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This fear is rooted in a continued misunderstanding of the election result by people in tech. Voters didn't vote for Trump because they read some fake news stor

This fear is rooted in a continued misunderstanding of the election result by people in tech. Voters didn't vote for Trump because they read some fake news story on Facebook, they voted for him out of economic desperation. They weren't tricked or mislead into it.

caseysoftware 10y ago
Yes, exactly. Reading coverage of the 1984 election is eerily similar with the whole "I don't know anyone who voted for Reagan!" line. If someone doesn't know a single person who voted for a candidate who received over 59M votes, I'd suggest the speaker has a problem.
- maxerickson 10y ago
  I know of several people that voted for Trump. They live in an area where the economy isn't great, but they aren't in any way economically desperate (one is mildly wealthy, another in a household with more than double the local median income, excellent benefits). Did people who feel left out give Trump his margin? I think they probably did. Are they his only supporters? Hell no.
  - exstudent2 10y ago
    While the people you mention might not be economically left behind, they don't have a voice in the US media. _That_ is monopolized by the left (as evidenced by the article we're commenting on). There are other ways to be "left behind" than economic. Media is power, it was used against half of the population in the US; they didn't like that.
  - dikdik 10y ago
    I know a slew of people that voted for Trump. Many are in their 20's and 30's and have been treading water since finishing college. Many more are a lot are older and solidly middle class or upper middle class, but are watching their children flounder.
ErikVandeWater 10y ago
It's hard to put exactly one reason on why Trump was elected and Clinton was not. I got the feeling more it was a rejection of the insider/elitist makeup of politics. Many people expected this rejection when Obama ran for "change" in 2008, but didn't see any change in how the political class conducts business.
- DamnYuppie 10y ago
  This a 1,000 times. I can't believe that everyone believes that people voted for Trump because of the things he did or said. They voted for him, I did at least, as a rejection of the status quo and the crony capitalism that, imho, is gutting this nation.
  - maxerickson 10y ago
    Maybe get ready for Trump-crony capitalism. Let me expand on that a little bit. My point isn't to mock you or cast aspersions or whatever, it is to make it clear that there were those of us that saw things differently 3 days ago. I'm not despondent, I'm going to try to wait and see what happens with an open mind. But my expectation is very much that people who voted Trump in to 'drain the swamp' or such are not going to get what they are expecting. We are going to see a combination of Trump serving Trump and the establishment engulfing him.
andrewmutz 10y ago
The data does not support the idea that Trump voters are worse off economically than Clinton voters: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-mythology-of-trumps-working-class-support/ http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-mythology-of-trumps-...
- aaron-lebo 10y ago
  But he still gained almost 10 points on Romney among working class whites in almost every state. It's why he won. There's no way Pennsylvania (first time since 1988) and the Rust Belt go to him otherwise.
- simonsarris 10y ago
  You are looking at old polls that are now provably non-representative. Trump's working class support blew Romney's numbers out of the water. Exit polls show that Trump made massive gains in the under 30k and the 30-49k brackets, compared to the previous election. Higher than 50k income brackets leaned more towards clinton than in the previous election. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/08/us/politics/election-exit-polls.html http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/08/us/politics/el...
- mdorazio 10y ago
  There are several problems with this analysis. First, it's based on the same older self-reported exit polling that led 538 to completely mispredict the election, so you should immediately be skeptical of the data. Second, it only takes into account self-reported current income blocks, not change in income over the last decade or so, which is what many Trump voters are angry about. For example, making $70k today might seem ok if you look at the table and see median state income is only $65k, but that means nothing to someone who made $90k in 2007 and has never been able to get income back to that level. Third, it also ignores future predictions based on current state of affairs for voters. It's not very comforting if you make higher than the median income in your area, but your job is on the chopping block. Trump picked up far more non-college educated voters, for whom future job prospects look worse and worse every year, even if they have gainful employment today.
popmystack 10y ago
>Voters didn't vote for Trump because they read some fake news story on Facebook So all those posts I have on my Facebook feed about emails and Clinton corruption were just for nothing?
deleted 10y ago
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boardwaalk 10y ago
I'm not sure baseless black-and-white assertions such as this are useful for an intelligent discussion. On the face of it you clearly can't describe the reason all Trump voters voted Trump so simply.
quirkafleeg 10y ago
Yeah. There's going to be millions of words spouted about this in the next week or so from people trying to explain the result, but I think the simple reality - as with Brexit - is that a large section of society are just sick of the way they are being treated. Perhaps due to overconfidence (to the point of arrogance) that they'd win, as with Brexit, some on the 'losing side' have to tell themselves, or anyone that will listen, that people who voted differently did so because they're stupid, misled or otherwise didn't know what they were doing. People who voted Trump and people who voted Brexit knew exactly what they were doing and had their own real and personal reasons for doing so.
- TAForObvReasons 10y ago
  There's also a Maslow hierarchy argument: millions of people have lost their jobs due to a variety of reasons, from "outsourcing" to "automation" to the "energy revolution". Social arguments, KKK, racism, etc. are meaningless when you worry about putting food on the table. Trump appealed to that sense. The truth is that most of these jobs aren't coming back. Trump told them what they want to hear, namely that he will fight to bring back the jobs. Clinton told them what they had to hear, namely that many of these jobs aren't coming back and we need to figure out where the displaced workers fit in the working society. Needless to say, voters preferred Trump's messaging.
  - plaidturtle 10y ago
    I see this kind of reasoning frequently, but I remember reading a study that showed that most of the Trump supporters were actually not victims of job-outsourcing and had good economic standing. Not sure if it was a non-partisan, credible study but unless you have good sources you might be theorizing?
hackuser 10y ago
> Voters didn't vote for Trump because ... they voted for him out of ... I'd like to propose a rule on HN, Don't make claims about issues like this without a serious factual basis. We have more than enough speculation already; more is just spam.
- onewaystreet 10y ago
  There will be deeper analysis done in the months to come as more data is gathered but it's clear from the initial data that economic anxiety did play a role in the election outcome: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/trump-was-stronger-where-the-economy-is-weaker/ http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/trump-was-stronger-where...
daxorid 10y ago
Trump voter here, with a successful ecommerce business. It was not out of economic desperation. Data point of one.
gaur 10y ago
> they voted for him out of economic desperation Right, the people chanting "fuck Islam" and "Sieg heil" [0] at Trump rallies surely cast their votes out of economic desperation. [0] http://www.nytimes.com/video/us/politics/100000004533191/unfiltered-voices-from-donald-trumps-crowds.html http://www.nytimes.com/video/us/politics/100000004533191/unf...
nitwit005 10y ago
> they voted for him out of economic desperation Really? The entire election can be boiled down to a single, concrete, easily understood reason? There's no diversity of thought at all? How remarkable.

caseysoftware 10y ago

Yes, exactly. Reading coverage of the 1984 election is eerily similar with the whole "I don't know anyone who voted for Reagan!" line. If someone doesn't know a single person who voted for a candidate who received over 59M votes, I'd suggest the speaker has a problem.

maxerickson 10y ago
I know of several people that voted for Trump. They live in an area where the economy isn't great, but they aren't in any way economically desperate (one is mildly wealthy, another in a household with more than double the local median income, excellent benefits). Did people who feel left out give Trump his margin? I think they probably did. Are they his only supporters? Hell no.
- exstudent2 10y ago
  While the people you mention might not be economically left behind, they don't have a voice in the US media. _That_ is monopolized by the left (as evidenced by the article we're commenting on). There are other ways to be "left behind" than economic. Media is power, it was used against half of the population in the US; they didn't like that.
- dikdik 10y ago
  I know a slew of people that voted for Trump. Many are in their 20's and 30's and have been treading water since finishing college. Many more are a lot are older and solidly middle class or upper middle class, but are watching their children flounder.

ErikVandeWater 10y ago

It's hard to put exactly one reason on why Trump was elected and Clinton was not. I got the feeling more it was a rejection of the insider/elitist makeup of politics. Many people expected this rejection when Obama ran for "change" in 2008, but didn't see any change in how the political class conducts business.

DamnYuppie 10y ago
This a 1,000 times. I can't believe that everyone believes that people voted for Trump because of the things he did or said. They voted for him, I did at least, as a rejection of the status quo and the crony capitalism that, imho, is gutting this nation.
- maxerickson 10y ago
  Maybe get ready for Trump-crony capitalism. Let me expand on that a little bit. My point isn't to mock you or cast aspersions or whatever, it is to make it clear that there were those of us that saw things differently 3 days ago. I'm not despondent, I'm going to try to wait and see what happens with an open mind. But my expectation is very much that people who voted Trump in to 'drain the swamp' or such are not going to get what they are expecting. We are going to see a combination of Trump serving Trump and the establishment engulfing him.

andrewmutz 10y ago

The data does not support the idea that Trump voters are worse off economically than Clinton voters: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-mythology-of-trumps-working-class-support/ http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-mythology-of-trumps-...

aaron-lebo 10y ago
But he still gained almost 10 points on Romney among working class whites in almost every state. It's why he won. There's no way Pennsylvania (first time since 1988) and the Rust Belt go to him otherwise.
simonsarris 10y ago
You are looking at old polls that are now provably non-representative. Trump's working class support blew Romney's numbers out of the water. Exit polls show that Trump made massive gains in the under 30k and the 30-49k brackets, compared to the previous election. Higher than 50k income brackets leaned more towards clinton than in the previous election. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/08/us/politics/election-exit-polls.html http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/08/us/politics/el...
mdorazio 10y ago
There are several problems with this analysis. First, it's based on the same older self-reported exit polling that led 538 to completely mispredict the election, so you should immediately be skeptical of the data. Second, it only takes into account self-reported current income blocks, not change in income over the last decade or so, which is what many Trump voters are angry about. For example, making $70k today might seem ok if you look at the table and see median state income is only $65k, but that means nothing to someone who made $90k in 2007 and has never been able to get income back to that level. Third, it also ignores future predictions based on current state of affairs for voters. It's not very comforting if you make higher than the median income in your area, but your job is on the chopping block. Trump picked up far more non-college educated voters, for whom future job prospects look worse and worse every year, even if they have gainful employment today.

popmystack 10y ago

>Voters didn't vote for Trump because they read some fake news story on Facebook So all those posts I have on my Facebook feed about emails and Clinton corruption were just for nothing?

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

boardwaalk 10y ago

I'm not sure baseless black-and-white assertions such as this are useful for an intelligent discussion. On the face of it you clearly can't describe the reason all Trump voters voted Trump so simply.

quirkafleeg 10y ago

Yeah. There's going to be millions of words spouted about this in the next week or so from people trying to explain the result, but I think the simple reality - as with Brexit - is that a large section of society are just sick of the way they are being treated. Perhaps due to overconfidence (to the point of arrogance) that they'd win, as with Brexit, some on the 'losing side' have to tell themselves, or anyone that will listen, that people who voted differently did so because they're stupid, misled or otherwise didn't know what they were doing. People who voted Trump and people who voted Brexit knew exactly what they were doing and had their own real and personal reasons for doing so.

TAForObvReasons 10y ago
There's also a Maslow hierarchy argument: millions of people have lost their jobs due to a variety of reasons, from "outsourcing" to "automation" to the "energy revolution". Social arguments, KKK, racism, etc. are meaningless when you worry about putting food on the table. Trump appealed to that sense. The truth is that most of these jobs aren't coming back. Trump told them what they want to hear, namely that he will fight to bring back the jobs. Clinton told them what they had to hear, namely that many of these jobs aren't coming back and we need to figure out where the displaced workers fit in the working society. Needless to say, voters preferred Trump's messaging.
- plaidturtle 10y ago
  I see this kind of reasoning frequently, but I remember reading a study that showed that most of the Trump supporters were actually not victims of job-outsourcing and had good economic standing. Not sure if it was a non-partisan, credible study but unless you have good sources you might be theorizing?

hackuser 10y ago

> Voters didn't vote for Trump because ... they voted for him out of ... I'd like to propose a rule on HN, Don't make claims about issues like this without a serious factual basis. We have more than enough speculation already; more is just spam.

onewaystreet 10y ago
There will be deeper analysis done in the months to come as more data is gathered but it's clear from the initial data that economic anxiety did play a role in the election outcome: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/trump-was-stronger-where-the-economy-is-weaker/ http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/trump-was-stronger-where...

daxorid 10y ago

Trump voter here, with a successful ecommerce business. It was not out of economic desperation. Data point of one.

gaur 10y ago

> they voted for him out of economic desperation Right, the people chanting "fuck Islam" and "Sieg heil" [0] at Trump rallies surely cast their votes out of economic desperation. [0] http://www.nytimes.com/video/us/politics/100000004533191/unfiltered-voices-from-donald-trumps-crowds.html http://www.nytimes.com/video/us/politics/100000004533191/unf...

nitwit005 10y ago

> they voted for him out of economic desperation Really? The entire election can be boiled down to a single, concrete, easily understood reason? There's no diversity of thought at all? How remarkable.