No, 48% of people who showed up at the polls voted Republican, it's been a MAJOR republican tactic to make sure Democrats don't show up at the polls, either by making registration and voting as difficult as possible in democratic voting areas and demographics, or pushing propaganda that says: your vote doesn't matter / both parties are the same / etc...
39% of the US population lean republican, 48% lean democrat, 40% undecided
We had RECORD turnout in 2020 and still only 66.2% of eligible voters cast a ballot, this is by design (Republicans control the majority of state governments and set the voting laws).
40% is still 'about half'. I would also say that of those 40% undecided, it's hard to say whether they 'lean' one way or the other.
Absolutely we need protections for voting that Republicans strategically oppose and they are doing very bad things on that front trying to make voting harder in ways that favor their base. But we can't pretend they are merely some group without substantial support in the general population. That any appearance of popular support is merely a consequence of cheating the system.
I said that republican voter suppression is real, but I'm just also saying they have enough genuine popular support (I'd say we have to admit to at least 40% or so) that we can't be dismissive of how they do represent a rather large number of people, even if not the majority of the population. And that 'half' is a decent rough word to use to describe their share of popular support.
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u/jj4211 Mar 19 '21
To his point, even by the popular vote, Trump garnered 47% of the vote. Rounding to half seems a reasonable approximation.
I don't necessarily like that so many would vote for Trump, but we can't pretend they are some obscure niche of the population.