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A new theory about political polarization

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Re: A new theory about political polarization

#151

Post by vkou »

notafraudster wrote: post #57

In political science, the conventional view is that polarization observed in the US is not a product of the two camps drifting further apart (in the sense of having more extreme views), it's the product of issue divisions aligning more closely to partisan camps. Consider Kim Davis. Kim Davis was a county clerk who went to jail after illegally refusing to issue a same-sex marriage certificate after the court system ru…

> (Catholics being a huge such group). Now abortion is neatly aligned across party lines: there are almost no pro-choice Republicans and almost no pro-life Democrats.

Catholics have always been, and continue to be, ~50/50 democrat/republican split, give or take a few points. Kennedy, Johnson, and Truman were the only democratic candidates who had >60% Catholic support.

Re: A new theory about political polarization

#152

Post by Balgair »

tusharchoudhary wrote: post #21

Political science seems to be going through a phase of questioning the rationality of voters. The two major theories of public choice -- Median Voter theory[1] (political parties take positions that appeal to the median voter) and Investment theory of Party Competition[2] (parties take positions most beneficial to their donors), both assume emotions (irrationality) of voters to be small. In the current political clim…

Whatever the data that Social Media companies have on their ad-spends in terms of politics should provide a very healthy data-set. Add in some mailer data for roundness. You should be able to pull the theories out of that with some elbow grease. I'm fairly certain that's what 538 pretty much does right now, what with most sports cancelled.

Re: A new theory about political polarization

#153

Post by [deleted] »

afiori wrote: post #125
ep103 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of the explanations you have given here, most of them appear to be good things. Voters learning more about and becoming more aware of the actions of their representative parties. Except the hastert rule. The hastert rule appears to be uniformly evil, and would appear to be an underlying reason for all of the other trends you've described in your post. Because it makes it impossible to govern, except in an extremely p…

> the hastert rule. Rather I am surprised to discover that the speaker has so much power in suppressing proposed legislation. How are member of Congress called lawmakers if they are not allowed to propose laws?

[deleted]

Re: A new theory about political polarization

#154

Post by spaetzleesser »

wahern wrote: post #143
Faark wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of this seems to have an unstated prerequisite: The US two party system where voting for a third party actively damages your own interest. It's not perfectly solved in other countries, but having more "evils" to choose from is a good start. Obviously politicians have have little incentive to change the process they already had to master to gain power though in the first place.

The U.S. recently briefly had a three party system with the emergence of the Tea Party. All it did was radicalize the GOP. Just ask John Boehner. Arguably this radicalization was only possibly because of the Hastert Rule. Under the Hastert Rule the smart strategy was to only caucus with the GOP, and obstruct the GOP when they didn't get what they wanted. That provided the Tea Party with maximum effectiveness. Without…

"The U.S. recently briefly had a three party system with the emergence of the Tea Party. All it did was radicalize the GOP. Just ask John Boehner. "

In a multiparty system they probably would have been a separate minority party.

I think what the US is really suffering from is that the country is maturing. For a long time people could just claim new areas, start living there and create new lives. The country is now fully owned and populated so moving around to start anew from scratch is not that much of an option anymore. Basically the country is filling up with people. Europe had this going on for much longer and the US is going that way too.

Re: A new theory about political polarization

#155

Post by marcusverus »

JPKab wrote: post #135
unethical_ban wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdote time! My father thinks that Trump is the best president in 100 years. He thinks that helping the coal industry is great, being tough on immigration and China is too, and so on. He thinks the Left is out to get Trump because they rabidly hate any conservative. When I talk to him about issues, though, things change. He thinks "no one should die from being poor" - in the context of healthcare. He thinks there s…

In defense of your father on "Defund the Police", the last time I checked, the Black Lives Matter's website where the idea was first widely publicized had a release on it that I was hoping would add nuance to the phrase. It didn't, at all. It actually reinforced an abolition viewpoint. I went to donate to BLM that day from the Airbnb website's banner, and that release caused me to donate my money elsewhere. This line…

Don't forget the NYT Op-Ed titled, "Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish The Police"[0]. Which is just as ill-considered as it sounds, and includes certifiably insane arguments like, "What about rape? The current approach hasn’t ended it. In fact most rapists never see the inside of a courtroom. Two-thirds of people who experience sexual violence never report it to anyone. Those who file police reports are often dissatisfied with the response."

[0]https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abol...

Re: A new theory about political polarization

#157

Post by michaelmrose »

Tiltowait-- wrote: post #80
dane-pgp wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, to put it another way, and at the risk of taking this discussion out of the abstract, "Lock her up!" only has to work as a tribal shibboleth, not as an actually deliverable policy (especially if your voters have already given up on the idea that politicians actually mean what they say).

Reality Winner was sentenced to federal prison for far less than Hillary Clinton did. She mishandled a single classified document while Hillary mishandled many, including top secret. She's not in prison because the US has one justice system for us and another for establishment elites. Billionaires pay millionaires to tell the middle class that the poor are the problem. Punch up and fight the ruling class criminals.

We have had an increasingly hostile reaction to members of intelligence leaking to the media for decades especially where it has caused notable embarrassment. I am actually glad that Winner leaked but there is little doubt she intended to break the law.

This is manifestly different from Hillary Clinton keeping email on a private server something other politicians have done without incident or controversy. She clearly intended to receive email more conveniently rather than intending to break the law.

>News reports by NBC and CNN indicated that the emails discussed "innocuous" matters already available in the public domain. For example, the CIA drone program has been widely discussed in the public domain since the early 2000s; however, the very existence of the program is technically classified, so sharing a newspaper article that mentions it would constitute a security breach according to the CIA

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Clinton_email_controve...

Re: A new theory about political polarization

#158

Post by michaelmrose »

Tiltowait-- wrote: post #134
unethical_ban wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdote time! My father thinks that Trump is the best president in 100 years. He thinks that helping the coal industry is great, being tough on immigration and China is too, and so on. He thinks the Left is out to get Trump because they rabidly hate any conservative. When I talk to him about issues, though, things change. He thinks "no one should die from being poor" - in the context of healthcare. He thinks there s…

He likes Trump because Trump is a 1980s Democrat. The Left treats people like him as The Other and is very loud and rude about it. See: http://archive.is/QRJ6m

Democrats in the 80s supported abortion. Trump calls them after birth executions and supported throwing doctors and women in prison. Only walking back the latter when it became clear that even a lot of the right wasn't on the same page.

Dems supported progressive taxation. Trump a life long tax cheat thinks taxation is theft.

Dems in the 80s supported regulations as a prophylaxis for the harm that unregulated free markets would do to our planet and our citizens. Trump believes they are an impediment to profits and ought to be stripped to nothing starting with the ones prohibiting pollution of our environment.

What do you think he has in common with 1980s Democrats?

Re: A new theory about political polarization

#159

Post by jlokier »

13415 wrote: post #123
tunesmith wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ranked choice voting is always a semi-poisoned subject because of the IRV adherents' insistence on calling IRV "ranked choice voting". Ranked choice voting is preference capturing mechanism that yields very valuable data. IRV is one of many possible counting implementations.

Isn't the problem that although rank-based systems have many desirable properties, they are particularly prone to strategic voting and manipulation? I personally think they are good in cooperative settings where voters have no strong incentive to vote strategically, but are they really so desirable for adversarial situations like national elections?

I believe it's the other way around.

Good rank-based systems are less prone to strategic voting and manipulation than plurality voting (= an ordinary vote), because each voter can safely put their preferred candidate first, even if that candidate is unlikely to win, without harming the chances of their next-preferred candidate.

They don't need to vote strategically to try to keep someone they particularly dislike out.

The no-so-good rank-based systems are less effective at this separation (though no system can be perfect at it), so people still vote strategically of course. But the pressure to do so is still reduced compared with plurality. Plurality is probably the worst of all options for pressuring people to vote strategically.

Re: A new theory about political polarization

#160

Post by jlokier »

tunesmith wrote: post #99
jjk166 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only because in your example wanting != wanting, which is an unfortunate consequence of the language not having a good word to differentiate between the desire to possess something and the desire not to be rid of it. -(-A) == A, when A == A, is a tautology though.

Still not true, for instance if A is "proven". If A is not not proven, it doesn't mean it is proven; it can still be a hypothesis. And yet, proven == proven.

> If A is not not proven, it doesn't mean it is proven; it can still be a hypothesis.

Are you sure?

It seems to me if A is not not-proven, it is surely proven.

If A is still just a hypothesis, then it is not-proven.

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