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Americans putting life on hold amid economic anxiety under Trump, poll shows
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 12 May 2025
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These polls are misleading. 4 in 10 Americans have always supported Trump regardless of what he does. That hasn't changed.
Maybe it's significant that he's lost support from the other 2 in 10 who voted for him, but if they seriously thought that he was the best candidate during the 2024 election, then their opinions aren't based on critical thinking either.
4 in 10 who actually vote. Trump only ever won ~30% of the popular vote when you count all of the people who couldn’t bother to get off the couch. If “Didn’t Vote” was a candidate, it would have won by a landslide.
Didn't vote means one of at least three things:
"I think the candidate i support will win anyways."
"I don't care who wins, i will be fine with any of the likely possible candidates."
"I don't feel represented by anyone but i feel powerless to get someone on the ballot who represents me."
Unless specifically polling non voters about the reason why they didn't vote we can't really tell.
There’s also the hidden fourth option: “I was disenfranchised by republicans, who made voting extremely difficult and/or prohibitively expensive.”
“While the law says that my employer must let me off to go vote, pointing out that fact does not protect me from getting fired in retaliation anyway in an at-will state.”
It is still possible to win wrongful termination suits in at-will states.
Got any lawyers?
I got fired in retaliation for asking for accommodations and pointing out Title 9 violations. That’s not supposed to happen, but lawyers don’t work for free.
Just like your spouse isn’t supposed to be able to kick you out, refuse to file for divorce and drain your bank account. But justice in America costs money.
You need to find lawyers in your area that specialize in employment law. They'll usually work on contingency. They'd hardly ever have any cases at all if they didn't.
It helps if you have something like old emails for proof that you asked.
You're missing one: "The Republicans successfully prevented me from being able to vote"
Many skip voting because they perceive that their state will always vote for the opposite canidate.
It's a big flaw with the electoral college. It should just be a popular vote
When do you expect the 1/3rd of the country that has never voted to magically show up to vote?
I don’t, for a variety of reasons. Whether it’s apathy, feeling like their vote doesn’t matter, or just outright disenfranchisement, the non-voting block is pretty reliable in that they simply don’t vote.
What changes from one election to the next is more focused on which people don’t vote. If there’s a hot topic that someone cares about, they’ll be more likely to jump through hoops in order to actually cast a ballot. The percentage of non-voters remains relatively stable, but the demographics of those non-voters tends to shift over time. So if one party can incite a particular group to vote, that’s usually considered a win.
You see it with voting pushes all the time. Souls to the polls, the league of women voters, felon re-enfranchisement groups, etc… All focused on getting different demographics to actually vote, because those particular demographics (whatever they are) tend to align with the group’s political beliefs.
When they have someone worth voting for.
You guys keep bringing this up as if the day when those non-voters start voting for Democrats is right around the corner. The percentage of people who don't vote hasn't changed much in 100 years. Quit wasting words on people who will never matter in this context.
Literally every single election the talking point is how many people didn't bother to vote. And it's always the same percentage. The only time it changed much at all was after Trump killed a few million Americans with his COVID policies. The only way to make any change more is to have a national voting holiday plus compulsory voting.
I'd rather have universal vote by mail. We already have it in multiple states and it works fine. No need to mess with schedules if people can do it on their own time.
It isn't mutually exclusive. Plus a holiday dedicated to voting means a day is open for researching a candidate, if needed. Also, psychologically, having the purpose of the holiday explicit means that some people will follow the rules of it. There are many prongs to getting people to vote.
The problem with the voting holiday idea, is many people are forced to work every holiday. They are generally the most marginalized people who work in the service industry as well. I used to be one. I was the general manager of a pizza shop and I worked every single holiday, football game, anything you can think of that will keep people from cooking and/or get them drinking. I also scheduled basically the entire staff for those days. It sucked. I told everyone from the start that holidays don't exist for you anymore in food, but it didn't stop women with tears in their eyes telling me they never expected they wouldn't be able to take their kids trick or treating.
I think the way to resolve this is a holiday window for voting. The workers schedule 4 days of the week for work, then the remaining 3 days are paid holidays. The worker selects which days of that holiday week are best for them. If they don't vote, their company is fined an amount double to the worker's weekly pay.
I prefer vote by mail, too. However, real-life implementation of it only leads to a roughly 10% increase in voter turnout. That only brings us from 55% turnout to 65% turnout, which is pathetic.
It's not 4/10.
Most Americans simply did not bother to vote. Trumpers are a minority, it's just that their hatefulness is artificially amplified by Russian bots.