Trump did not infect the 48%.

[BernieBabies]

They were infected long before he and Fox News came along. They just found someone who could verbalize what they were already feeling.

The cold hard truth confirmed by this election is that they have always been selfish, racist, stupid assholes.

The most centrist candidate could barely make a dent in them.

[JI7]

1. I agree and I think many of them were people who probably did not vote for a long time because they

thought both parties didn't do anything about immigration (by which they mean brown people) .

ANd then suddenly this person comes along who says what they have already felt so they vote for him when they didn't come out to vote for McCain and Romney .

I also think many of the new voters Trump got were people who liked him in 2016 but didn't vote because they didn't think it would make a difference . But they came out to vote for him this time.

[Miguelito Loveless]

2. The contagion began when Reagan got rid of the Fairness Doctrine

And media companies, especially radio stations, could lie with impunity to their audiences.

[pansypoo53219]

6. decades of brainwashing by the gnews media. govt bad, bizness good.

[Miguelito Loveless]

7. Precisely

And fear sells.

[Johnny2X2X]

3. Not 48%

There’s still 18 million votes to count. 48 will end up being 45%.

[RussBLib]

8. but that's only a % of the total who voted

I think we will still have over 80 million eligible voters that did NOT vote in this election. 80 million!

Too busy? Too hard to vote? Disenfranchised? What?

Looks like we will be lucky to hit 60% of eligible voters casting a ballot this time. That is still a little pathetic to me.

But divide Trump's 68 million voters into the 239 million (estimated) Eligible Voters and you get a little over 28% of the Eligible Voters voting for Trump. And I think that, racists and bullies have a rare chance to express solidarity with a presidential candidate, so I'm guessing most of the hardcore racists were going to vote, dammit, come hell or high water.

I feel better thinking that under 30% of the country likes Trump the Orange Sleazeball.

[Yeehah]

4. Hate radio, hate internet and Fox "News" have been telling them what they want to hear for decades

"Your problems are the fault of other people: liberals, minorities and immigrants."

Propaganda works.

[LakeVermilion]

5. I don't get their grievances...

From what I could see, they had plenty of money to buy Trump hats, shirts, and flags. Then they roared around in their $80,000 Ram pickups. A lot of them looked like they better not lose their health insurance.

[Patterson]

9. Dumbasses and assholes.