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Do you think the bulk of voters for Trump believe one of these things? He won a considerable number of votes.
by kjeetgill 6y ago
Do you think the bulk of voters for Trump believe one of these things? He won a considerable number of votes.
- flowerlad 6y agoThe bulk of Trump voters are from rural areas, and tend to be less (or un-)educated. I don't know what percentage of Trump voters believe QAnon conspiracy theories. But I do believe the bulk of Trump voters are voting against their self interests, because they are gullible. Why else would most Trump voters come from rural areas? If they had legit reasons to support Trump why aren't the voters spread equally among urban/educated and rural/uneducated people? Which of Trump's policies are only helping rural/uneducated people?
- free_rms 6y agoThe rejoinder to this line of thinking is generally: "if liberals are so smart, how come they always lose?" Worth a thought.
- DeathRay2K 6y agoBecause intelligence doesn't translate to popularity?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- free_rms 6y agoIf we actually care about outcomes, then maybe we should use some of that vaunted intelligence to think about winning more. "You're dumb and racist, so vote for us" is apparently not a winning message. And spending hundreds of millions on the same dumb media consulting firms that lose again and again, zero positive message besides "it's us or trump".. I could go on for days about how "smart" the democratic politicians are.
- ineedasername 6y agoPursuit of winning at the cost of values isn't a great path. We certainly see it in a bipartisan selection of politicians, but there's no reason intelligence should win out any more of less to propaganda or misinformation, regardless of which party it comes from, especially because it tends to be a lot easier to convince even inteligent people of an appealing lie than an ugly truth, again regardless of party affiliation.
- free_rms 6y agoThat's what the democrats did, though, by picking Biden over Bernie. And they sucked anyways. What values did Biden communicate during the campaign?
- ineedasername 6y agoAs I said, these things are not constrained to one side or the other. Though Biden was a moderate, and overall there was more support for moderates in the aggregate than for the more extreme progressive views of Bernie. That could just have come down to a more cynical calculation about "electability" though.
- free_rms 6y agoWhomever's downvoting both of us should chill, first off. Second off.. I mean Biden's basically center-right, and he does nothing for any of the values most loudly espoused by the democratic base. He'd have been fired from a FAANG company for the "You're not black" comment, but everyone just agreed to pretend it didn't happen instead because we were stuck with him at that point. So you can't say it's about values instead of winning. The thing is, our values would win. 60-70% of the country supports medicare for all, most people would support a more redistributive tax code, most people don't like the idea of cops shooting their kid, it goes on and on. But the democratic professional class refuses to run on those values, again and again. Do you ever see the Republicans telling the pro-life people to eat shit the way the Democrats consistently tell progressives? No, they make a deal that they'll fight for it, probably lose, but at least they'll fight, and they get votes for it. And the coup de grace is that anyone who questions the democrats' commitment must not really be on our side. Probably a closet racist. It's really kind of genius if your goal is to maintain control of the party.
- apta 6y agoQuite the assumption that intelligent people would only vote liberal.
- TheOtherHobbes 6y agoBecause liberals aren't evil, and it's so much easier to win elections if you're prepared to tell outright lies and manipulate voters on tribal lines. Like this: https://www.timeout.com/newyork/news/a-massive-mural-featuring-20-000-of-trumps-lies-has-been-installed-in-soho-102920 https://www.timeout.com/newyork/news/a-massive-mural-featuri... Even though Clinton and Obama weren't saints - and I have limited respect for both of them - you are going to have a really hard time finding behaviour on that scale on the liberal side. You're also going to find much less evidence of either threatened or actual violence. Even BLM at its worst has never come close to the appalling record of right-wing violence in the US over the last couple of decades. https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/10/27/in-america-far-right-terrorist-plots-have-outnumbered-far-left-ones-in-2020 https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/10/27/in-ameri... So that's why liberals "lose" - we're far less likely to feel comfortable with lying, cheating, bullying, violence, and intimidation. And for a substantial percentage of right-wing supporters those seem to be considered admirable moral features, not bugs. Disagree? Provide evidence of general trends, not specifics.
- hackinthebochs 6y ago>Why else would most Trump voters come from rural areas? Because the political and cultural interests of rural areas are different than the interests of urban areas? The economies of rural areas have crumbled. But 50% of the population live in cities and so economic policies that benefit the "majority" of the population will completely miss the issues rural areas face. Trump's support is because he at least pretends to care about them.
- flowerlad 6y ago> pretends to care about them. And that's why I said: Not bad people, but gullible people.
- hackinthebochs 6y agoYou're missing the point. It's not that they're gullible, it's that one side ignores them completely and the other side is speaking to them. It doesn't matter that the guy telling you what you want to hear is probably lying, its still a better spot than the guy that ignores you because they don't want or need your vote.
- lawnchair_larry 6y agoIt’s amazing how many people in the left still don’t get this. Trump supporters absolutely did not vote for him out of gullibility. They got exactly what they expected.
- ineedasername 6y agoAlso rural areas see much less of the impact that government has. They see less infrastructure, they see less of the masses of students that have to be educated, etc. They tend to be pro-small government because they don't have a daily view of the impact government has on daily life. I don't view that as gullible, I view that as a perspective that is incomplete due to geographical circumstances. And I am sure that's probably a road that goes both ways, with people in urban & suburban areas not seeing the full picture with respect to rural society.
- adventured 6y ago> The bulk of Trump voters are from rural areas, and tend to be less (or un-)educated. You're of course ignoring even worse problems on the Democrat side. The lowest education rates and highest drop-out rates in the US are not in rural areas, they're almost exclusively in the inner cities where Democrats tend to completely dominate the vote. Rural students at 87% are more likely to graduate from high school in four years than the national average at 83%. The graduation rate by comparison in Washington DC public schools is typically around 65%-70%. Shall I list all the major blue cities by graduation rates, or is that not necessary because everyone already knows what the outcomes actually look like? The persistent low education and high drop-out rate problems in so many major Democrat dominated cities (eg: Philly, Los Angeles, Baltimore, Detroit, Atlanta, Cleveland, Milwaukee, DC, etc.) is terrifying as an American. They're rates that low-development nations might be ashamed of. The left pretends none of that exists when it's inconvenient, like when making blanket statements about Republican voter education levels.
- kaitai 6y agoI feel like your answer is sort of in bad faith. I live in an urban area, and people are quite concerned about the dropout rate (and more to the point that I think you're trying to imply but are dancing around for your own reasons, the racial achievement gaps). But I guess we put a different spin on it: we are ashamed of it, we should be ashamed of it, and we bring it up a lot in political races and on billboards and in conversations about who to elect to the School Board. Have we been effective in fixing it? Not really. But it's not because of propaganda purposes -- it's because it's a hard problem that's intertwined with questions of financial capital and stability and health care and justice and environment. Anyhow, in the United States, all citizens have the vote, and an uneducated urban vote and an uneducated rural vote are both votes, though due to our unequal representation the rural vote is 'worth' more.
- majormajor 6y agoIn sports terms, if a penalty is committed, we give the other team some compensation. Like a pass interference penalty. Because it's not fair to make a team go for the same goal when they've gotten cheated... In the US, we scream bloody murder at most attempts to even out those starting point disparities that our ancestors caused... when I was in school, one favorite trick to do instead was to stick Magnet programs in poor schools to import kids from the rest of the city to try to bring up some of the numbers, rather than focusing on the kids who weren't doing well in the first place. It makes for a wonderful self-fulfilling "these people are worth less because they accomplish less so it's out of our hands so we have no need to try to make right our past wrongs" story.
- apta 6y agoI know Trump voters who are extremely well educated, this is not an argument. Secondly, if by "educated" you mean holding a piece of paper, we already know that many colleges these days are infested by the far left, so again it is not an argument. What you care about are critical thinkers, and there's a much bigger disparity there. I'd argue that many college degree holders are not good critical thinkers.
- newusragain1 6y agoHaving lived in San Francisco has definitely changed my perspective. An area with supposedly lots of intelligent people continuously votes for the worst politicians, leading to one of the worst managed cities in this country when it comes to property crime, drug use, cost of living, and homelessness.
- nl 6y agoI think a large proportion of Trump voters believe parts of QAnon-pushed conspiracy theories - especially that he is "taking on a Deep State conspiracy", and data indicates some support for that[1][2]. Surely they don't believe the "blood drinking paedophile" part though? It seems outrageous, and yet I know a bunch of people on HN believed PizzaGate back in 2016, so maybe I'm underestimating it. [1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/10/22/qanon-poll-finds-half-trump-supporters-believe-baseless-claims/3725567001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/10/22/qano... [2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/tommybeer/2020/09/02/majority-of-republicans-believe-the-qanon-conspiracy-theory-is-partly-or-mostly-true-survey-finds/?sh=2ad5dfd65231 https://www.forbes.com/sites/tommybeer/2020/09/02/majority-o...
- nl 6y agoThe downvotes on this are very aggressive and I'd love to know why. Do people think my summary of the data is wrong or that I'm underestimating the depth of it?
- _jal 6y agoTroll swarm. Enjoy the ride.
- nl 6y agoThanks. The good thing about having been on HN for a while is that I don't really need to care about troll voting.
- ineedasername 6y agoAlso there's often a trend I've noticed in some of my own down voted comments that an initial negative turns positive as curious readers want to see what was so bad, realize it was nothing, and upvote.
- nl 6y ago
- Der_Einzige 6y agoI'm guessing but I bet that about 30-40% of his voters believe it.
- _jal 6y agoI don't know what you consider 'bulk'. I would say that candidates pushing a three year old conspiracy theory doing better in elections than, say, the Libertarian or Green candidates demonstrates some mass. I would say the US president supporting it gives it some mass. Pretending it is not a significant force in Republican politics is either spin or an ostrich impersonation, not sure which.
- slg 6y agoTo put some numbers to it here are results from a Morning Consult poll[1]: >Republicans, in particular, have been drawn to QAnon, with 38 percent of GOP adults who had heard of QAnon saying they believed the claims were at least somewhat accurate, compared to 18 percent of Democrats and 16 percent of independents. Strangely enough Democrats and Independents were more likely to have an opinion of QAnon than Republicans. However they were much less likely to believe any of it with 63% of Democrats labeled it somewhat or completely inaccurate while only 24% of Republicans did. This also seems to be another strike against the idea of "shy Trump voters" because I think there is a bigger social stigma against QAnon than Trump. Although I guess maybe the Republicans who are saying they aren't aware of or have no opinion of QAnon could be "shy QAnon believers". [1] - https://morningconsult.com/2020/10/14/social-media-qanon-poll/ https://morningconsult.com/2020/10/14/social-media-qanon-pol...
- shajznnckfke 6y agoI don’t find it too surprising that more Democrats have an opinion of QAnon. There’s a small segment of people who actually have consumed the material and believe in it, and a much larger set who have heard of it and have a vague (and possibly wrong) notion of what “side” it’s on. I think due to the repugnant nature of the movement, most of that commentary is going to come from the left, so mostly left-wing people will form an opinion. Most of the people who are favorable toward QAnon in those polls on both the left and right probably have little idea of what it actually is. See: https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/05/28/bush-did-north-dakota/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/05/28/bush-did-north-dakota/
- irrational 6y agoAnecdotal, but every single person I've spoken to who voted for Trump does believe one or more of these conspiracy theories.
- apta 6y agoWhat's your sample size?
- irrational 6y agoAbout 27 people in 5 different states.
- kenjackson 6y agoAnecdotally, I’ve seen the same thing. It’s weird because outside of these political conspiracies, they don’t really have any other odd beliefs as far as I know.
- christophilus 6y agoI know a lot of Trump voters, and I’m not aware of any who believe these things. It might be my own bubble, though. They voted almost exclusively due to the abortion issue.
- tempestn 6y agoYeah, I think that's a separate category. I've tried to engage with a number of Trump supporters, as I'd really like to understand how reasonable, ethical people could vote for someone I see as so despicable and dangerous. Obviously I'm missing something, and I honestly don't want to think that half the US population is unreasonable on unethical. I've found that the most reasonable people tend to be staunchly pro life. And I can see that—if you truly believed abortion was murder, it would be reasonable to support almost anyone who might stop it. I don't believe that, but I can respect it. Others tend to believe things about the world that I don't think are true, like climate change isn't a big deal, other countries have been taking advantage of the US for decades, democrats are controlled by the military-industrial complex, etc. Their conclusions might be reasonable if you take their beliefs as fact, but I think their starting position is flawed. And then there are of course those who aren't reasonable. Those who just enjoy watching Trump troll libs. Those who want to see the whole system burn. Those who just believe whatever Fox or Breitbart or whatever says. Etc. I mean, I'm sure I have my own biases. I despise the very thought of the man, because of the way he acts and how he doesn't care about the damage he does. But I'm sure that feeling makes it difficult for me to see any of his positive qualities, or that someone could (perhaps rationally?) value those qualities over the negative ones I see. So far though, I haven't been able to find evidence to change my mind.
- zimablue 6y agoIt’s about 40%, look it up there’s polling on it, and that’s apparently probably over representing the more trusting/sane ones. Partly joking on the last part dunno how the populated those polls.
- rcstank 6y ago> there's polling on it Ironic, right? How do we trust any political based polling that got things so very wrong the past two elections?
- thu2111 6y agoYeah but polls routinely show that 4% of people think Obama is a lizard: https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/12/noisy-poll-results-and-reptilian-muslim-climatologists-from-mars/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/12/noisy-poll-results-and... Very often you do encounter polls these days where an absurdly huge number of people give hilariously trollish answers to pollsters, and then people take the resulting polls completely seriously. Pollsters try to include 'attention check' questions to catch basic issues like people just pressing yes to every question, but I do see very often polls that quite obviously can't match reality without anyone noticing it. There's something about maths that switches people's brains off.