Theoretically this isn't an issue as this is just two political parties choosing the candidate that want to support for the general election. Political parties may choose their candidate however they like; they could pick a name from a hat if they wanted to. The issue is these two parties are so entrenched in the government as to essentially be legitimized as the only viable parties.
Only 9% of America Chose Trump and Clinton as the Nominees
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Re: Only 9% of America Chose Trump and Clinton as the Nominees
#32This isn't hacker news
You're getting downvoted because this article is actually not an example of the NYT's slanted coverage. Don't get me wrong, they've had some shamefully distorted articles (especially the infamous updated Bernie article), but this is just a short data visualization.
Re: Only 9% of America Chose Trump and Clinton as the Nominees
#33I don't see how this would be different from any other election with new candidates from both parties.
I was sort of thinking the same thing - though more about how I hope they extend this visualization to past presidential elections.
Re: Only 9% of America Chose Trump and Clinton as the Nominees
#34What astounds me the most is that party membership in the United States is actually very high compared to most other countries (except for India). Fewer than 200,000 Australians would currently be members of any political party - representing less than 1.5% of the total voters (around 14 million) - and that's being very generous with estimates of party membership figures. Most AFL football clubs would have more membe…
I definitely agree. The article appears to be painting a very dark picture that 91% don't want the candidates. Where as this is just stating the obvious of what happens in every country that first puts forward a leader of a party that is contending to win the overall election.
It's a problem in the current context of how U.S. elections work, where those 91% of the people feel "forced" into voting one of these two parties or candidates, even though 50% of them are registered Independent.
If the U.S. electoral system easily allowed for other parties to exist and thrive (such as with a proportional representation voting system for Congress, which drastically increases how well people are represented in Congress, and could lead to much less "gridlock") then this wouldn't be an issue. Because those 91% of the people could easily ignore the Democratic and Republican candidates if they were terrible (which seems to be the case this year), and just vote for another party's candidate in the general election.
And they could very much still do that. The problem is there's both a legal and unofficial collusion between the two main parties to control the elections in various ways (such as making the rules for who gets to debate), and between them and the media, who normally completely ignore other candidates, and don't treat them nearly as fairly, so their chances greatly diminish.
There are a lot of things that could be done to fix this. But people need to support politicians willing to overhaul this system.
Larry Lessig (on who the DNC changed the rules mid-game so he doesn't get to make his case in a debate) had some great ideas [1], and so does the Green Party [2].
Jill Stein also supports ranked choice voting, and I believe multi-winner ranked choice voting, too, which is a form of proportional representation [3].
Unfortunately, you're not going to hear about all of these ideas from a media that has a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, and you'd have to rely heavily on the Internet and social media to grow this movement (and do it before Google/Facebook/Twitter start ramping up their censorship to help their favorite candidates, as we've already started seeing them do).
[1] https://lessig2016.us/the-plan/
Re: Only 9% of America Chose Trump and Clinton as the Nominees
#35On a side note: I think this page is really well done.
It's rare that that much (programming) effort is put into a simple newspaper article.
Anyone agree?
Re: Only 9% of America Chose Trump and Clinton as the Nominees
#36I don't understand the problem. This is exactly what statistics addresses. Is that 9% a good enough random sample of the entire population, or not? If not, then what is the error 5%, 10%? Actually 9% is a really good sample.
If you were using the primaries as a way of predicting the overall winner, the critical word would be "random".
The statistical idea that a small sample can accurately represent the whole is based on the assumption that the small number are largely indistinguishable from that whole. It's like taking a sample of
In this case, the people voting in primaries are a self-selecting group - people who are both relatively actively engaged with politics and members of one of the two main parties.
It's not unreasonable to think that the wider population (even the wider population of people who normally vote at an election) could behave vastly differently.
For instance, if you had a candidate who was so divisive that they were either loved or hated, then it wouldn't be overly surprising if the vast majority of their supporters had signed up to vote in the primaries, with little support outside of that core. Compare this to a more middle of the road candidate - they might struggle to get as many people out to vote in a primary, but might do far better in the wider population.
That theory is very relevant in the UK at the moment, with the leader of the Labour Party (Jeremy Corbyn) being very popular amongst grassroots party members, but with his enemies saying he could never win a general election as this level of support would never be reflected outside of party supporters.
Re: Only 9% of America Chose Trump and Clinton as the Nominees
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is especially cruel because it doesn't take much to be labeled a felon in the US.
"The New Jim Crow" is an excellent book on this. There's a chapter about how this disproportionately affects young black men and disenfranchises them.
Just bought this one, excited to start reading it when it arrives.
Re: Only 9% of America Chose Trump and Clinton as the Nominees
#38I don't see a problem. They are the Republican and Democratic party candidates. The members of those parties can nominate whomever they want. There's nothing in the constitution that says anything about how political parties chose their candidates. Primaries didn't always exist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_pri...
Re: Only 9% of America Chose Trump and Clinton as the Nominees
#39On a side note: I think this page is really well done. It's rare that that much (programming) effort is put into a simple newspaper article. Anyone agree?
I also really enjoyed the presentation of the information. The information was presented gradually in an easily digestible format.
Re: Only 9% of America Chose Trump and Clinton as the Nominees
#40I don't understand the problem. This is exactly what statistics addresses. Is that 9% a good enough random sample of the entire population, or not? If not, then what is the error 5%, 10%? Actually 9% is a really good sample.
I really doubt that 9% in the primaries looks anything like the general election, which itself probably diverges from a pure population demographic sample (voter ID laws, disenfranchisement, etc)