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Having traveled the country by land for years and discussed this topic frequently, intentionally, and occasionally awkwardly with at least a thousand people, I

by jMyles 7y ago

Having traveled the country by land for years and discussed this topic frequently, intentionally, and occasionally awkwardly with at least a thousand people, I think that you are not even in the ballpark of correct when you surmise that "slightly less than half the country" supports this administration (or any in my lifetime, with the exception of the brief period following September 11, 2001). The man received about 62,984,828 votes in 2016 out of 330 million people. As an empirical matter, this perhaps demonstrates that a little more than 18% supported him at that time - much more than "slightly" less than half. There is every reason to believe that, since that time, his support has further waned. I'm not giving an opinion one way or another on the wisdom of precluding particular content. But I think that it is wildly out of step with reality to suggest that "slightly less than half the country" support the government at all, much less this particularly unpopular and ineffectual leader.

mc32 7y ago
No one counts elections like that. Not when Dems win and not when Repubs win. It’s disingenuous but it looks good when making a point. Even Saddam or my Kim never got 75% even when they state they received 99% of the vote. It would be very unusual for a US pol to get over 50% of the raw population of their district.
- jMyles 7y ago
  > Even Saddam or my Kim never get 75% even when they state they received 99% of the vote. I think I need you to more clearly state the point you are making. Are you suggesting that the published elections totals for Trump, Saddam, and Kim understate the popularity of each of them? I have never heard any reasonable person suggest that the elections in Iraq during Saddam's rule, nor any election in the history of the DPRK, are a basis for any particular conclusion about the popularity of those leaders or about how elections might be used to gauge the popularity of leaders.
- threatofrain 7y ago
  But this person is talking about language to ballpark American sentiment, not how you think people count electoral power.
pan69 7y ago
> 330 million people Not to be nitpicky, but the total population of a country does not equal the total amount of people eligible to vote (e.g. children). Sorry, don't have actual numbers on this though but thought is was worth pointing out.
- jMyles 7y ago
  That's an important part of the point here: is it fair to suggest that Trump has the support of "slightly less than half" of the nation's children because of the configuration of votes cast by the portion of adults who chose to cast a vote? Of course not.
  - gridlockd 7y ago
    Yeah it's fair, given the influence that parents have on their children. In fact, it's probably the children that actually believed America is going to be "great again".
    - jMyles 7y ago
      I'm not prepared to draw that conclusion without evidence.
- tqi 7y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_the_United_States_presidential_elections https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_the_United_St... ~250M in 2016
Chris_Chambers 7y ago
You should null route reddit.com in your /etc/hosts file. Your exposure to the echo chamber there is worsening your mental illness.
Zhenya 7y ago
You're twisting numbers to make your point. There are 330M people in the US but actually 138M voted in 2016. 63M voted for Trump per your number. Outside of that we don't know who supports whom. So we don't know if this move by raverly really effects almost half but most likely does effect a lot more that the 18% you stated.
- jMyles 7y ago
  > Outside of that we don't know who supports whom. That's my point. It is highly disingenuous (and a little creepy) to suggest that an executive leader is supported by "slightly less than half" the population when we don't even have a basis for knowing that.
hartator 7y ago
> Having traveled the country by land for years Don’t fully get why you have to plug that you are traveling a lot here, but okay.
- jMyles 7y ago
  I have personally talked specifically about the 2016 with a lot of people. A lot of people. In nearly every US State. I lived in a school bus for two years and made it my business to bring up this topic every day with strangers.
  - hartator 7y ago
    > I lived in a school bus for two years and made it my business to bring up this topic every day with strangers. Why were you bringing up Trump? Most Trump supporters won't share with a stranger that they support Trump.
    - jMyles 7y ago
      > Why were you bringing up Trump? ...because it's vitally important. > Most Trump supporters won't share with a stranger that they support Trump. I too had this prejudicial stereotype, but we are, as far as I have been able to tell, incorrect on this point. Specifically, I heard a lot of smart, well-adjusted, concerned Americans share with me why they voted for Trump (some because they supported him, most not) and whether or not they continued to support his administration (some did, most did not).
      - hartator 7y ago
        > I too had this prejudicial stereotype It's not prejudicial stereotypes. Most people don't want to share their political views specially when they are controversial and a perceived minority.
        jMyles 7y ago
        > Most people don't want to share their political views This has not been my experience.
gridlockd 7y ago
Trump still has approval ratings in the fourties, which is slightly less than half. Surely those opinion polls are biased in some way or another, but that's still the best numbers we have, in my opinion. > As an empirical matter, this perhaps demonstrates that a little more than 18% supported him at that time. No it doesn't. It demonstrates that at least 18% supported him for president, at the time. It tells you nothing about the people that couldn't or didn't vote, but may have supported him in spirit. For instance, it's pretty pointless to actually go out and vote for Trump in California. > Having traveled the country by land for years and discussed this topic... Of all the numbers that are available, your anecdata is the least relevant.
- jMyles 7y ago
  > Trump still has approval ratings in the fourties, which is slightly less than half. I do not have confidence in any of the current methodologies for polling for presidential approval ratings, and of course I'm not alone in this view; I'm joined by a substantial cohort within academic political science (in which I have a degree, if that's important) and, occasionally, Pew itself. [0] At a minimum, even if the methodology is spot-on, all of the current polls (at least of which I'm aware) exclude people under the age of 18, incarcerated people, undocumented immigrants, homeless people, and, in many cases, people who do not have a landline telephone. This relegates them to joke status if the conclusion being discussed is support of the entire population. > No it doesn't. It demonstrates that at least 18% supported him for president, at the time. It tells you nothing about the people that couldn't or didn't vote, but may have supported him in spirit. For instance, it's pretty pointless to actually go out and vote for Trump in California. It sounds like we're on the same page here: elections are not a good basis for drawing conclusions about the support a particular leader has within a population. I particularly object to your contention that this demonstrates that "at least 18% supported him" - depending on your view of "support", I suggest that this excludes the enormous contingent of "anybody but Hillary" voters. These people did not support Trump, do not support his administration, and used their vote as a tactic to show opposition to a candidate rather than support for a candidate. > Of all the numbers that are available, your anecdata is the least relevant. Feel free to disregard it then. It's meaningful to me. I have every confidence in the conclusions that I'm able to draw from my extensive travels and discussions on this topic, particularly in the deep south, whose politics I had never understood until traveling there and discussing the 2016 election with people on a daily basis for several months. 0: https://www.politico.com/story/2019/02/27/phone-polling-crisis-1191637 https://www.politico.com/story/2019/02/27/phone-polling-cris...
jahewson 7y ago
2016 US voting age population was approx. 250 million, so it’s actually 25%. Statistically, unless you have specific data that shows otherwise, we should expect non-voters to have (mostly) voted the same way was actual voters, should they choose to vote. This only falls apart if their are very, very big factors biasing the non-voting population.
- jMyles 7y ago
  > 2016 US voting age population was approx. 250 million, so it’s actually 25%. Why do you exclude people who are not of voting age? > Statistically, unless you have specific data that shows otherwise, we should expect non-voters to have (mostly) voted the same way was actual voters You can't be serious. This is flatly false, and has been throughout the entirety of the period of modern polling methodology. Non-voters are dramatically less likely to support the government at all, let alone a particular leader. Consider also that many of the populations who are unable to vote (felons, incarcerated people, undocumented immigrants) are dramatically underserved by government institutions and are typically not polled in any of the presidential approval polls. Why in the world do you suggest, in the absence of any evidence, that they are likely to have a similar degree of likelihood of supporting Trump?
masonic 7y ago
The man received about 62,984,828 votes in 2016 ... which is 140% of what Bill Clinton received for his first term. Raw numbers mean nothing. One might as well look at the percentage of eligible voters who voted for Hillary and make a similarly hostile conclusion.
- belltaco 7y ago
  Voting population growth is a thing. It went up by 32% or so.
  - UncleSlacky 7y ago
    There was also the fact that Ross Perot drew off a lot of voters in that election, so Clinton didn't need as many in order to win.
- jMyles 7y ago
  > One might as well look at the percentage of eligible voters who voted for Hillary and make a similarly hostile conclusion. I agree that a similar conclusion is warranted. I don't agree that it is "hostile." The present situation in the USA is that no leader enjoys support from a large swath of the population.
belorn 7y ago
Let see here, in order to have an democratic country where over half of the population voted for the people in power, you need a participation rate of around 70% with children accounted for, and about 70% of those need to have voted for the same party. The percentage of children under the age of 18 in the US is around 23%. It is thus definitively possible to have a election where 50% of the population voted for the people in power but there is not much of a margin. I wonder if it has ever happened and if so where (disqualifying any dictatorship).
- brobdingnagians 7y ago
  Here are some interesting numbers on landslide votes in the US (only electoral college votes, but I think it represents general popularity as well): [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presidential_elections_by_Electoral_College_margin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presiden... [2] https://www.thoughtco.com/landslide-presidential-elections-by-electoral-votes-3367489 https://www.thoughtco.com/landslide-presidential-elections-b...
bufferoverflow 7y ago
You're falsely equating the voters and the supporters.

by jMyles 7y ago

mc32 7y ago

No one counts elections like that. Not when Dems win and not when Repubs win. It’s disingenuous but it looks good when making a point. Even Saddam or my Kim never got 75% even when they state they received 99% of the vote. It would be very unusual for a US pol to get over 50% of the raw population of their district.

jMyles 7y ago
> Even Saddam or my Kim never get 75% even when they state they received 99% of the vote. I think I need you to more clearly state the point you are making. Are you suggesting that the published elections totals for Trump, Saddam, and Kim understate the popularity of each of them? I have never heard any reasonable person suggest that the elections in Iraq during Saddam's rule, nor any election in the history of the DPRK, are a basis for any particular conclusion about the popularity of those leaders or about how elections might be used to gauge the popularity of leaders.
threatofrain 7y ago
But this person is talking about language to ballpark American sentiment, not how you think people count electoral power.

pan69 7y ago

> 330 million people Not to be nitpicky, but the total population of a country does not equal the total amount of people eligible to vote (e.g. children). Sorry, don't have actual numbers on this though but thought is was worth pointing out.

jMyles 7y ago
That's an important part of the point here: is it fair to suggest that Trump has the support of "slightly less than half" of the nation's children because of the configuration of votes cast by the portion of adults who chose to cast a vote? Of course not.
- gridlockd 7y ago
  Yeah it's fair, given the influence that parents have on their children. In fact, it's probably the children that actually believed America is going to be "great again".
  - jMyles 7y ago
    I'm not prepared to draw that conclusion without evidence.
tqi 7y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_the_United_States_presidential_elections https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_the_United_St... ~250M in 2016

Chris_Chambers 7y ago

You should null route reddit.com in your /etc/hosts file. Your exposure to the echo chamber there is worsening your mental illness.

Zhenya 7y ago

You're twisting numbers to make your point. There are 330M people in the US but actually 138M voted in 2016. 63M voted for Trump per your number. Outside of that we don't know who supports whom. So we don't know if this move by raverly really effects almost half but most likely does effect a lot more that the 18% you stated.

jMyles 7y ago
> Outside of that we don't know who supports whom. That's my point. It is highly disingenuous (and a little creepy) to suggest that an executive leader is supported by "slightly less than half" the population when we don't even have a basis for knowing that.

hartator 7y ago

> Having traveled the country by land for years Don’t fully get why you have to plug that you are traveling a lot here, but okay.

jMyles 7y ago
I have personally talked specifically about the 2016 with a lot of people. A lot of people. In nearly every US State. I lived in a school bus for two years and made it my business to bring up this topic every day with strangers.
- hartator 7y ago
  > I lived in a school bus for two years and made it my business to bring up this topic every day with strangers. Why were you bringing up Trump? Most Trump supporters won't share with a stranger that they support Trump.
  - jMyles 7y ago
    > Why were you bringing up Trump? ...because it's vitally important. > Most Trump supporters won't share with a stranger that they support Trump. I too had this prejudicial stereotype, but we are, as far as I have been able to tell, incorrect on this point. Specifically, I heard a lot of smart, well-adjusted, concerned Americans share with me why they voted for Trump (some because they supported him, most not) and whether or not they continued to support his administration (some did, most did not).
    - hartator 7y ago
      > I too had this prejudicial stereotype It's not prejudicial stereotypes. Most people don't want to share their political views specially when they are controversial and a perceived minority.
      - jMyles 7y ago
        > Most people don't want to share their political views This has not been my experience.

gridlockd 7y ago

Trump still has approval ratings in the fourties, which is slightly less than half. Surely those opinion polls are biased in some way or another, but that's still the best numbers we have, in my opinion. > As an empirical matter, this perhaps demonstrates that a little more than 18% supported him at that time. No it doesn't. It demonstrates that at least 18% supported him for president, at the time. It tells you nothing about the people that couldn't or didn't vote, but may have supported him in spirit. For instance, it's pretty pointless to actually go out and vote for Trump in California. > Having traveled the country by land for years and discussed this topic... Of all the numbers that are available, your anecdata is the least relevant.

jMyles 7y ago
> Trump still has approval ratings in the fourties, which is slightly less than half. I do not have confidence in any of the current methodologies for polling for presidential approval ratings, and of course I'm not alone in this view; I'm joined by a substantial cohort within academic political science (in which I have a degree, if that's important) and, occasionally, Pew itself. [0] At a minimum, even if the methodology is spot-on, all of the current polls (at least of which I'm aware) exclude people under the age of 18, incarcerated people, undocumented immigrants, homeless people, and, in many cases, people who do not have a landline telephone. This relegates them to joke status if the conclusion being discussed is support of the entire population. > No it doesn't. It demonstrates that at least 18% supported him for president, at the time. It tells you nothing about the people that couldn't or didn't vote, but may have supported him in spirit. For instance, it's pretty pointless to actually go out and vote for Trump in California. It sounds like we're on the same page here: elections are not a good basis for drawing conclusions about the support a particular leader has within a population. I particularly object to your contention that this demonstrates that "at least 18% supported him" - depending on your view of "support", I suggest that this excludes the enormous contingent of "anybody but Hillary" voters. These people did not support Trump, do not support his administration, and used their vote as a tactic to show opposition to a candidate rather than support for a candidate. > Of all the numbers that are available, your anecdata is the least relevant. Feel free to disregard it then. It's meaningful to me. I have every confidence in the conclusions that I'm able to draw from my extensive travels and discussions on this topic, particularly in the deep south, whose politics I had never understood until traveling there and discussing the 2016 election with people on a daily basis for several months. 0: https://www.politico.com/story/2019/02/27/phone-polling-crisis-1191637 https://www.politico.com/story/2019/02/27/phone-polling-cris...

jahewson 7y ago

2016 US voting age population was approx. 250 million, so it’s actually 25%. Statistically, unless you have specific data that shows otherwise, we should expect non-voters to have (mostly) voted the same way was actual voters, should they choose to vote. This only falls apart if their are very, very big factors biasing the non-voting population.

jMyles 7y ago
> 2016 US voting age population was approx. 250 million, so it’s actually 25%. Why do you exclude people who are not of voting age? > Statistically, unless you have specific data that shows otherwise, we should expect non-voters to have (mostly) voted the same way was actual voters You can't be serious. This is flatly false, and has been throughout the entirety of the period of modern polling methodology. Non-voters are dramatically less likely to support the government at all, let alone a particular leader. Consider also that many of the populations who are unable to vote (felons, incarcerated people, undocumented immigrants) are dramatically underserved by government institutions and are typically not polled in any of the presidential approval polls. Why in the world do you suggest, in the absence of any evidence, that they are likely to have a similar degree of likelihood of supporting Trump?

masonic 7y ago

The man received about 62,984,828 votes in 2016 ... which is 140% of what Bill Clinton received for his first term. Raw numbers mean nothing. One might as well look at the percentage of eligible voters who voted for Hillary and make a similarly hostile conclusion.

belltaco 7y ago
Voting population growth is a thing. It went up by 32% or so.
- UncleSlacky 7y ago
  There was also the fact that Ross Perot drew off a lot of voters in that election, so Clinton didn't need as many in order to win.
jMyles 7y ago
> One might as well look at the percentage of eligible voters who voted for Hillary and make a similarly hostile conclusion. I agree that a similar conclusion is warranted. I don't agree that it is "hostile." The present situation in the USA is that no leader enjoys support from a large swath of the population.

belorn 7y ago

Let see here, in order to have an democratic country where over half of the population voted for the people in power, you need a participation rate of around 70% with children accounted for, and about 70% of those need to have voted for the same party. The percentage of children under the age of 18 in the US is around 23%. It is thus definitively possible to have a election where 50% of the population voted for the people in power but there is not much of a margin. I wonder if it has ever happened and if so where (disqualifying any dictatorship).

brobdingnagians 7y ago
Here are some interesting numbers on landslide votes in the US (only electoral college votes, but I think it represents general popularity as well): [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presidential_elections_by_Electoral_College_margin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presiden... [2] https://www.thoughtco.com/landslide-presidential-elections-by-electoral-votes-3367489 https://www.thoughtco.com/landslide-presidential-elections-b...

bufferoverflow 7y ago

You're falsely equating the voters and the supporters.