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Comment by godsinhisheaven | Hacker News Reader

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Why do you feel scientists deserve to be punished for being against a political regime that is anti-science?

77,302,580 people voted for Trump in 2024. That is not "half the country".

Nor does he or ever did have the support of "(over) half the country". His maximum approval level in 2025 was at the beginning of his term at 47% "approve" and is currently around 36%, according to the Gallup poll.

Trump won the popular vote 49.9% vs 48.5% for Harris. It doesn’t automatically translate to half the country.

The popular vote does not matter in the US. The electoral college matters.

It kinda does matter because it shows more than half the US are truly sick of the current batch of US politicians and aren't enthused enough to vote for their schtick.

Trump didn't even win 50% of the people who voted. He got the most votes (a plurality), but ~1.5% of the votes went to third party candidates, slightly more than the gap between Harris and Trump voters. One of the many reasons this "we have a huge mandate to reshape the country in the image of Project 2025" line is so infuriating; you have to go back to 1968 to find an election with a smaller non-negative popular vote margin of victory.

(Also, "non-negative" is carrying a lot of weight, since both Trump in his first term and George W. Bush in his first lost the popular vote. The idea that a wide majority of the country is conservative, let alone MAGA, is risible.)

It's over half the electorate. Stop changing the standards for democracy and holding the current ex-wrestling valet and game show host to standards than literally no one has been held to in history. It's a desperate, dishonest way to cover up the failure of the opposition to be any better.

No, it was under half the electorate too (27% of the electorate didn't vote after all).

It was under half of the voters in the election itself as well. He won with a plurality, not a majority.

There's a huge difference between "definitely won the election" and "a massive mandate for sweeping change".

An electorate is only as good as the information it uses to make the choice. Fewer than 10% of Americans both stated they routinely read a newspaper (in print or online) yet still walked into a voting booth in 2024 and voted for Trump.

I’m not saying he shouldn’t have won, we have the system we have, but to then act like he’s got a mandate is unjustifiable.

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