The “silent majority” is a myth, perhaps one of the worst myths ever perpetrated in U.S. history.
People who are silent are uninvolved. They are spectators and are irrelevant.
Fill a stadium up jam packed full of spectators, and put one team and one team only on the field, any one you want.
Who wins? The spectators or the team? Obviously the team wins, because the team is actually participating.
The team may have only been 30 or 40 or 50 people. But they are participating. THEY are the majority. Not the 50,000 spectators. The spectators are irrelevant.
I believe the “silent majority” was meant to be people who voted for the conservative candidate—but didn’t march in the streets screaming about it. They did/do indeed exist.
After Nixon was re-elected in 1972, leftist kook Pauline Karl (a “film critic”) lamented his landslide victory. She claimed nobody she knew voted for Nixon. Her attitude kind of illustrated how the elites view middle class Americans.