The polls I have personally had a number of participants that was a single digit percent of the number of subscribers. Not exactly representative of the whole community.

If the participation rate in the US election was 3.5% because they announced it 3 days prior to the vote and only to a fraction of citizens, there would be good reason to be mad at the results

funny you should mention that, because said certain group of people who contest said election use the same argument, among others, to push the view that they're the true majority, and so the election there, too, should be overturned and the opposite result instated, just with different arbitrary selected and ultimately meaningless thresholds

if you ask me, all those nonvoters would have voted to close down the subreddit. I'd guess you think differently, but since they didn't vote, we'll never know, and they don't count for either. Maybe you should have rallied all the nonvoters to your side?

and, if the result had been the opposite, would the same people be similarly rallying to have the vote overturned and flipped to "blackout" due to the low "turnout"? I doubt it.