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Exactly, he won the election thanks to 80000 votes in three states. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/01/donald-trump-will-be-president-th

Exactly, he won the election thanks to 80000 votes in three states. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/01/donald-trump-will-be-president-thanks-to-80000-people-in-three-states/?utm_term=.827af77a0a2d https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/01/do...

freejulian 9y ago
Sure, the margin was slim, but Hillary has no one to blame but herself. Scapegoating Facebook keeps all of Hillary’s misdeeds out of the limelight. Perhaps if she was a better candidate I wouldn’t have wrote in Bernie. I, for one, am happy to have Trump over her. Edit: ah yes, let me feel the downvotes hackernews. We can’t have anyone disliking Hillary here!
- grumdan 9y ago
  Your comment doesn't actually add anything to this conversation, so regardless of one's position on Trump vs. Hillary, the downvotes are justified. All you said was a vague commonplace sentiment that has very little to do with the topic at hand.
  - stochastic_monk 9y ago
    Additionally, “at least it’s not Hillary” is a pretty baseless reason without supporting arguments. The majority of Americans would vastly prefer her, so please explain your point if you aim to be taken seriously. This isn’t reddit.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- drharby 9y ago
  Why edit tag when you are not even annotating what you edit? Your original post was nothing as it is now. You are being grossly deceptive, and this is coming from a guy who loves to play devils advocate on hn
nilkn 9y ago
Even applying such retroactive analysis to determine the smallest set of people who could change their votes so as to alter the election result, that doesn't imply anything about why Trump voters voted for Trump. That doesn't mean they were brainwashed by Facebook, that they're all white supremacists, etc.
- heartbreak 9y ago
  > That doesn't mean they were brainwashed by Facebook, that they're all white supremacists, etc. At the risk of engaging in a debate I don’t want to participate in, is this not building a strawman? When I purchase a product after viewing a targeted advertisement for that product, no reasonable person would claim I’d been brainwashed. One might, however, claim I’d been influenced by the advertisement.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - nilkn 9y ago
    This should probably be a response to fareesh's top-level post. My comment was just to say that Trump's margin of victory -- however you want to analyze it or state it -- doesn't have any bearing on what motivated Trump voters and isn't even relevant in the context of fareesh's comment.
lulmerchant 9y ago
Actually, he won thanks to ~63,000,000 votes. You’re also trying to make it sound like there was something uniquely nefarious about his campaign. He used the same marketing tactics that all recent campaigns have used. The same tactics that Obama was widely praised for in 2012. He won because voters liked him more.
- lgregg 9y ago
  * he won thanks to 304 electoral votes and ~3,000,000 less popular votes.
  - lulmerchant 9y ago
    Neither candidate was campaigning for a popular vote, they were both campaigning to win the electoral college. Which Trump did because ~63,000,000 Americans decided, purely of their own free will, that he was the better candidate. No matter how much you try to retroactively gerrymander the outcome, both candidates were playing on a level playing field, one of them won and one of them lost. It’s really a testament to democracy that an outsider candidate can prevail over the amount of establishment support Hillary had.
- wisdomsf 9y ago
  There's so much wrong with this comment. Correct, he received ~63m votes. Hillary received 65.85m votes. He won because our presidential election system is based on an electoral college (which may be debated as a plus or minus). But that also means certain states have a disproportionate amount of representation with respect to their population. Please don't delude yourself or at least attempt to be honest. Races at the county and state level matter a lot. It matters that outside of a couple of states, the winner take all electoral system can have a significant impact on elections. Yes, those are the rules that have been established, that both parties are privy to when developing their campaign strategy. But let's not reduce that to "oh, one person won because people liked them more."
  - lulmerchant 9y ago

freejulian 9y ago

Sure, the margin was slim, but Hillary has no one to blame but herself. Scapegoating Facebook keeps all of Hillary’s misdeeds out of the limelight. Perhaps if she was a better candidate I wouldn’t have wrote in Bernie. I, for one, am happy to have Trump over her. Edit: ah yes, let me feel the downvotes hackernews. We can’t have anyone disliking Hillary here!

grumdan 9y ago
Your comment doesn't actually add anything to this conversation, so regardless of one's position on Trump vs. Hillary, the downvotes are justified. All you said was a vague commonplace sentiment that has very little to do with the topic at hand.
- stochastic_monk 9y ago
  Additionally, “at least it’s not Hillary” is a pretty baseless reason without supporting arguments. The majority of Americans would vastly prefer her, so please explain your point if you aim to be taken seriously. This isn’t reddit.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
drharby 9y ago
Why edit tag when you are not even annotating what you edit? Your original post was nothing as it is now. You are being grossly deceptive, and this is coming from a guy who loves to play devils advocate on hn

nilkn 9y ago

Even applying such retroactive analysis to determine the smallest set of people who could change their votes so as to alter the election result, that doesn't imply anything about why Trump voters voted for Trump. That doesn't mean they were brainwashed by Facebook, that they're all white supremacists, etc.

heartbreak 9y ago
> That doesn't mean they were brainwashed by Facebook, that they're all white supremacists, etc. At the risk of engaging in a debate I don’t want to participate in, is this not building a strawman? When I purchase a product after viewing a targeted advertisement for that product, no reasonable person would claim I’d been brainwashed. One might, however, claim I’d been influenced by the advertisement.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- nilkn 9y ago
  This should probably be a response to fareesh's top-level post. My comment was just to say that Trump's margin of victory -- however you want to analyze it or state it -- doesn't have any bearing on what motivated Trump voters and isn't even relevant in the context of fareesh's comment.

lulmerchant 9y ago

Actually, he won thanks to ~63,000,000 votes. You’re also trying to make it sound like there was something uniquely nefarious about his campaign. He used the same marketing tactics that all recent campaigns have used. The same tactics that Obama was widely praised for in 2012. He won because voters liked him more.

lgregg 9y ago
* he won thanks to 304 electoral votes and ~3,000,000 less popular votes.
- lulmerchant 9y ago
  Neither candidate was campaigning for a popular vote, they were both campaigning to win the electoral college. Which Trump did because ~63,000,000 Americans decided, purely of their own free will, that he was the better candidate. No matter how much you try to retroactively gerrymander the outcome, both candidates were playing on a level playing field, one of them won and one of them lost. It’s really a testament to democracy that an outsider candidate can prevail over the amount of establishment support Hillary had.
wisdomsf 9y ago
There's so much wrong with this comment. Correct, he received ~63m votes. Hillary received 65.85m votes. He won because our presidential election system is based on an electoral college (which may be debated as a plus or minus). But that also means certain states have a disproportionate amount of representation with respect to their population. Please don't delude yourself or at least attempt to be honest. Races at the county and state level matter a lot. It matters that outside of a couple of states, the winner take all electoral system can have a significant impact on elections. Yes, those are the rules that have been established, that both parties are privy to when developing their campaign strategy. But let's not reduce that to "oh, one person won because people liked them more."
- lulmerchant 9y ago