In 2004, approximately 121 million people cast votes in our presidential election. Of those, 62 million picked George W. Bush. So out of 180 million or so American adults, 34 percent or so voted for the winning ticket. Now, 34 percent or so is roughly where Bush's approval rating currently stands. Nobody should be surprised by any of this.

Then there's television. We hear about ratings numbers all the time. At the height of the Iraq war, the number one cable news outlet, the Fox News Channel, was pulling in an average of 3.3 million viewers. It's much fewer now, but even those numbers hide the fact that of the 180 million adults in America, over 176.7 million aren't getting their news from FNC.

Prime time is slightly more influential. Two weeks ago, for instance, the most watched program was a new episode of "C.S.I." that aired on Thursday, Sept. 30; by Nielsen's estimates, there were 25.2 million viewers. We're told that this is a popular show, that the country loves its blend of mystery, science and theater. Apparently, however, 155 million Americans -- over 86 percent of the adult population -- had something better to do with their time.

Like go to the movies, perhaps. This was a big summer for blockbusters; Shrek 3 made so much money - $320 million domestically -- that it ended up at number 18 on the all-time list. But with an average ticket price of $6.50, that means 49.2 million Americans went to see it (not taking into account repeat viewings). Throw the kids and seniors into our sample, and that means over 254 million Americans didn't. In retrospect, I wish I could count myself in that number.

Music is also a big thing in America. Kanye West's new album, Graduation, has sold 1.3 million copies here to date. As good as it is, only .007 percent of the adult population has its own copy. I know what the RIAA says about piracy killing the music industry, but the point is that 99.993 percent of Americans believe that Graduation isn't worth paying for.

As far as things that are more difficult to bootleg are concerned, Scholastic's first American print run of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows this summer was a record-shattering 12 million. All sold out quickly. You may also choose to read that as 168 million without copies (93.7 percent), a figure I prefer. Since both Graduation and Harry Potter skew younger anyway, we're talking about a potential audience beyond the 180 million-strong 20-64 megademo, so these quoted percentages are far kinder than true reality.

When you start thinking of things in terms of subtractive audience measurements, you may want to throw a shoe every time someone on teevee uses "The American people" as a catch-all term, followed by a blanket statement about what the public is presumably consuming, believing or thinking. It's an illusion, and a ridiculous one. Not that we here on the internet are any better at this: it's easy to get the impression around sites like Digg and Metafilter that Ron Paul is a highly popular 2008 presidential candidate and that most people use Apple computers. Since both products have single-digit real-world market shares, there are at least 162 million adult Americans who have little or no use for either.

There are literally tens of millions of people in the U.S. who just don't care about any of this stuff. Some call this giant nation within a nation the "silent majority," but that's a misnomer -- they're just talking about things the teevee people and the internet people don't care about. But where are all these Others? How can we meet them, converse with them, find out what they want?

A good start would probably be to get outside the house on Super Bowl Sunday. This year's telecast of SB XLI had 93 million viewers, or 51 percent of American adults -- that's about the only time America truly reaches critical consumer mass. Try the supermarket -- you'll probably find a lot of them there.