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Comment by sethrin | Hacker News Reader

Well no, Trump was elected by a majority of the Electoral College. The majority of the public vote went to the other candidate. Which is sort of the point, that the US is not actually democratic in some important ways which influence policy decisions.

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>The majority of the public vote went to the other candidate.

No, it didn't. Hillary didn't get a majority, she got about 48%. Trump got about 46%. There was not a significant difference between the two, and roughly half the American public voted for Trump.

It's so weird how every single time I write about how roughly half the American public voted for that turd, people like you come out of the woodwork to try to insinuate that Trump was elected by some vanishingly small minority. Why is that?

Because you're lying about the claim being made. It is correct to say that Trump was elected by a minority of the total votes cast. It would be incorrect to say that he was elected by "some vanishingly small minority", but you're the only one saying that. Being elected by a minority is sufficient to sustain the claim that an institution is antidemocratic, particularly in an otherwise simple-plurality voting system. I'm sorry if there's some reality there you don't like.

If Hillary had won, it would have also been "antidemocratic" according to your definition. So would you have protested that too? No one was going to get greater than 50% of the popular vote in that election.

Apparently there's some reality there you don't like either.

You Americans are seriously lunatic reality-deniers. Close to 50% of the voters vote for Trump, but because it's not mathematically 50%, you dismiss it as a not-significant part of the electorate. You liberals are no better than the people who stormed the Capitol; you're just as unbelieving of reality as they are.

You seem confused. It's pretty common in English, particularly when discussing simple plurality voting, to use "majority" to indicate "plurality" instead of absolute majority. It would also be possible to claim that a vote is antidemocratic absent an arbitrarily chosen supermajority, but that's not being advanced here. I decline further semantic arguments as being non-substantive, as well as puerile. Your inventions about my character are nakedly intended to be offensive; probably you shouldn't post like that here.

indeed, how bizarre that saying "half" (not "roughly half", as you are now saying), a literally factually untrue statement, garners responses pointing out that it is.

are you sure you're on the right forum for you? This community generally values accuracy over flamebait.

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