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Originally Posted by dr wadd
If the turnout doesn`t even represent the majority of the population then it is meaningless to extrapolate results from this poll to the population as a whole.
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Not voting is as much a democratic act as voting for the party of your choice. By not voting, people exercise their right not to influence the political process, and/or to leave the choosing of their political representatives to someone else.
So, you are right insofar as you say we can't extrapolate the results across the whole population - that would be to impute to them a political view that they might not hold. However if you are implying that the results are, as a consequence of this, meaningless (as less than 50% of electors voted), then I think you are wrong. Those who were entitled to vote but did not, left the choice to those that did. Therefore the result, regardless of turnout, is legitimised by the choice of the entire electorate.