[user104658]

Originally Posted by Niamh.

Do you not believe Clinton-Skepticism? Of course this is only anecdotal but while I was in the states just before the election most Americans we spoke to about it said they were voting Trump because they disliked Hilary so much......of course they could have just been saying that because on some level they realise that voting Trump seems a bit ... hhhmmm not attractive? (I can't think of the word I'm searching for here) but you know, that they were slightly embarrassed at admitting that they just wanted to vote for him so need to give some sort of justification for it?

I believe it existed, just like the "rebellion / lolz" Brexit votes, but not to a large enough extent that it was 100% pivotal. I also think that an absolute ****ing boatload of people who didn't vote at all in 2016 are probably some of the most vocal Trump supporters by now and will definitely vote in the next election, which will counteract most (if not more than) the "omg what happened" non-voters from the Democrat side.

The same goes for Brexit really. There's an idea that people who didn't bother and are now horrified would vote en masse and dramatically change the result - but I strongly suppect that there are plenty of crowing no-deal Brexiteers who didn't vote in the referendum the first time.

[edited to add] Also because of how the US electoral system works, it doesn't matter at all if Democrat supporters in states that already voted democrat - e.g. California and New York - come out in droves to vote. The democrat vote can literally double in those states and it doesn't make any difference... and those two states alone contain nearly 20% of the entire population of the US. Their FPTP system is even more broken than the UK's and that's saying something.