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About 35% of the country supported what the National Guard did at Kent State. Deplorable is being far too kind to these people.


Not sure it would be a good idea to shoot US citizens for the 35% approval.

(But to your point, anything >0% is pretty horrible.)


It depends on whether you plan to have elections afterwards or not.

If not, 35% approval is perfectly fine if that includes most of the police and the military.


That is enough to win elections.


Didn't Trump say we won't have to worry about elections anymore?

What's stopping them to do enough fuckery between now and 2028 to "win" the GOP the election in 2028 (or even 2026), and to stop Trump from joining the ranks of despots that keep getting reelected like Putin and Erdogan? Or JD Vance can be his Medvedev.

To use a horrible analogy, a lot of times women don't even admit to themselves that they've been raped, because accepting that means accepting a horrific label. The USA is in the middle of getting raped, and so far the response has been to mostly freeze up and take it, not wanting to fight, because that is scary and can get you hurt even more. (Well, at least for the majority of the country there isn't a real fightback yet...).


Trump has already joined those ranks, he just failed at it. January 6th was a legitimate attempt at overturning the election results. He was impeached over it. Mike Pence was the only thing that stopped it, and I can’t believe how close we actually came to that timeline.

And you’re absolutely right about the denial. It manifests as the “nothing ever happens” meme.


If you're concerned about that you have a moral responsibility to campaign for secession.


I'm giving it until 2028. I'm not even fully convinced Trump makes it that far. But if that comes to fruition, then yes. I would support California joining Canada.


... no it isn't. If you have 35% support but everyone else is opposed, that's not enough to win elections.


But everyone else isn't opposed.

https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2025/2024-pre...

>In the 2024 presidential election, 73.6% (or 174 million people) of the citizen voting-age population was registered to vote and 65.3% (or 154 million people) voted according to new voting and registration tables released today by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Moreover, due to the electoral college and Senate and gerrymandering of House districts, the majority is hardly needed for attain power. I bet that even in other societies, throughout time, roughly a third of the population will not react to what one of the other thirds is doing (even if they claim they don't approve in polls).


I agree. This was my point. The 35% number is the strong support. But that is not enough. If they lose all their weak support, they lose.


It demonstrably is, because of gerrymandering, electoral college, turnout manipulation etc.


35% is still not enough, even given those issues.


You only need PA, WI, and MI


If you only have 35% of the popular vote, you aren't going to win in the electoral college.


That's what happned in 2024, right? you're not accounting for the fact that 30-40% of the country does not vote in nationals.


No, it's not what happened... The election was not won with 35% of the popular vote...

Again, if you insist on talking about "35% of people in the US" rather than "35% of voters", then fine, but I think it's a weird way to talk about it. We don't know what the people who didn't vote thought about the candidates. Voting is the way that we find that out!


>if you insist on talking about "35% of people in the US" rather than "35% of voters", then fine, but I think it's a weird way to talk about it.

When were talking about adhering to a dangerous status quo, the conversation makes sense. A status quo of boring beauracracy can be defendable. A status quo of fascism, much less so. Thars why conversations in 2025 are like this.

Even then:remember Trump still had a 40% approval rating after all this.


Most numbers I can find say that about 65% of Americans are registered to vote. Let’s say 100% of them voted in 2024.

Of that, let’s call it a flat 51% voted for Trump. That means that about half of 65%, or roughly 32.5% of American citizens support Trump, and by extension, likely this policy move.

So yes, it actually is more than you need to win elections.


Oh hmm, if the 35% number is all Americans, then sure.

But typically people are talking about percentages of voters with statistics like this.




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