

Put another way, only 18 per cent of Americans voted for either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, respectively.

Forgoing the fact it looks like a French transport from the Star Wars universe, my wee chart shows you the solid majority of Americans are voiceless as far as the election goes.

Granted, most of those people in that 60 per cent ‘silent majority’ probably have some opinion about who they would vote for if they could.

Yet the tendency to demonise your opponents or conflate the American electorate with the American people (231 v 325 million) and paint them with broad (often unflattering) generalisations happens far too often in US politics.

So the lesson going forward is: keep things in perspective. And, no, 48 per cent of Americans are not racist, bigoted, sexist, xenophobic, homophobic, phobic-phobic bastards because they disagree with you.