Technology

the 51% who do

Nah, it's more like <1%. The average citizen does have a say in who our representatives are, but we don't get to decide what choices they make. When you vote for someone, you don't necessarily agree with everything they do, you just think the country would go in a better direction with them vs their opponents.

For example, Biden didn't meaningfully push back on Israel, and I doubt Trump would do anything differently. So if you are super passionate about the Israel-Gaza war, you can't vote for either, but that means throwing your vote away with a third party candidate, which has other caveats (i.e. if you have a preference on issues other than Israel-Gaza, voting third party reduces that voice). I voted third party this past election because I knew my state would vote overwhelmingly for one of the candidates (and it did, like clockwork), so my vote had more value as a protest against the terrible candidates we had instead of throwing it to either the one that would win or the runner-up.

In a democracy, things really aren't that binary. Just because a candidate won 51% of the vote or whatever doesn't mean 51% of the populace agrees with their policies, they just think they'll do a better job than the main alternative. In this case, I think it largely came down to the economy, and people thought Trump would do better than Harris on that. I personally think the Presidential Puzzle (video by Ben Felix about it here) is more convincing than an actual shift in national agreement with Trump.