7 ms·

Does prospect theory explain Trump and Brexit votes?

37 points by msravi 10y ago

clock_tower 10y ago
Note to moderators: the typo in "Brexit" is really distracting. When I saw "Brezit", I thought it was about a possible Breton (Breizh) secession from France!
- msravi 10y ago
  Sorry, fixed the typo.
  - clock_tower 10y ago
    Thanks!
PhantomGremlin 10y ago
Interesting essay. But it starts with: The quantity of votes in favor of the Brexit and in favor of Trump surprised most of us. It's only "most of us" if you live in a liberal echo chamber. E.g. the NY Times has done some recent naval gazing, but it would be fascinating to find out what percent of their employees voted for Trump. Fewer than 10%? Fewer than 1%? So, certainly, the result "surprised" them. Meanwhile in the real world the popular vote breakdown was: Clinton 63,515,588 Trump 61,917,320 That's about a 1% difference. I don't see how that translates to "surprised most of us"!
- nandemo 10y ago
  This has nothing to do with "liberal echo chamber". Most opinion polls indicated that Clinton would win, and most people believed so. That's all there is to it. > That's about a 1% difference. I don't see how that translates to "surprised most of us"! You can't use the result of the elections to claim that the result was "expected"! The stock market expected a Clinton win, and so did betting markets outside the US: http://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/07/betting-sites-see-record-wagering-on-us-presidential-election.html http://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/07/betting-sites-see-record-wage... Arguably, at some point even Trump indicated that he believed Clinton would win, when he claimed the elections were "rigged".
  - philovivero 10y ago
    You don't think maybe the elections really were rigged? Here's a video where a computer programmer who worked on voting systems is questioned under oath, and he makes some pretty good arguments that elections are rigged. At least the ones where electronic voting machines are used. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcxGGnmRQAs&t=92s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcxGGnmRQAs&t=92s I'll admit, I didn't bother researching, but I'd understood a lot of electronic voting machines were used in the election we just underwent. The results of the election only slightly surprised me, but I've gone to great lengths to avoid ingesting media from mainstream sources. Outside the mainstream, Trump's popularity was quite a bit more obvious.
    - nandemo 10y ago
      To be honest, I have no opinion on the rigging claim. I'm not a US citizen or resident and I don't know much about how y'all go about actually voting. My point is that candidate B claimed the election would be rigged against him; it's not a stretch to assume he thought candidate A would probably win at that point.
- Lazare 10y ago
  It's entirely possibly that most people might be planning on voting for a candidate, but incorrectly believe that most other people were planning on voting for their opponent.
  - PhantomGremlin 10y ago
    That's certainly quite possible. But in the final weeks the US election had close polling. Clinton was leading Trump by less than 5% in most polls and was actually behind in a few of them (Matt Drudge always managed to find those polls to link to). So it's hard to understand why people might have those beliefs in a relatively close election. Easier to understand if the election was predicted to be a blowout. But blowouts don't happen that often. The most recent true blowout I experienced was Reagan vs Mondale in 1984. An electoral blowout, only Minnesota and DC voted for Mondale. But the popular vote was closer, roughly 59%/41%.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - dajohnson89 10y ago
      Why isn't anyone considering that within the margin of error, the polls were correct? Isn't the confidence interval +/- a few percentage points anyways??
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - deleted 10y ago
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- hannele 10y ago
  I think it surprised a lot of the world outside of America, too.
  - protomyth 10y ago
    You have access to the NYT and not a cafe in the US Great Plains on a Saturday morning. Sadly the NYT doesn't bother to show up either.
- Clubber 10y ago
  Because most polls showed Hillary winning or winning by a landslide.
- geofft 10y ago
  Yes, the final election result wasn't terribly surprising given polling. Trump was reported to have a very nonzero chance of winning the electoral college all along (although there weren't many reports of him having a > 50% chance), and all polls had the popular vote being very close. But what was surprising, all along, to people from all sorts of echo chambers (including, I think, Trump himself) was that Trump had this support in the first place. He was the goofball candidate in the primaries. Mitt Romney, the previous Republican nominee, called him a "phony" and a "fraud," and said, "He's playing the American public for suckers." Imagine McCain saying that about Romney, or Kerry about Obama! He dominated the news cycle for months with indiscretions and mistakes. He lost the debates, by any metric in which you care about actual policy discussed at the debates. Republicans were quite worried about him dooming the party. It was clear months before November that he was a realistic candidate who would win about half of the popular vote, but the fact that we got to that point was surprising.
- pasquinelli 10y ago
  the people who voted for trump had no better idea what the result would be than anyone else.
- intended 10y ago
  This assumes many people voting knew beforehand that their chosen candidate would win/lose. Since they don't it's safe to say that all results are a surprise. As pointed out, trump himself didn't expect to win.
- ScottBurson 10y ago
  Even Trump and his staff were surprised. They didn't expect to win, because of the poll results! That echo chamber thing cuts both ways.
mixedCase 10y ago
"we face people who, perceiving that they have lost something, are willing to take high risks." I love how throughout the post the author keeps on pushing the point that people simply have a misguided perception of reality, under no circumstance it is considered that these people are directly or indirectly affected by current policy. There are too many people living in opaque bubbles blogging about "what REALLY happened!".
- pasquinelli 10y ago
  perhaps they framed it as people "perceiving that they have lost something" because perception is the relevant point, and where they have, appropriately, refrained from saying anything about a disputed and irrelevant reality, (perception, again, being the relevant point), you've filled in that bit about people living in an opaque bubble. "There are too many people living in opaque bubbles blogging about 'what REALLY happened!'"
- ChrisNorstrom 10y ago
  The worst part about all this, is that the same party that claims to be about Tolerance is so intolerant that you can't even explain to them why this (Trump & Brexit) happened. No I'm not saying a word and I advise the HN members who "know what I'm talking about" to STAY quiet as well. I know it's tempting but I've tried it before on HN. I tried explaining, I'd type up these long posts with links to video evidence, scientific papers, psychology today articles and still the you-know-what-leaning downvote brigade got me. I don't mind downvotes but when you see how these people attack and censor and get you fired from work it's just not worth it. I deleted all my comments before the deletion time limit hit and vowed to just stop. I know some of you are curious but honestly, this is your punishment. Your punishment is not Trump and Brexit, your punishment is never truely knowing why Trump and Brexit happened. This is your hell. You made it.
  - rybosome 10y ago
    Why do you think it happened? I'm asking in good faith because I am in a liberal bubble, and I feel strongly that more empathy and willingness to listen is needed from my cohort.
clumsysmurf 10y ago
Sadly, at least for Trump, i think it came down to 1 party loyalty 2 identity politics 3 active voter suppression in key states 4 The Electoral College, which was designed to prevent this exact thing (demagoguery) #1 & #2 are discussed in "Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government (Princeton Studies in Political Behavior)" https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0691169446 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0691169446 #2 also discussed in "The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker (Chicago Studies in American Politics)" https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/022634911X https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/022634911X #3 and other dirty tricks discussed in "Ratfked: The True Story Behind the Secret Plan to Steal America's Democracy" https://www.amazon.com/Ratf-ked-Behind-Americas-Democracy/dp/1631491628 https://www.amazon.com/Ratf-ked-Behind-Americas-Democracy/dp... and "The Great Suppression: Voting Rights, Corporate Cash, and the Conservative Assault on Democracy" https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/110190576X https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/110190576X
- TTPrograms 10y ago
  Yeah, it probably didn't have much to do with the economically left-behind working class that constitutes the majority of the country and wasn't appealed to at all by the Democratic campaign.
  - clumsysmurf 10y ago
    Lets remember, at this point Hillary is 1.7 million popular votes ahead of Trump.
    - TTPrograms 10y ago
      I don't think these are contradictory statements.
    - tedunangst 10y ago
      None of those votes do anything to change the result in Pennsylvania, which until recently was part of a "Blue Firewall" that made a Trump victory impossible.
empressplay 10y ago
Trump won because people got sick of liberalism, and to make matters worse we (I'm a liberal) created an environment where they couldn't express that in a shared public area without being berated or shamed. That's it, honestly. We on the left need to dial it back a bit and have a discussion, and move forward with consensus rather than trying to drag everyone kicking-and-screaming along with our agenda regardless of if we feel it's "right" or not. You don't win the tolerance argument with a stick, you win it with a carrot.
- philovivero 10y ago
  As an extreme social liberal (as I am) I do find the current "liberal" atmosphere rather stifling. It doesn't help that I'm a white male, either. I'm told I'm part of the problem. To that, I say: "Well, then. I guess I'll just bow out and let you guys handle that Trump fellow on your own. I'm not about to lend a helping hand anymore." It's actually rather liberating to know I don't need to put any effort into the political arena. I can just sit back, relax, and laugh at the spectacle.
  - antisthenes 10y ago
    Consider for a second a hypothetical fiscal liberal, social conservative antinatalist. If they do not self-censor themselves, they can expect to easily be a social pariah in most urban areas of living, with all the negative economic connotations that ensues.
- intended 10y ago
  I disagree. (Edited this for tone) I'm not American and I've watched American politics for fun and profit for a long time now. Firstly - "you" have already tried cooperation. The day Obama won, the republicans regrouped from a devastating loss and promised to make him a one term president. They've converted the routine and boring debt ceiling increase into political theater, grinding America to a halt. Iirc they've fought Medicare tooth and nail, even though it's modeled on a republican program. Many things have aligned to create this situation. As i recall working with people on the other side is considered bad form. This isn't simply because of a liberal agenda or because people haven't been listening. It's because people have actively been injecting narrative and false data in order to move voting populations in specific directions.
crimsonalucard 10y ago
There's no point for someone who voted for Hillary to guess why another person voted for Trump. What is the point of prospect theory when you can just ask the people and get it straight from the horses mouth. If you voted for Trump... Why did you vote for him over Hillary?
- antisthenes 10y ago
  Some would argue that voting for the opposing candidate leads the other party to produce better candidates in the next election cycle. In other words, it takes a swing to the other side in order to radicalize the other side and swing the pendulum of discussion back in their favor. Maybe the ACA repeal will lead us to actually have single payer with the next cycle?
futureguy 10y ago
People not voting are as important in this equation as those who voted. At least in the instance of the Trump situation.

37 points by msravi 10y ago

Note to moderators: the typo in "Brexit" is really distracting. When I saw "Brezit", I thought it was about a possible Breton (Breizh) secession from France!

msravi 10y ago
Sorry, fixed the typo.
- clock_tower 10y ago
  Thanks!

PhantomGremlin 10y ago

Interesting essay. But it starts with: The quantity of votes in favor of the Brexit and in favor of Trump surprised most of us. It's only "most of us" if you live in a liberal echo chamber. E.g. the NY Times has done some recent naval gazing, but it would be fascinating to find out what percent of their employees voted for Trump. Fewer than 10%? Fewer than 1%? So, certainly, the result "surprised" them. Meanwhile in the real world the popular vote breakdown was: Clinton 63,515,588 Trump 61,917,320 That's about a 1% difference. I don't see how that translates to "surprised most of us"!

nandemo 10y ago
This has nothing to do with "liberal echo chamber". Most opinion polls indicated that Clinton would win, and most people believed so. That's all there is to it. > That's about a 1% difference. I don't see how that translates to "surprised most of us"! You can't use the result of the elections to claim that the result was "expected"! The stock market expected a Clinton win, and so did betting markets outside the US: http://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/07/betting-sites-see-record-wagering-on-us-presidential-election.html http://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/07/betting-sites-see-record-wage... Arguably, at some point even Trump indicated that he believed Clinton would win, when he claimed the elections were "rigged".
- philovivero 10y ago
  You don't think maybe the elections really were rigged? Here's a video where a computer programmer who worked on voting systems is questioned under oath, and he makes some pretty good arguments that elections are rigged. At least the ones where electronic voting machines are used. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcxGGnmRQAs&t=92s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcxGGnmRQAs&t=92s I'll admit, I didn't bother researching, but I'd understood a lot of electronic voting machines were used in the election we just underwent. The results of the election only slightly surprised me, but I've gone to great lengths to avoid ingesting media from mainstream sources. Outside the mainstream, Trump's popularity was quite a bit more obvious.
  - nandemo 10y ago
    To be honest, I have no opinion on the rigging claim. I'm not a US citizen or resident and I don't know much about how y'all go about actually voting. My point is that candidate B claimed the election would be rigged against him; it's not a stretch to assume he thought candidate A would probably win at that point.
Lazare 10y ago
It's entirely possibly that most people might be planning on voting for a candidate, but incorrectly believe that most other people were planning on voting for their opponent.
- PhantomGremlin 10y ago
  That's certainly quite possible. But in the final weeks the US election had close polling. Clinton was leading Trump by less than 5% in most polls and was actually behind in a few of them (Matt Drudge always managed to find those polls to link to). So it's hard to understand why people might have those beliefs in a relatively close election. Easier to understand if the election was predicted to be a blowout. But blowouts don't happen that often. The most recent true blowout I experienced was Reagan vs Mondale in 1984. An electoral blowout, only Minnesota and DC voted for Mondale. But the popular vote was closer, roughly 59%/41%.
  - deleted 10y ago
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  - dajohnson89 10y ago
    Why isn't anyone considering that within the margin of error, the polls were correct? Isn't the confidence interval +/- a few percentage points anyways??
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 10y ago
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  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
hannele 10y ago
I think it surprised a lot of the world outside of America, too.
- protomyth 10y ago
  You have access to the NYT and not a cafe in the US Great Plains on a Saturday morning. Sadly the NYT doesn't bother to show up either.
Clubber 10y ago
Because most polls showed Hillary winning or winning by a landslide.
geofft 10y ago
Yes, the final election result wasn't terribly surprising given polling. Trump was reported to have a very nonzero chance of winning the electoral college all along (although there weren't many reports of him having a > 50% chance), and all polls had the popular vote being very close. But what was surprising, all along, to people from all sorts of echo chambers (including, I think, Trump himself) was that Trump had this support in the first place. He was the goofball candidate in the primaries. Mitt Romney, the previous Republican nominee, called him a "phony" and a "fraud," and said, "He's playing the American public for suckers." Imagine McCain saying that about Romney, or Kerry about Obama! He dominated the news cycle for months with indiscretions and mistakes. He lost the debates, by any metric in which you care about actual policy discussed at the debates. Republicans were quite worried about him dooming the party. It was clear months before November that he was a realistic candidate who would win about half of the popular vote, but the fact that we got to that point was surprising.
pasquinelli 10y ago
the people who voted for trump had no better idea what the result would be than anyone else.
intended 10y ago
This assumes many people voting knew beforehand that their chosen candidate would win/lose. Since they don't it's safe to say that all results are a surprise. As pointed out, trump himself didn't expect to win.
ScottBurson 10y ago
Even Trump and his staff were surprised. They didn't expect to win, because of the poll results! That echo chamber thing cuts both ways.

mixedCase 10y ago

"we face people who, perceiving that they have lost something, are willing to take high risks." I love how throughout the post the author keeps on pushing the point that people simply have a misguided perception of reality, under no circumstance it is considered that these people are directly or indirectly affected by current policy. There are too many people living in opaque bubbles blogging about "what REALLY happened!".

pasquinelli 10y ago
perhaps they framed it as people "perceiving that they have lost something" because perception is the relevant point, and where they have, appropriately, refrained from saying anything about a disputed and irrelevant reality, (perception, again, being the relevant point), you've filled in that bit about people living in an opaque bubble. "There are too many people living in opaque bubbles blogging about 'what REALLY happened!'"
ChrisNorstrom 10y ago
The worst part about all this, is that the same party that claims to be about Tolerance is so intolerant that you can't even explain to them why this (Trump & Brexit) happened. No I'm not saying a word and I advise the HN members who "know what I'm talking about" to STAY quiet as well. I know it's tempting but I've tried it before on HN. I tried explaining, I'd type up these long posts with links to video evidence, scientific papers, psychology today articles and still the you-know-what-leaning downvote brigade got me. I don't mind downvotes but when you see how these people attack and censor and get you fired from work it's just not worth it. I deleted all my comments before the deletion time limit hit and vowed to just stop. I know some of you are curious but honestly, this is your punishment. Your punishment is not Trump and Brexit, your punishment is never truely knowing why Trump and Brexit happened. This is your hell. You made it.
- rybosome 10y ago
  Why do you think it happened? I'm asking in good faith because I am in a liberal bubble, and I feel strongly that more empathy and willingness to listen is needed from my cohort.

clumsysmurf 10y ago

Sadly, at least for Trump, i think it came down to 1 party loyalty 2 identity politics 3 active voter suppression in key states 4 The Electoral College, which was designed to prevent this exact thing (demagoguery) #1 & #2 are discussed in "Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government (Princeton Studies in Political Behavior)" https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0691169446 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0691169446 #2 also discussed in "The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker (Chicago Studies in American Politics)" https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/022634911X https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/022634911X #3 and other dirty tricks discussed in "Ratfked: The True Story Behind the Secret Plan to Steal America's Democracy" https://www.amazon.com/Ratf-ked-Behind-Americas-Democracy/dp/1631491628 https://www.amazon.com/Ratf-ked-Behind-Americas-Democracy/dp... and "The Great Suppression: Voting Rights, Corporate Cash, and the Conservative Assault on Democracy" https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/110190576X https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/110190576X

TTPrograms 10y ago
Yeah, it probably didn't have much to do with the economically left-behind working class that constitutes the majority of the country and wasn't appealed to at all by the Democratic campaign.
- clumsysmurf 10y ago
  Lets remember, at this point Hillary is 1.7 million popular votes ahead of Trump.
  - TTPrograms 10y ago
    I don't think these are contradictory statements.
  - tedunangst 10y ago
    None of those votes do anything to change the result in Pennsylvania, which until recently was part of a "Blue Firewall" that made a Trump victory impossible.

empressplay 10y ago

Trump won because people got sick of liberalism, and to make matters worse we (I'm a liberal) created an environment where they couldn't express that in a shared public area without being berated or shamed. That's it, honestly. We on the left need to dial it back a bit and have a discussion, and move forward with consensus rather than trying to drag everyone kicking-and-screaming along with our agenda regardless of if we feel it's "right" or not. You don't win the tolerance argument with a stick, you win it with a carrot.

philovivero 10y ago
As an extreme social liberal (as I am) I do find the current "liberal" atmosphere rather stifling. It doesn't help that I'm a white male, either. I'm told I'm part of the problem. To that, I say: "Well, then. I guess I'll just bow out and let you guys handle that Trump fellow on your own. I'm not about to lend a helping hand anymore." It's actually rather liberating to know I don't need to put any effort into the political arena. I can just sit back, relax, and laugh at the spectacle.
- antisthenes 10y ago
  Consider for a second a hypothetical fiscal liberal, social conservative antinatalist. If they do not self-censor themselves, they can expect to easily be a social pariah in most urban areas of living, with all the negative economic connotations that ensues.
intended 10y ago
I disagree. (Edited this for tone) I'm not American and I've watched American politics for fun and profit for a long time now. Firstly - "you" have already tried cooperation. The day Obama won, the republicans regrouped from a devastating loss and promised to make him a one term president. They've converted the routine and boring debt ceiling increase into political theater, grinding America to a halt. Iirc they've fought Medicare tooth and nail, even though it's modeled on a republican program. Many things have aligned to create this situation. As i recall working with people on the other side is considered bad form. This isn't simply because of a liberal agenda or because people haven't been listening. It's because people have actively been injecting narrative and false data in order to move voting populations in specific directions.

crimsonalucard 10y ago

There's no point for someone who voted for Hillary to guess why another person voted for Trump. What is the point of prospect theory when you can just ask the people and get it straight from the horses mouth. If you voted for Trump... Why did you vote for him over Hillary?

antisthenes 10y ago
Some would argue that voting for the opposing candidate leads the other party to produce better candidates in the next election cycle. In other words, it takes a swing to the other side in order to radicalize the other side and swing the pendulum of discussion back in their favor. Maybe the ACA repeal will lead us to actually have single payer with the next cycle?

futureguy 10y ago

People not voting are as important in this equation as those who voted. At least in the instance of the Trump situation.