Comment by flipgimble | Hacker News Reader

Comment by flipgimble | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I know what you mean about the country being split politically, but I think using the 50% number is a misleading illusion. Only 31.8% of the voting-age population voted for Trump, so 68% did not vote for these policies.

I get that we often assume that the non-voting population is as evenly split in their support as those who voted during the election. But I think that is going to be wildly off the mark as well. Why? current presidential approval ratings are net -15%, and 2025 elections showed avg 15% swing in district that he won in 2024. His biggest support %s are from old people, and lowest among young voters.

My prediction is that we will see political ads playing non-stop showing ICE brutalizing main street America, and showing how tariff driven inflation is destroying paychecks. The mid-terms will be a dramatic correction which is why you are seeing the ground work to call everything illegitimate or rigged, and attack our established means of voting.

As someone who was waving a "fuck ice" flag on a street corner in rural Colorado yesterday as part of our weekly protest of their facility, anecdotally I'd say about 60% of the 100 or so cars I watched looked away, with about 30% showing some active support and the other 10% or so showing active opposition.

I don't think that folks are braodly supportive of ICE here, though I think that a) the folks who do support it are loud and b) most of the folks who don't support it have fairly reformist politics and are opposed, for instance, to us protesting while open-carrying.

For the record, I am highly worried that open-carrying by the counter-ICE folks at these events will be the next escalation- I carry a stop-the-bleed kit (and did some formal training). We are more worried about getting shot by counter protestors at this point.

I don't think those percentages matter for a couple reasons

1) Voter turnout is always low, we'll see in 2028 if turnout is higher.

2) It's high enough to extrapolate the rest of the countries viewpoint. Meaning you cannot say that 68% would all fall one side or another.

In other words, 68% voting-age population are OK with the orange-man sitting on the throne

Reply on news.ycombinator.com