Yeah, polls are limited in a variety of ways. The election results at least represent when someone took some amount of effort to vote.
2024 eligible voters: 244,666,890
2024 ballots cast: 156,766,239. 64% of eligible voters cast a vote
Trump votes: 77,284,118. 49.2% of votes cast, 31.6% of eligible voters
Harris votes: 74,999,166. 47.8% of votes cast, 30.6% of eligible voters
Trump got 1% more of the eligible voting population to go through the effort of casting a vote. That's not nothing, and it put him in office, but it's not a landslide that grants him an unquestionable public mandate.
I didn't say it was a landslide. The electorate is closely divided. But saying "most people didn't vote for Trump" makes it seem like they wouldn't have voted for him if they had to choose. And the data we have points in exactly the opposite direction. The pool of non-voters is low trust and cynical about American institutions. In that regard, they are more Trumpy than the electorate as a whole. In the Blue Rose study, Harris would have won if only 2022 midterm voters had voted in 2024. And if everyone had voted, Trump would have won by almost 5 points.
Making assumptions that non-voters would or would not support particular policies is erroneous. Harvard-Harris did a poll question on this last month, and found that 76% of Americans supported the U.S. arresting Maduro and bringing him to stand trial in the U.S.: https://harvardharrispoll.com/press-release-december-2025. That means most Americans are further to the right on this issue than a bunch of isolationist conservatives who voted for Trump.
Sure. But polling has consistently underestimated Trump voters, including in this most recent election.
Yeah, polls are limited in a variety of ways. The election results at least represent when someone took some amount of effort to vote.
2024 eligible voters: 244,666,890
2024 ballots cast: 156,766,239. 64% of eligible voters cast a vote
Trump votes: 77,284,118. 49.2% of votes cast, 31.6% of eligible voters
Harris votes: 74,999,166. 47.8% of votes cast, 30.6% of eligible voters
Trump got 1% more of the eligible voting population to go through the effort of casting a vote. That's not nothing, and it put him in office, but it's not a landslide that grants him an unquestionable public mandate.
I didn't say it was a landslide. The electorate is closely divided. But saying "most people didn't vote for Trump" makes it seem like they wouldn't have voted for him if they had to choose. And the data we have points in exactly the opposite direction. The pool of non-voters is low trust and cynical about American institutions. In that regard, they are more Trumpy than the electorate as a whole. In the Blue Rose study, Harris would have won if only 2022 midterm voters had voted in 2024. And if everyone had voted, Trump would have won by almost 5 points.
Making assumptions that non-voters would or would not support particular policies is erroneous. Harvard-Harris did a poll question on this last month, and found that 76% of Americans supported the U.S. arresting Maduro and bringing him to stand trial in the U.S.: https://harvardharrispoll.com/press-release-december-2025. That means most Americans are further to the right on this issue than a bunch of isolationist conservatives who voted for Trump.