Silent majority

The silent majority is an unspecified large group of people in a country or group who do not express their opinions publicly. The term was popularized by U.S. president Richard Nixon in a televised address on November 3, 1969, in which he said, "And so tonight—to you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans—I ask for your support." In this usage it referred to those Americans who did not join in the large demonstrations against the Vietnam War at the time, who did not join in the counterculture, and who did not participate in public discourse. Nixon, along with many others, saw this group of Americans as being overshadowed in the media by the more vocal minority.

Preceding Nixon by half a century, it was employed in 1919 by Calvin Coolidge's campaign for the 1920 presidential nomination. Before that, the phrase was used in the 19th century as a euphemism referring to all the people who have died, and others have used it before and after Nixon to refer to groups of voters in various nations of the world.

Early meanings

Euphemism for the dead

"The majority" or "the silent majority" can be traced back to the Roman writer Petronius, who wrote abiit ad plures (he is gone to the majority) to describe deceased people, since the dead outnumber the living. (In 2023 there were approximately 14.6 dead for every living person.) The phrase was used for much of the 19th century to refer to the dead. Phrases such as "gone to a better world", "gone before", and "joined the silent majority" served as euphemisms for "died". In 1902, Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan employed this sense of the phrase, saying in a speech that "great captains on both sides of our Civil War have long ago passed over to the silent majority, leaving the memory of their splendid courage."

Groups of voters

In May 1831, the expression "silent majority" was spoken by Churchill C. Cambreleng, representative of New York state, before 400 members of the Tammany Society. Cambreleng complained to his audience about a U.S federal bill that had been rejected without full examination by the United States House of Representatives.