451–460 of 565 posts
"The voter approaches their table, and gives their name and party affiliation. The party affiliation is used as a signal that something fishy might be going on if the ratio of R to D is very different from the votes recorded." This sounds so weird to an Aussie. For most people when you enter the polling place, you get bombarded by party supporters with their "how to vote" leaflets. Most people take all or none to be…
Do you guys have voting days off?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You’re being downvoted because the “democrats are le smart and well read” trope is getting old
What does that mean? I think Democratic voters are vulnerable to a different kind of conspiracy theory. For example, huge numbers of left-leaning voters seem to believe that money is the determining factor in elections, whereas the evidence points towards you needing a certain amount, but beyond that it appears to be of marginal value.
QAnon is one of those projects. So is the social micro-targeting used by Cambridge Analytica/AIQ which swung the Brexit vote in the UK and also did a lot to get Trump elected in 2016.
It would be irrational to assume the same thing wasn't attempted this year. All the media outlets I read - not just social media - have been heavily astroturfed with posts making the same pro-Trump scripted talking points over and over and over.
(HN has been relatively free of this, but I suspect that's primarily because conventional political debate is strongly discouraged outside of the occasional thread not because it wouldn't have been tried if it were possible.)
The problem with micro-targeting is that if you're not in one of the target groups, you don't see the ads - so unlike a TV campaign you're not aware of what the other guy is saying unless you can contrive some real and/or fake accounts that will get you an in.
And the propaganda techniques are both subtle and outrageous. (You might not think QAnon is subtle, but it's very carefully designed.)
Trump significantly outspent Biden on social. But the Trump campaign never really ended, while Biden had to start relatively cold.
So for all these and other reasons you're right. It's not about money, it's about narrative engineering implemented with money - and the right has always been much better at that than the left.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is based on exit polls. Exit polls only interview people who vote in person, which may be generally be useful, but in this election are an enormously systematically biased slice of the electorate. You really can't base any generalizations beyond the in-person voting segment based on them.
> This is based on exit polls. Are there some other measurements based on something else, or is it something we now can never know as a result of mail in ballots having no polling and an expected different statistical distribution?
For 2016 and 2018, Pew had validated voter datasets, based on people in their American Trends Panel who were matched against voter databases and thus known to have voted. Assuming they do the same thing (or some other reputable firm does something similar, or ideally both) for 2020, that would probably be the best data source.
Everyone knows Republicans are racist homophobic xenophobic bigoted nazis. Why would they want to admit that to some random over the phone? The rhetoric that we are using to describe the other party is not necessarily helping our cause in the long run. First it is pushing folks with legitimate disagreement away from public discourse. Second it is creating a good-guy/bad-guy scenario that is the equivalent of tribalis…
Because of geographic polarization, the majority of Republicans live in communities that are majority Republican, and the majority of Democrats live in the communities that are majority Democrat. The majority of Republicans face zero social penalty for admitting their support for Trump because most of their friends, family, neighbors and coworkers are also voting for Trump. The 0.1% of Trump voters who live in Silico…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Trump supporters do seem to differ from my view of a 'traditional republican'; if not the actions of the namesake (which I do view as the negative things you describe) what do they see in the candidate or platform being supported?
Since you did not specify what you consider a "traditional republican" to be, I'll tell you why I voted for Donald Trump: 1) No new wars started, despite media outcry in 2016 that he'd take us into WWIII; 2) Historic peace deals between Israel and its neighbors - again, in spite of accusations that Jerrod Kushner did not have any diplomatic skills and would botch anything he touched; 3) Strong federalist approach to…
Answering your question: I didn't have any theory relating Trump's actual policy implementation accomplishments to support. Rather _my opinion_ is still a _belief_ that most who support the 45th president as a candidate do so based on blind charisma and an extra sweet helping of wishful thinking.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The bulk of Trump voters are from rural areas, and tend to be less (or un-)educated. I don't know what percentage of Trump voters believe QAnon conspiracy theories. But I do believe the bulk of Trump voters are voting against their self interests, because they are gullible. Why else would most Trump voters come from rural areas? If they had legit reasons to support Trump why aren't the voters spread equally among urb…
The rejoinder to this line of thinking is generally: "if liberals are so smart, how come they always lose?" Worth a thought.
Like this:
https://www.timeout.com/newyork/news/a-massive-mural-featuri...
Even though Clinton and Obama weren't saints - and I have limited respect for both of them - you are going to have a really hard time finding behaviour on that scale on the liberal side.
You're also going to find much less evidence of either threatened or actual violence.
Even BLM at its worst has never come close to the appalling record of right-wing violence in the US over the last couple of decades.
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/10/27/in-ameri...
So that's why liberals "lose" - we're far less likely to feel comfortable with lying, cheating, bullying, violence, and intimidation. And for a substantial percentage of right-wing supporters those seem to be considered admirable moral features, not bugs.
Disagree? Provide evidence of general trends, not specifics.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The bulk of Trump voters are from rural areas, and tend to be less (or un-)educated. I don't know what percentage of Trump voters believe QAnon conspiracy theories. But I do believe the bulk of Trump voters are voting against their self interests, because they are gullible. Why else would most Trump voters come from rural areas? If they had legit reasons to support Trump why aren't the voters spread equally among urb…
I know Trump voters who are extremely well educated, this is not an argument. Secondly, if by "educated" you mean holding a piece of paper, we already know that many colleges these days are infested by the far left, so again it is not an argument. What you care about are critical thinkers, and there's a much bigger disparity there. I'd argue that many college degree holders are not good critical thinkers.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you think the bulk of voters for Trump believe one of these things? He won a considerable number of votes.
Anecdotal, but every single person I've spoken to who voted for Trump does believe one or more of these conspiracy theories.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you not think that the mainstream Republican party has moved radically rightward over the past 12 years? It's not spending its energy discussing Laffer curves and energy policy, and whether or not someone can be fired from their job for being gay, or if we should invade another Middle Eastern country anymore. It's spending its energy seriously talking about QAnon, and how the COVID pandemic is over, and and how th…
> But we no longer live in a sane world One way to deal with this type of dysphoria would be to spend some quality time with people who hold views different from the ones you have, and it would be much better if you didn't do that online, but in person - for reasons that I'm sure you understand well, since you are an HN reader. Or, you decide that everyone on the other side of the fence is completely bollocks. But wi…
They describe it like losing a family member to a drug addiction, or a cult. Quality time with their own family is no longer a thing that can happen, because how dare the children suggest that basic pandemic precautions be taken, or even think of supporting the vast pedophilic democratic conspiracy.
Pray tell, how should they bridge that chasm? This is a serious question.
It's well and good and morally smug to suggest that the problem is that 'you don't spend enough time talking to people holding insane beliefs'. The problem is that you can't use reason or empathy to get someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.
Who replies honestly to political question to random strangers? I know I don't. What's the benefit of letting anyone know where you stand politically at this point? None. It's much more likely - no matter which side you're for - that the person asking could have an adverse reaction. Things are just way too polarized now, not sure how that can change, but that's how it is. I mean outside friends/family I simply take a…