4 ms·

> It sounds like they're looking for someone to blame for right wing candidates' success in the same way people blamed Russian bots for Trump's success because

> It sounds like they're looking for someone to blame for right wing candidates' success in the same way people blamed Russian bots for Trump's success because they can't believe that real people could possibly be voting for such obviously "wrong" candidates of their own free will and they must surely have been fooled into it by clever tricksters. Since the media consumed by EU voters is so disjoint because of language barriers, this should be somewhat possible to test. If one could show a correlation between the amount of "trickery" present in media consumed by voters in a country and that country's election outcomes, you could get an answer to whether voters really are fooled into voting for right wing candidates.

threeseed 7y ago
We recently had an Australian election in which there was a lot of fake news around a "death tax" imposed by one of the parties. That party lost in a close election in which at polling booths one of the top 3 issues was the death tax. Trickery works. It's why everyone keeps doing it.
- nl 7y ago
  The Australian election wasn't particularly close. The two-party-preferred margin was 3.2%, which is the mid-range in terms of margins this century (7 federal elections since 2000, 3 have had higher margins and 3 lower). Yes the "death tax" was an outright lie. But there were lots of factors which went into that margin. Also it's important to clarify that (for the most part - except possibly on some WeChat groups) - this wasn't a foreign campaign. It was mostly old fashioned paid advertising by the Liberal party itself.
- golemiprague 7y ago
  Like this was the first time in history the Labour lost an election and the first time in history polling is wrong. But of course, everybody who vote for the Liberals must be an idiot who believe fake news, unlike the enlighten left. This is exactly what makes me vote for the right and i will do it also in the next election even if I think the left policies are better, which I won't.
lopmotr 7y ago
You would never be able to control for other factors that differ between countries. They already have different left-right leanings to begin with and that's changing with time.

threeseed 7y ago

We recently had an Australian election in which there was a lot of fake news around a "death tax" imposed by one of the parties. That party lost in a close election in which at polling booths one of the top 3 issues was the death tax. Trickery works. It's why everyone keeps doing it.

nl 7y ago
The Australian election wasn't particularly close. The two-party-preferred margin was 3.2%, which is the mid-range in terms of margins this century (7 federal elections since 2000, 3 have had higher margins and 3 lower). Yes the "death tax" was an outright lie. But there were lots of factors which went into that margin. Also it's important to clarify that (for the most part - except possibly on some WeChat groups) - this wasn't a foreign campaign. It was mostly old fashioned paid advertising by the Liberal party itself.
golemiprague 7y ago
Like this was the first time in history the Labour lost an election and the first time in history polling is wrong. But of course, everybody who vote for the Liberals must be an idiot who believe fake news, unlike the enlighten left. This is exactly what makes me vote for the right and i will do it also in the next election even if I think the left policies are better, which I won't.

lopmotr 7y ago

You would never be able to control for other factors that differ between countries. They already have different left-right leanings to begin with and that's changing with time.