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From: mahoney@bartok.DEC
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Re: Dangerous Military Myth
Message-ID: <1636@decwrl.DEC.COM>
Date: Wed, 12-Mar-86 10:54:10 EST
Article-I.D.: decwrl.1636
Posted: Wed Mar 12 10:54:10 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 15-Mar-86 23:07:44 EST
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Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
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---------------------Reply to mail dated 10-MAR-1986 01:35---------------------

> 
>   One final point.  Guy, you have repeatedly made reference to the "majority"
>of Americans who support Reagan.  Show me the majority.  Approximately 35% of
>the registered voters voted in the last election.  Reagan received just over
>50% of the POPULAR vote.  Combine these facts with the fact that over 50%
>of Americans are *NOT REGISTERED VOTERS*, and as I count it, somewhere between
>5% and 10% of the American people voted for Reagan, *AT BEST*...more likely
>2% to 5%.  Consider further that the vast majority of voters (in either camp)
>do not vote the issues, but rather vote in a popularity contest, what percentage
>of Americans actually support Reagan?  .2%?  .02%?  Hmmm....
> 


     I must take acception to this remark.  Reagan roughly got 60,000,000 votes
that was approximately 60% of the people who voted in the election. That is more
than just over 50%.  Now I contend that there are probably 170000000 possible 
voters all told. (I could be wrong this is purely from my head and I apologize
if I am way off base.) That means he got the vote of about 35% of the US while
not a majority it is still a large percentage of the vote.  That is far above
the 2% to 5%.  Even if every person on the US about 250,000,000 could vote he
would still have 24% of the vote.   Please don't just throw out numbers like
this.  The numbers of votes he recieved is more then Mondale which was roughly 
about 40,000,000 so that is the only truely important statistic.  

   (I was one of the 40,000,000 who voted for Mondale)

  As an aside the article you were responding to made it sound like a small
number of people disagreed with Reagan.  That I also did not like please
40,000,000 is not a small number of people.

   Brian Mahoney