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When parties reverse their stance, supporters immediately switch their opinions

191 points by nabla9 6y ago

PostThisTooFast 6y ago
Well I would think it depends on who is considered "the party." For example, if any Republican in the USA grows a nut and exhibits integrity, Trumpanzees immediately turn on him or her. So how many "Republicans" in such a situation would have to change their stand to achieve a similar result to what's reported here?
ocdtrekkie 6y ago
This is because the party will ostracize you if you don't conform. You can't survive in a liberal environment if you don't support abortion and you can't survive in a conservative environment if you support gun control. Your friends will argue with you, you'll be surrounded by memes making fun of people who believe what you do. There's incredible social forces to conform to the exact set of beliefs espoused by political parties, which are mostly set by corporate interests. It's a huge part of what the Republican party has struggled with: There's both the clear vision of conservative values and ideals... and Donald Trump. You can practically see on people's faces trying to reconcile their beliefs with party platform. And there's a massive amount of pressure to stay in line with everyone else.
- vkou 6y ago
  > You can't survive in a liberal environment if you don't support abortion and you can't survive in a conservative environment if you support gun control. Would that explain why Catholics, who, ah, generally don't support abortion, are split ~50/50 between blue and red? [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_and_politics_in_the_United_States#Party_affiliation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_and_politics_i...
  - Mountain_Skies 6y ago
    It's more complex than that but does work with the parent's comment. The official policy of the Catholic Church is that abortion is a terrible sin. Many other (but obviously not all) Christian churches have the same views. That does not mean that individual Catholics or their Christian brothers and sisters agree with the views of their churches on abortion or don't always agree that their religious views should be imposed on all of society. Abortion, while an important issue, is just one of thousands that church dogma preaches and there is no party that matches up to any of them completely. Some members of the church simply see the balance of other issues as being greater than the issue of abortion.
    - vkou 6y ago
      So, you are saying that when one social group you belong to (the church) has an inconsistent belief system with another social group you belong to (loose party affiliation), you pick the one that suits your personal opinion on other issues. This begs the question - why do people pick and choose their religious dogma, but not their political dogma? I feel that the answer to this question is 'The world is a little bit more complicated than the parent poster claims.' These claims have little predictive, or explanatory power, given this rather prominent counter-example.
      - Mountain_Skies 6y ago
        Probably because most people don't pick what church they belong to; their parents do that for them. While people do convert between religions, most will stay with what they grew up with and try to make things work within that framework. Sometimes that's not possible so they pick one or the other of their religion or their political ideology. Religion doesn't always lose out and my gut instinct is that it wins out more than politics does but that's more difficult to see since membership and public interaction for religion works differently than it does for political parties.
      - throwawayboise 6y ago
        People pick and choose both. What I have seen is that people generally start with what their parents taught them, but it's not that uncommon for them to end up completely different. And it changes over time. I was very much a "D" voter when I was young (as my parents were) but mostly vote "R" now. I've never been religous though (neither were my parents).
- kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
  The Southern Baptist Convention was pro-abortion for a time. Things can change.
- sk5t 6y ago
  The core disagreements seem more moralistic and personal security issues rather than corporate pandering. The gun manufacturing industry is small and weakly compared to the real players--healthcare, finance, tech, MIC. While the left loves to paint the NRA as evil--and it is a bit, and grossly mismanaged--it is at its core a grassroots organization; rural people and some others will not consent to giving up 2A or being disarmed, full stop. Likewise there are no shadowy "Big Abortion" interests propping up that side of things, nor am I able to think of anyone poised to profit by forbidding it. That said, the no-compromise issues really do have the effect of shoving all the important stuff into the background...
  - ARandomerDude 6y ago
    > Likewise there are no shadowy "Big Abortion" interests propping up that side of things, nor am I able to think of anyone poised to profit by forbidding it. In fact, there are numerous pro-life groups who directly benefit from moving the ball around but never actually winning the game. The same is true of race relations organizations, animal cruelty activists, the NRA, etc. With all of these, the spoken platform may or may not be a good thing, but the largest stakeholders would lose tremendous money and influence if they ever actually won.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - sk5t 6y ago
      You're describing pretty standard "mission creep." I.e. "if the problem this organization exists to address is fixed, fundraising efforts stop and staff must be fired. But we don't want to fire people, so we must perpetually move the goalposts to keep the momentum going." MADD is the classic example here.
    - koheripbal 6y ago
      > benefit from moving the ball around but never actually winning the game. This is exactly how you win elections. If you gain enough single-issue voters you never need to debate the complex issues that might split your base. It's important to portray the situation as if they are losing. Pro-Choice is a great example. Abortion-right are frequently portrayed as "under attack and imminently about to be destroyed" despite almost every SCOTUS judge publicly saying it's "settled law". It is a political form of George Orwell's endless war, and the ultimate distraction. Corporations don't need to fund them directly as politicians are happy to play this game so that corporations can fund THEM directly since the political attention is placed elsewhere.
- binthis25 6y ago
  I normally avoid these political threads on HN, so made another throwaway. I and friends have for a few years discussed the idea of freezing all gun and abortion laws in place for 20 years as a means to declawing the US parties' stranglehold on dialogue.
  - ImprovedSilence 6y ago
    Thats a real interesting thought, it really is issues like these that basically make every other actual issue fade into the background fir many voters. Of course, good luck getting it passed...
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - ddingus 6y ago
    Points for genuine effort. Nice idea. It is very compelling. Sans wedge issues, there is a solid American consensus out there and it trends populist, and does so for simple economic reasons.
    - SV_BubbleTime 6y ago
      I agree, it’s a fun idea. Entirely entirely unrealistic and would go nowhere. Both sides love their wedges. They campaign on they both saber rattle with, they make their careers on them. When they have a chance to make movement, they usually don’t, if they fixed the issue it wouldn’t raise money anymore. Look how many people already say there is a UniParty when looking at pretty shitty things like both sides voting for Iraq war, Patriot Act, meager amounts of citizen Covid relief compared to corporate interests... so take away the wedge issues and the two parties may look far more similar. I’d like to see viable third and fourth party options. No decent person can be entirely red or blue.
      - ddingus 6y ago
        Uniparty is a bit over the top for me, but Washington Economic Consensus is near spot on. That said, you are plenty close to the mark. Subtract the wedges and it is awful bland. I have quit responding to labels directly and nearly always move to clarity first and foremost. Uniparty? Usually this is met with either righteous indignation, or a hard pass, or agreement of some kind. When I ask, "how so?", I tend to understand the other person better and have an opportunity to have a respectable, sometimes productive dialog. Re: more parties I agree with you. Sadly, I do not believe those party options make much sense in our current system. And it is the system, meaning changing it will require similar effort as it does to get anything else done, so... I feel factions, blocs, caucuses can serve a similar role. On the right, the Tea Party was quite effective. Not endorsement, just noting dynamics that apply here. The economic left is contemplating similar ways and means. The other tool we do have is collective action. Class type moves that can deliver very significant incentive to change.
- gizmo686 6y ago
  You still need to account for the leap from party to community. Unless you are active in politics in a capacity that needs party support (such as running for office), you don't really care if the party ostrizes you, as long as the community does not.
  - ocdtrekkie 6y ago
    I've regularly found both issues retaining liberal and conservative friends because I don't fully support the party platform of either. As long as sharing political memes of your party to the community continues, many people are outright pushing away anyone in the middle. Bear in mind, many people's politics and values have become very aligned: If you don't support someone's views on identity issues, for instance, they may not feel they can be friends with you anymore. If you consider abortion to be literal murder, the color it places on someone who supports or has had an abortion, may make friendship similarly challenging.
    - omgwtfbyobbq 6y ago
      You really hit the nail on the head. I've had issues even outside of politics. For whatever reason, if you don't conform to certain beliefs in a group, other members will sooner or later think you're the nail and they're the hammer.
    - asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
      Nobody (ed: I mean, "few people", as of course there are non-zero people who believe this) believes abortion is literal murder. They might say they do, but if there were buildings where actual literal murder were happening it wouldn't be long before people would destroy those places. Folks would lynch abortion providers -- not one or two, but en masse. Plenty of conservative women get abortions. If it were the type of thing that led to social ostracization as a general rule, you'd see articles being written about it. It doesn't. That's actually kind of the point of this article, as I read it: political opinions are very malleable. Tribal identification is one mechanism by which they can be changed. If the tribe decides we're cutting taxes, we change our opinion to favor cutting taxes. If the tribe decides that trans identity is extremely important, we do too. Not because of any overt pressure but simply because of natural herd and instincts. But self-interest is an even stronger hammer with which to shape political opinions. If it is strongly in my economic best interest to get an abortion, there's a pretty decent chance I'm gonna finagle my way to believing it's OK -- at least for me -- even if I "thought it was literal murder" before. It's easy enough to do because abortion has none of the physical hallmarks of literal murder (you know, struggling, screaming victims, blood everywhere, etc.) and society clearly treats it as a different thing, no matter where in the U.S. you live. I have noticed a similar pattern whereby rich liberal friends are slightly less in favor of eating the rich than poor liberal friends, even though the Twitter crowd has pretty much decided where they stand on this issue. Self-interest is a powerful motivator! Us rich folks like to talk about all the entitlements we support but we get a little less comfortable when it comes time to talk about who pays for them. This is just a general rule, it doesn't apply universally by any means. Even this article suggested that there's just a 15% shift in personal opinion directly after a tribe opinion change. But I guess the change grows over time too. I hadn't heard a damn thing about illegal immigrants from my conservative father until about 2016. Now sometimes it seems like every third article he sends me is on that subject. Hey, you know another interesting thing about this: everyone hates literal murder, but somehow murderers families often -- not always, but often -- come around to forgiving them. Sometimes they forgive the murderer so hard that they come to court to support them before they're even convicted, pay for lawyers, etc. You'd almost never do that for someone who wasn't family. Self-interest, family, and tribe are extremely powerful mutators of political and even moral opinion!
- ericb 6y ago
  > This is because the party will ostracize you if you don't conform. Is it? When I debate some partisans, I can't find bedrock logic under their opinions. It's like the opinions are pointers to beliefs they receive from an authority figure. They are unconvinceable--because the decision maker isn't in the room.
  - mxcrossb 6y ago
    I agree. Many political topics are very complex, and it is hard to independently form opinions on them. Humans rely on fallacious shortcuts all the time when making decisions, otherwise we’d be paralyzed. We would see people switching their views even without social pressures.
  - supersour 6y ago
    A book I always recommend on this topic is by Jonathan Haidt "The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion" Also, there is a page in there where Haidt hypothesized that the low agreeableness/asperger personality people actually do better in the startup world precisely because they don't fear being ostracized and thus don't engage in the groupthink showcased in the article. Peter Thiel type people. Of course that's hard to really test one way or another, but the narrative fits...
  - throw0101a 6y ago
    Check out this book on the two major systems of thought (in the US): * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_Politics_(book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_Politics_(book) Probably also worth nothing that our political view point(s) may, to a certain extent, be biologically determined: > Studies have found that subjects with conservative political views have larger amygdalae and are more prone to feeling disgust. Liberals have larger volume of grey matter in the anterior cingulate cortex and are better at detecting errors in recurring patterns. Conservatives have a stronger sympathetic nervous system response to threatening images and are more likely to interpret ambiguous facial expressions as threatening. In general, conservatives are more likely to report larger social networks, more happiness and better self-esteem than liberals. Liberals are more likely to report greater emotional distress, relationship dissatisfaction and experiential hardship and are more open to experience and tolerate uncertainty and disorder better. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biology_and_political_orientation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biology_and_political_orientat...
- AntiImperialist 6y ago
  Yes, it's very frustrating. Just because I'm anti-abortion, people automatically believe I'm "pro-life". I'm far from pro-life. For example, I believe in capital punishment, specially for abortionists.
- colechristensen 6y ago
  It’s not that hard to survive having thoughts of your own, you just have to surround yourself with people that think for themselves and are ok with differences of opinion. More succinctly, separate out intolerant followers from your life. Ok it’s not that easy.
- throwawayboise 6y ago
  > It's a huge part of what the Republican party has struggled with It is, but it's not just them. Mainstream Democrats are more center than the Party. "Defund the Police" did not play well with many centrist Dems.
  - tstrimple 6y ago
    Defund the police wasn't a Democratic Party position no matter how much conservatives try to make it one.
- jariel 6y ago
  That's a different phenom entirely. People flip flop on policies because they are part of social groups, not coherent ideologies. They don't perceive themselves as flip flopping, because of course they have not changed groups. If a 'strong' leader of a group such as the President, characterizes something as positive, followers will buy it. Especially when there is a political divide, people tend to be 'against' ideas as well, much more so if 'the other side' approves or proposes them. If you gave any number of policy recommendations to a random group, and indicated at random they were proposed by either Republicans or Democrats, I suggest you'd get responses more consistent with group alignment than ideological alignment.
- _qulr 6y ago
  > There's both the clear vision of conservative values and ideals... and Donald Trump. I've lived long enough to see the terms "liberal" and "conservative" morph multiple times. (You will too eventually, just watch carefully.) They've long since lost any connection to their origin in classical European political philosophy and have now become merely placeholders to give the pretense that the two major US political parties have some kind of consistent ideological (as opposed to financial) backing, which they don't. There's a certain irony in Barry Goldwater being credited with launching the modern "conservative" movement in the US when Goldwater himself could be considered much more "libertarian" and was opposed to the policies and increasing influence of "conservative Christians" such as Pat Robertson. Scratch either of the two parties and underneath you'll see a very loose coalition of differing, sometimes opposing interests, not a clear set of consistent, unwavering beliefs. It's an ongoing power struggle, and the political labels just reflect the currently dominant group in the power struggle.
zhoujianfu 6y ago
Maybe a direct democracy is the way to go... if there’s no representatives, there’s no parties. People may be more likely to make up their own minds (or at least vote for policies that would obviously help themselves).
- nharada 6y ago
  I don't love the idea of having to vote on every single thing. There's too much to learn -- being properly informed is a full time job. San Francisco and CA in general have a lot of "direct democracy" items on ballots (a couple dozen props each cycle) and nobody really understands more than one or two at the level they probably should. I personally have never read the full text of a CA prop, and I'm guessing most others haven't either.
  - ocdtrekkie 6y ago
    Indeed, the fact that Uber managed to straight up buy a way to undo the law to suit their business... direct democracy doesn't prevent money and influence, which are really the root of political parties.
    - gruez 6y ago
      >Indeed, the fact that Uber managed to straight up buy a way to undo the law to suit their business Did they? Ballotpedia says that the support side outspent the oppose side 10:1, but maybe californians just like their cheap taxi/delivery service (just like they like their cheap apparel/electronics manufactured in developing countries), or they thought that AB-5 is riddled with exemptions already?
  - dantheman 6y ago
    I think that the scope of government has grown so big that it's impossible for representatives to know what's going on, let alone understand the domains. The problem is they're trying to do too much.
    - 6y ago
Mountain_Skies 6y ago
The Battle in Seattle in 1999 was when I first became aware of opposition to globalism. At the time I was confused because I'd always been taught more connections between the peoples and nations of the world was always good. To see people who I recognized as having very similar values to my own fighting so passionately against something I had until then never questioned being good was quite the wake up call to learn more about all sides of the issue. So now it's very odd to me to see many of the same people and groups have turned into cheerleaders for globalism. The position now doesn't seem to be so much a position as an anti-position against the anti-globalist views of the rising populist groups. The speed at which it has happened is what's really surprising.
- jariel 6y ago
  Globalism is not so much about 'connecting people'. It mostly has a neolibaral foundation, and secondarily a governance and NGO ethos. Anti-Globalism in the 1990's was by the Left, and they were against the WTO and mostly neoliberal world order. Anti-Globalism today is much more complicated issue, but with the more popular versions being more or less Nationalist, anti-UN/WHO/Multilaterialism. Personally - I think there are very good arguments on all sides of this subject and it's sad that it's ideologically aligned. Global neoliberalism has brought zillions out of poverty, but has wicked externalizations and a lot of inequality. Globalist institutions have a certain kind of individual corruption (think FIFA) and are also subject to the completely antithetical influences of bad actor states (think Saudi Arabia on Human Rights) etc. and finally, very susceptible to ideological institutionalization, elitism and creeping, ineffectiveness and bureaucracy. Yet at the same time there are some parts of some orgs that are super essential. Like the WHO right now and probably the IPCC for a few reasons.
  - nickik 6y ago
    The whole concept of 'neoliberalism' is simply the far left being angry at literally everybody to the right of them. People from right wing nationalists, libertarians, center leftists all with diverse opinions were all simply called neoliberal. Neoliberalism has never been an actual movement or philosophy or anything coherent but rather is everything the far left doesn't like since the late 70s. What both the left and the right complain about in their 'anti-globalist' is 'we are unhappy with the situation here' and we blame the rest of the globe. The left believes that all changes to the economy they don't like could just not effect them if you didn't have free trade. And the right, by now is basically the party of the white working class has the same issue. This is also why the left is now the pro globalism party, they are now the party of the urban people rather then the (white) working class and cities have much fewer of the problems from change in industrial structure.
thayne 6y ago
This absolutely drives me crazy. I know so many people who simply blindly follow whatever stance their preferred party has on every issue, rather than having their own educated opinion. And since I dare to have my own views on different issues that sometimes align with one party sometimes the other, and sometimes neither, I've seen hatred from both sides.
disgruntled101 6y ago
To be honest you can just go with the reasoning to its logical conclusion and switch your stance depending on what gives you the most personal benefit (clout or material gain) rather than switching based on party stance. From the looks of it all ideology is artificial, imposed on you by others. And personality is the same, an artificial mask set upon yourself by random circumstance. Better free yourself to seek your own gains.
jariel 6y ago
"We don't want no government run healthcare, and keep your goddam hands of my medicare!" - angry person at Obama rally, 2008. Watching the comment boards on all of the various sites, it was hilarious to see FoxNews commenters recently rally behind Trump's $2K last minute populist wrench-in-the-works veto threat/demand. All of a sudden 'empathy for working people' became a really important issue! It was always there of course among rank and file working class, they just needed someone 'patriotic!' to say it. And then the other articles would lament socialism with bated breath. I'm not taking sides here, other than to point out this one very specific and recent populist issue very viscerally demonstrated how this can happen. I should say it's also not entirely duplicitous, the same policy can be arrived at via different principles. In particular, populist-Constitutionalism can be a funny thing when it clashes with ideology, for example, the 1st Amendment doesn't protect 'free speech' at all in the way people think it does, many are surprised to learn. Edit: I should add, in the months leading up to the budgetary standoff, as 'one party' was pushing hard for said stimulus checks, there was no support at all among the Fox News commenting section, at least from my observance. And then when some 'other person supported it' the support was loud and clear.
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  > And then the other articles would lament socialism with bated breath. FWIW there is a line of reasoning in which neither of these is inconsistent. The strongest opposition to socialism is really opposition to central planning, with the consequent inefficiency and corruption that tends to imply. Giving everybody a uniform amount of money is about the smallest amount of central planning you can have and still be said to be doing anything. The decision of what to do with the money goes to the individual rather than the party apparatchiks. It's something you can do (help people) without doing the thing you don't want to do (give power to bureaucracies).
  - jariel 6y ago
    Yes, you can try to bend that reed in the wind, but mass welfare and social assistance is fundamentally, straight up socialism. There is a completely unambiguous divide on that issue in the regular political context - Democrats are 100% on the side of more personal stimulus, and Republicans entirely on the other side. That war plays out like clock work every budgetary period. Trump's last minute monkey-wrench was really interesting for a whole slew of reasons beyond the scope of this, the flip-flop was crystal clear among the commenting proles. The evidence, is of course that 'large stimulus checks' had been pushed by the Dems for months (!) leading up to the final negotiations, and nobody thought they were a good idea until 'Trump Said It'.
samrmay 6y ago
A 15% shift, while quite substantive, is actually a little lower than I would've guessed. I could totally see this number shifting based on geopolitical climate, but that percentage switch is lower than it could be. Perhaps a minor silver lining?
pdevr 6y ago
There is nothing wrong in switching your opinion based on facts that come to light later. Parties and their supporters have every right to do that. However, when a party wrongly or subjectively changes its position, that is when things get murky. Supporters have to either fall in line, or be silent, to be accepted as "one of them".
wilg 6y ago
This is some excellent cynic bait! Is it bad? I dunno. I'm sure people who are Very Rational Independent Thinkers will interpret it that way. But maybe people aren't well informed about the issue, so they go with the group they trust on other issues, because of a shared value system. Maybe there's a public debate which convinces them, or something in the news that provides color on the issue. Or all these things together. Or something else. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- StanislavPetrov 6y ago
  >But maybe people aren't well informed about the issue, so they go with the group they trust on other issues, because of a shared value system. There is one safeguard known generally to the wise, which is an advantage and security to all, but especially to democracies as against despots. What is it? Distrust. -Demosthenes
  - wilg 6y ago
    I mean yea, sure. But I'm not sure we should expect everyone to have done a ton of research on every issue, and for something not very hot button (like presumably support for reducing unemployment benefits in Denmark), and you have a sensible default of the party you currently like's position.
- satyrnein 6y ago
  Yeah, especially since the effect is only 15%. It also seems possible that public sentiment was already shifting, which caused the party to shift, which influenced the undecided 15%. For example, if you look back now in the US, you could probably find that some Democrats started supporting gay marriage after the party changed its stance. It's also the case that the party changed its stance in the middle of a large scale shift in public opinion that was occurring.
- leetcrew 6y ago
  this is a good point. I can't possibly be well-informed on every single important issue. whenever I pick an issue to dive into deeply, I find that my conclusion almost reverses with each layer of the onion that I peel back. eventually I have to stop, still wondering whether the next piece of information would change my stance again.
lawwantsin17 6y ago
No mention of the role the media plays in repeating, repeating, repeating.
yters 6y ago
I have noticed this with Republicans after the advent of Trump. Suddenly things like close ties with Russia or moral transegence, major criticisms of past democrats, either no longer mattered or were suddenly a good thing, i.e. maybe Russia is our friend after all, and character doesn't count that much. It was very strange, especially trying to persuade fellow Republicans that this was happening. I found history started getting revised after the fact, and it felt like maybe I lived in an alternate timeline.
- jariel 6y ago
  It's shameful your comment is down voted because it speaks right to the heart of the issue. Republicans are historically far more Hawkish on Russia, Iran etc. and with Trump was saw the tables reversed. The answer is likely because people attune to groups and individual leaders of those groups more than ideology. Trump supporters accepted his 'Tough on China' but 'Weak on Russia' brand of personal foreign policy essentially because he told them to. It's about him, not ideology or even ideas. Especially with Syria, It's been equally funny watching the centrist Democrats have to push back and make big public statements in support of trying to keep the troops there and stop Trump from pulling out abruptly. People are more consistent with the people they follow than the ideas they maintain.
veridies 6y ago
It's worth noting that this study focuses on two Danish parties. It's honestly not clear that the magnitude of these shifts is consistent — see, for example, https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/797kzj/comment/dozt0rp?context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/797kzj/comment/do..., which convincingly argues that the American parties have different willingnesses to shift in order to follow party orthodox.
philyg 6y ago
Political parties can be harmful because once you have made your allegiance you do not need to expend much energy to research policies and can just support your party's position. That's why there is I think some merit to how some elections are run in Cuba where candidates essentially run as independents. Whatever the motivations of this system are I see multiple benefits: - candidates themselves have to show policy acumen and cannot rely on party policy - Each candidate's personal opinion is therefore more likely to be relayed to the public - less political conformism as large parties cannot dominate - Voters are forced to review policies every election rather than simply voting for the same party/party candidates
- StanislavPetrov 6y ago
  >Political parties can be harmful because once you have made your allegiance you do not need to expend much energy to research policies and can just support your party's position. This isn't just limited to political parties, but group "identity" in general.
ben509 6y ago
I'm skeptical, though not enough to drop $8 on the paper. The quote, "If citizens just blindly follow their party without thinking much about it..." sets of my BS detector, because it's one of those pat statements that (other) people are predictably dumb or gullible. The first problem with saying people take positions uncritically is that you need to determine how interested they are in the subject. Assuming this was a longitudinal study, I'd want to know how much thought respondents had put into an opinion when doing the survey. The simple explanation is the 15% who flipped likely never had strong (or well-developed) opinions in the first place. It's fairly unusual in politics to see reversals without any explanation, simply because politicians have to interact with people who are very invested in politics. And if you read those explanations charitably, most reversals aren't. For instance, government programs are sold to the public with warranties of fitness of purpose. If your welfare program was sold with such a guarantee and doesn't live up to that promise, then you're not reversing yourself to oppose it. It's right to be skeptical of reversals and the explanations, but if you're buying into the notion that people are "blindly" following their leadership, you're probably falling for some cheap partisan rhetoric yourself.
- gruez 6y ago
  >I'm skeptical, though not enough to drop $8 on the paper. you don't have to. https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12550 https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12550
  - ben509 6y ago
    Thanks!
- mparramon 6y ago
  >The quote, "If citizens just blindly follow their party without thinking much about it..." sets of my BS detector, because it's one of those pat statements that (other) people are predictably dumb or gullible. Smart people don’t think others are stupid: https://rochemamabolo.com/2015/06/21/smart-people-dont-think-others-are-stupid/ https://rochemamabolo.com/2015/06/21/smart-people-dont-think...
gwbas1c 6y ago
Good leadership shifts public opinion. When I vote, I pick people who I trust to help me form opinions on subjects I don't know in detail. (Except for climate change,) I don't vote based on a strict adherence to issues; because I want to elect critical thinkers who are leaders.
crunchyfrog 6y ago
Here is a better example: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2017/04/11/daily-202-reflexive-partisanship-drives-polling-lurch-on-syria-strikes/58ec27d4e9b69b3a72331e6e/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-2... However, this won't fit those looking for a "all people/parties are the same" narrative. One party changed their opinion by 64%, the other party was unchanged.
KhoomeiK 6y ago
I've been noticing this shift recently taking place with US party opinions on foreign policy. Republicans have historically been more anti-Russia and hawkish, but during the Trump presidency, Democrats started calling out Trump for getting close with Russia. The Republican voter base has also suddenly turned into a bunch of doves, getting behind Trump's calls to pull out of Syria and Afghanistan.
- castratikron 6y ago
  Something I've been trying to understand lately is Republicans' view of "Big Tech" as the new bogeyman. My impression is that Republicans are generally "business friendly", which can take on forms like a certain Midwest state giving billions in tax cuts for a TV factory to the tune of $200k+/employee, seizing land by eminent domain when necessary. And now only a couple years later you have the same party berating tech CEOs and threatening to regulate or break up Facebook and Twitter. What happened to laissez faire? With regards to ending foreign conflicts, to me it seems more like a desire to return to America's pre-WWII isolationist position. It might be hard to imagine now, but up until Pearl Harbor there was virtually no desire among Americans to enter "Europe's" war (>90% opposed).
- darksaints 6y ago
  That isn't the only thing that Trump has flipped on Republicans. Trade issues are another...Donald Trump has more in common with the 1999 anti-WTO rioters in Seattle than he has had with any Republicans in the same time period. But in comes trump and all of a sudden Republicans and Trade Unionists are in bed together.
  - newfriend 6y ago
    The problem is you people think all Republicans are the same. When there are only two parties, you get a wide variety of views funneled into those parties. Ron Paul was very popular among Republicans. And before him Ross Perot, who basically gave Clinton the White House in 1992 by taking a huge percentage of voters who would have voted for George H.W. Bush. His #1 issue was anti-NAFTA. They didn't "suddenly become doves" or "became anti-trade". They have always been there, but the party didn't have to listen until 2016.
roenxi 6y ago
This is extremely rational. Most people probably only care about 1-2 issues, and pick a party based on that. For all the other issues, the most sensible strategy is to advocate for their party, tying to sway people who care about other issues. That is to say - for any individual, they are part of a faction of their party. For the faction to prosper, the party must prosper. So the individual strategically should advocate for whatever the other factions want without worrying about the details too much.
Imnimo 6y ago
>their voters immediately moved their opinions by around 15% into line with their party. Maybe I don't totally understand what 15% means here, but it sounds like the vast majority of supporters did not switch their opinions? If my interpretation is correct, this title feels very misleading, but it's also possible I'm just misunderstanding.
panny 6y ago
When Fox News reversed their stance, they lost half their audience. This study seems almost like an anecdote as it only studied two issues in a single, small European country. I have a feeling the results aren't reproducible in any meaningful way.
dragonwriter 6y ago
That's kind of expected in a robust multiparty democracy, if you are examining the universe of party members before and members after a change, because people who don't follow where the party is going leave, and the system supports variations on multiple axes. (From the article here, I'm not sure if that's what was studied or not, and I haven't read the underlying study.)
penguin_booze 6y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuius_regio,_eius_religio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuius_regio,_eius_religio
tpoacher 6y ago
"We were always at war with Oceania".
tpoacher 6y ago
Kinda confirms Scott Adams' assertion that the large majority of people do not have personal opinions per se (at least not to the degree that they think they do); they choose an "opinion package" in the sense that their main choice is which media package they choose to consume, and are subsequently assigned their opinions from that; a far more economical heuristic for having a range of complex opinions, than having to weigh each one of them individually.
thinkingemote 6y ago
It's always the other side that polarises things.
voisin 6y ago
Parties have nothing to do with positions on issues and everything to do with choosing a clan to be a part of and a clan to be against.
retpirato 6y ago
I disagree. You should be a member of a party because they share your views, not the other way around.

191 points by nabla9 6y ago

Well I would think it depends on who is considered "the party." For example, if any Republican in the USA grows a nut and exhibits integrity, Trumpanzees immediately turn on him or her. So how many "Republicans" in such a situation would have to change their stand to achieve a similar result to what's reported here?

ocdtrekkie 6y ago

This is because the party will ostracize you if you don't conform. You can't survive in a liberal environment if you don't support abortion and you can't survive in a conservative environment if you support gun control. Your friends will argue with you, you'll be surrounded by memes making fun of people who believe what you do. There's incredible social forces to conform to the exact set of beliefs espoused by political parties, which are mostly set by corporate interests. It's a huge part of what the Republican party has struggled with: There's both the clear vision of conservative values and ideals... and Donald Trump. You can practically see on people's faces trying to reconcile their beliefs with party platform. And there's a massive amount of pressure to stay in line with everyone else.

vkou 6y ago
> You can't survive in a liberal environment if you don't support abortion and you can't survive in a conservative environment if you support gun control. Would that explain why Catholics, who, ah, generally don't support abortion, are split ~50/50 between blue and red? [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_and_politics_in_the_United_States#Party_affiliation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_and_politics_i...
- Mountain_Skies 6y ago
  It's more complex than that but does work with the parent's comment. The official policy of the Catholic Church is that abortion is a terrible sin. Many other (but obviously not all) Christian churches have the same views. That does not mean that individual Catholics or their Christian brothers and sisters agree with the views of their churches on abortion or don't always agree that their religious views should be imposed on all of society. Abortion, while an important issue, is just one of thousands that church dogma preaches and there is no party that matches up to any of them completely. Some members of the church simply see the balance of other issues as being greater than the issue of abortion.
  - vkou 6y ago
    So, you are saying that when one social group you belong to (the church) has an inconsistent belief system with another social group you belong to (loose party affiliation), you pick the one that suits your personal opinion on other issues. This begs the question - why do people pick and choose their religious dogma, but not their political dogma? I feel that the answer to this question is 'The world is a little bit more complicated than the parent poster claims.' These claims have little predictive, or explanatory power, given this rather prominent counter-example.
    - Mountain_Skies 6y ago
      Probably because most people don't pick what church they belong to; their parents do that for them. While people do convert between religions, most will stay with what they grew up with and try to make things work within that framework. Sometimes that's not possible so they pick one or the other of their religion or their political ideology. Religion doesn't always lose out and my gut instinct is that it wins out more than politics does but that's more difficult to see since membership and public interaction for religion works differently than it does for political parties.
    - throwawayboise 6y ago
      People pick and choose both. What I have seen is that people generally start with what their parents taught them, but it's not that uncommon for them to end up completely different. And it changes over time. I was very much a "D" voter when I was young (as my parents were) but mostly vote "R" now. I've never been religous though (neither were my parents).
kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
The Southern Baptist Convention was pro-abortion for a time. Things can change.
sk5t 6y ago
The core disagreements seem more moralistic and personal security issues rather than corporate pandering. The gun manufacturing industry is small and weakly compared to the real players--healthcare, finance, tech, MIC. While the left loves to paint the NRA as evil--and it is a bit, and grossly mismanaged--it is at its core a grassroots organization; rural people and some others will not consent to giving up 2A or being disarmed, full stop. Likewise there are no shadowy "Big Abortion" interests propping up that side of things, nor am I able to think of anyone poised to profit by forbidding it. That said, the no-compromise issues really do have the effect of shoving all the important stuff into the background...
- ARandomerDude 6y ago
  > Likewise there are no shadowy "Big Abortion" interests propping up that side of things, nor am I able to think of anyone poised to profit by forbidding it. In fact, there are numerous pro-life groups who directly benefit from moving the ball around but never actually winning the game. The same is true of race relations organizations, animal cruelty activists, the NRA, etc. With all of these, the spoken platform may or may not be a good thing, but the largest stakeholders would lose tremendous money and influence if they ever actually won.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - sk5t 6y ago
    You're describing pretty standard "mission creep." I.e. "if the problem this organization exists to address is fixed, fundraising efforts stop and staff must be fired. But we don't want to fire people, so we must perpetually move the goalposts to keep the momentum going." MADD is the classic example here.
  - koheripbal 6y ago
    > benefit from moving the ball around but never actually winning the game. This is exactly how you win elections. If you gain enough single-issue voters you never need to debate the complex issues that might split your base. It's important to portray the situation as if they are losing. Pro-Choice is a great example. Abortion-right are frequently portrayed as "under attack and imminently about to be destroyed" despite almost every SCOTUS judge publicly saying it's "settled law". It is a political form of George Orwell's endless war, and the ultimate distraction. Corporations don't need to fund them directly as politicians are happy to play this game so that corporations can fund THEM directly since the political attention is placed elsewhere.
binthis25 6y ago
I normally avoid these political threads on HN, so made another throwaway. I and friends have for a few years discussed the idea of freezing all gun and abortion laws in place for 20 years as a means to declawing the US parties' stranglehold on dialogue.
- ImprovedSilence 6y ago
  Thats a real interesting thought, it really is issues like these that basically make every other actual issue fade into the background fir many voters. Of course, good luck getting it passed...
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- ddingus 6y ago
  Points for genuine effort. Nice idea. It is very compelling. Sans wedge issues, there is a solid American consensus out there and it trends populist, and does so for simple economic reasons.
  - SV_BubbleTime 6y ago
    I agree, it’s a fun idea. Entirely entirely unrealistic and would go nowhere. Both sides love their wedges. They campaign on they both saber rattle with, they make their careers on them. When they have a chance to make movement, they usually don’t, if they fixed the issue it wouldn’t raise money anymore. Look how many people already say there is a UniParty when looking at pretty shitty things like both sides voting for Iraq war, Patriot Act, meager amounts of citizen Covid relief compared to corporate interests... so take away the wedge issues and the two parties may look far more similar. I’d like to see viable third and fourth party options. No decent person can be entirely red or blue.
    - ddingus 6y ago
      Uniparty is a bit over the top for me, but Washington Economic Consensus is near spot on. That said, you are plenty close to the mark. Subtract the wedges and it is awful bland. I have quit responding to labels directly and nearly always move to clarity first and foremost. Uniparty? Usually this is met with either righteous indignation, or a hard pass, or agreement of some kind. When I ask, "how so?", I tend to understand the other person better and have an opportunity to have a respectable, sometimes productive dialog. Re: more parties I agree with you. Sadly, I do not believe those party options make much sense in our current system. And it is the system, meaning changing it will require similar effort as it does to get anything else done, so... I feel factions, blocs, caucuses can serve a similar role. On the right, the Tea Party was quite effective. Not endorsement, just noting dynamics that apply here. The economic left is contemplating similar ways and means. The other tool we do have is collective action. Class type moves that can deliver very significant incentive to change.
gizmo686 6y ago
You still need to account for the leap from party to community. Unless you are active in politics in a capacity that needs party support (such as running for office), you don't really care if the party ostrizes you, as long as the community does not.
- ocdtrekkie 6y ago
  I've regularly found both issues retaining liberal and conservative friends because I don't fully support the party platform of either. As long as sharing political memes of your party to the community continues, many people are outright pushing away anyone in the middle. Bear in mind, many people's politics and values have become very aligned: If you don't support someone's views on identity issues, for instance, they may not feel they can be friends with you anymore. If you consider abortion to be literal murder, the color it places on someone who supports or has had an abortion, may make friendship similarly challenging.
  - omgwtfbyobbq 6y ago
    You really hit the nail on the head. I've had issues even outside of politics. For whatever reason, if you don't conform to certain beliefs in a group, other members will sooner or later think you're the nail and they're the hammer.
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
    Nobody (ed: I mean, "few people", as of course there are non-zero people who believe this) believes abortion is literal murder. They might say they do, but if there were buildings where actual literal murder were happening it wouldn't be long before people would destroy those places. Folks would lynch abortion providers -- not one or two, but en masse. Plenty of conservative women get abortions. If it were the type of thing that led to social ostracization as a general rule, you'd see articles being written about it. It doesn't. That's actually kind of the point of this article, as I read it: political opinions are very malleable. Tribal identification is one mechanism by which they can be changed. If the tribe decides we're cutting taxes, we change our opinion to favor cutting taxes. If the tribe decides that trans identity is extremely important, we do too. Not because of any overt pressure but simply because of natural herd and instincts. But self-interest is an even stronger hammer with which to shape political opinions. If it is strongly in my economic best interest to get an abortion, there's a pretty decent chance I'm gonna finagle my way to believing it's OK -- at least for me -- even if I "thought it was literal murder" before. It's easy enough to do because abortion has none of the physical hallmarks of literal murder (you know, struggling, screaming victims, blood everywhere, etc.) and society clearly treats it as a different thing, no matter where in the U.S. you live. I have noticed a similar pattern whereby rich liberal friends are slightly less in favor of eating the rich than poor liberal friends, even though the Twitter crowd has pretty much decided where they stand on this issue. Self-interest is a powerful motivator! Us rich folks like to talk about all the entitlements we support but we get a little less comfortable when it comes time to talk about who pays for them. This is just a general rule, it doesn't apply universally by any means. Even this article suggested that there's just a 15% shift in personal opinion directly after a tribe opinion change. But I guess the change grows over time too. I hadn't heard a damn thing about illegal immigrants from my conservative father until about 2016. Now sometimes it seems like every third article he sends me is on that subject. Hey, you know another interesting thing about this: everyone hates literal murder, but somehow murderers families often -- not always, but often -- come around to forgiving them. Sometimes they forgive the murderer so hard that they come to court to support them before they're even convicted, pay for lawyers, etc. You'd almost never do that for someone who wasn't family. Self-interest, family, and tribe are extremely powerful mutators of political and even moral opinion!
ericb 6y ago
> This is because the party will ostracize you if you don't conform. Is it? When I debate some partisans, I can't find bedrock logic under their opinions. It's like the opinions are pointers to beliefs they receive from an authority figure. They are unconvinceable--because the decision maker isn't in the room.
- mxcrossb 6y ago
  I agree. Many political topics are very complex, and it is hard to independently form opinions on them. Humans rely on fallacious shortcuts all the time when making decisions, otherwise we’d be paralyzed. We would see people switching their views even without social pressures.
- supersour 6y ago
  A book I always recommend on this topic is by Jonathan Haidt "The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion" Also, there is a page in there where Haidt hypothesized that the low agreeableness/asperger personality people actually do better in the startup world precisely because they don't fear being ostracized and thus don't engage in the groupthink showcased in the article. Peter Thiel type people. Of course that's hard to really test one way or another, but the narrative fits...
- throw0101a 6y ago
  Check out this book on the two major systems of thought (in the US): * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_Politics_(book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_Politics_(book) Probably also worth nothing that our political view point(s) may, to a certain extent, be biologically determined: > Studies have found that subjects with conservative political views have larger amygdalae and are more prone to feeling disgust. Liberals have larger volume of grey matter in the anterior cingulate cortex and are better at detecting errors in recurring patterns. Conservatives have a stronger sympathetic nervous system response to threatening images and are more likely to interpret ambiguous facial expressions as threatening. In general, conservatives are more likely to report larger social networks, more happiness and better self-esteem than liberals. Liberals are more likely to report greater emotional distress, relationship dissatisfaction and experiential hardship and are more open to experience and tolerate uncertainty and disorder better. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biology_and_political_orientation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biology_and_political_orientat...
AntiImperialist 6y ago
Yes, it's very frustrating. Just because I'm anti-abortion, people automatically believe I'm "pro-life". I'm far from pro-life. For example, I believe in capital punishment, specially for abortionists.
colechristensen 6y ago
It’s not that hard to survive having thoughts of your own, you just have to surround yourself with people that think for themselves and are ok with differences of opinion. More succinctly, separate out intolerant followers from your life. Ok it’s not that easy.
throwawayboise 6y ago
> It's a huge part of what the Republican party has struggled with It is, but it's not just them. Mainstream Democrats are more center than the Party. "Defund the Police" did not play well with many centrist Dems.
- tstrimple 6y ago
  Defund the police wasn't a Democratic Party position no matter how much conservatives try to make it one.
jariel 6y ago
That's a different phenom entirely. People flip flop on policies because they are part of social groups, not coherent ideologies. They don't perceive themselves as flip flopping, because of course they have not changed groups. If a 'strong' leader of a group such as the President, characterizes something as positive, followers will buy it. Especially when there is a political divide, people tend to be 'against' ideas as well, much more so if 'the other side' approves or proposes them. If you gave any number of policy recommendations to a random group, and indicated at random they were proposed by either Republicans or Democrats, I suggest you'd get responses more consistent with group alignment than ideological alignment.
_qulr 6y ago
> There's both the clear vision of conservative values and ideals... and Donald Trump. I've lived long enough to see the terms "liberal" and "conservative" morph multiple times. (You will too eventually, just watch carefully.) They've long since lost any connection to their origin in classical European political philosophy and have now become merely placeholders to give the pretense that the two major US political parties have some kind of consistent ideological (as opposed to financial) backing, which they don't. There's a certain irony in Barry Goldwater being credited with launching the modern "conservative" movement in the US when Goldwater himself could be considered much more "libertarian" and was opposed to the policies and increasing influence of "conservative Christians" such as Pat Robertson. Scratch either of the two parties and underneath you'll see a very loose coalition of differing, sometimes opposing interests, not a clear set of consistent, unwavering beliefs. It's an ongoing power struggle, and the political labels just reflect the currently dominant group in the power struggle.

zhoujianfu 6y ago

Maybe a direct democracy is the way to go... if there’s no representatives, there’s no parties. People may be more likely to make up their own minds (or at least vote for policies that would obviously help themselves).

nharada 6y ago
I don't love the idea of having to vote on every single thing. There's too much to learn -- being properly informed is a full time job. San Francisco and CA in general have a lot of "direct democracy" items on ballots (a couple dozen props each cycle) and nobody really understands more than one or two at the level they probably should. I personally have never read the full text of a CA prop, and I'm guessing most others haven't either.
- ocdtrekkie 6y ago
  Indeed, the fact that Uber managed to straight up buy a way to undo the law to suit their business... direct democracy doesn't prevent money and influence, which are really the root of political parties.
  - gruez 6y ago
    >Indeed, the fact that Uber managed to straight up buy a way to undo the law to suit their business Did they? Ballotpedia says that the support side outspent the oppose side 10:1, but maybe californians just like their cheap taxi/delivery service (just like they like their cheap apparel/electronics manufactured in developing countries), or they thought that AB-5 is riddled with exemptions already?
- dantheman 6y ago
  I think that the scope of government has grown so big that it's impossible for representatives to know what's going on, let alone understand the domains. The problem is they're trying to do too much.
  - 6y ago

Mountain_Skies 6y ago

The Battle in Seattle in 1999 was when I first became aware of opposition to globalism. At the time I was confused because I'd always been taught more connections between the peoples and nations of the world was always good. To see people who I recognized as having very similar values to my own fighting so passionately against something I had until then never questioned being good was quite the wake up call to learn more about all sides of the issue. So now it's very odd to me to see many of the same people and groups have turned into cheerleaders for globalism. The position now doesn't seem to be so much a position as an anti-position against the anti-globalist views of the rising populist groups. The speed at which it has happened is what's really surprising.

jariel 6y ago
Globalism is not so much about 'connecting people'. It mostly has a neolibaral foundation, and secondarily a governance and NGO ethos. Anti-Globalism in the 1990's was by the Left, and they were against the WTO and mostly neoliberal world order. Anti-Globalism today is much more complicated issue, but with the more popular versions being more or less Nationalist, anti-UN/WHO/Multilaterialism. Personally - I think there are very good arguments on all sides of this subject and it's sad that it's ideologically aligned. Global neoliberalism has brought zillions out of poverty, but has wicked externalizations and a lot of inequality. Globalist institutions have a certain kind of individual corruption (think FIFA) and are also subject to the completely antithetical influences of bad actor states (think Saudi Arabia on Human Rights) etc. and finally, very susceptible to ideological institutionalization, elitism and creeping, ineffectiveness and bureaucracy. Yet at the same time there are some parts of some orgs that are super essential. Like the WHO right now and probably the IPCC for a few reasons.
- nickik 6y ago
  The whole concept of 'neoliberalism' is simply the far left being angry at literally everybody to the right of them. People from right wing nationalists, libertarians, center leftists all with diverse opinions were all simply called neoliberal. Neoliberalism has never been an actual movement or philosophy or anything coherent but rather is everything the far left doesn't like since the late 70s. What both the left and the right complain about in their 'anti-globalist' is 'we are unhappy with the situation here' and we blame the rest of the globe. The left believes that all changes to the economy they don't like could just not effect them if you didn't have free trade. And the right, by now is basically the party of the white working class has the same issue. This is also why the left is now the pro globalism party, they are now the party of the urban people rather then the (white) working class and cities have much fewer of the problems from change in industrial structure.

thayne 6y ago

This absolutely drives me crazy. I know so many people who simply blindly follow whatever stance their preferred party has on every issue, rather than having their own educated opinion. And since I dare to have my own views on different issues that sometimes align with one party sometimes the other, and sometimes neither, I've seen hatred from both sides.

disgruntled101 6y ago

To be honest you can just go with the reasoning to its logical conclusion and switch your stance depending on what gives you the most personal benefit (clout or material gain) rather than switching based on party stance. From the looks of it all ideology is artificial, imposed on you by others. And personality is the same, an artificial mask set upon yourself by random circumstance. Better free yourself to seek your own gains.

jariel 6y ago

"We don't want no government run healthcare, and keep your goddam hands of my medicare!" - angry person at Obama rally, 2008. Watching the comment boards on all of the various sites, it was hilarious to see FoxNews commenters recently rally behind Trump's $2K last minute populist wrench-in-the-works veto threat/demand. All of a sudden 'empathy for working people' became a really important issue! It was always there of course among rank and file working class, they just needed someone 'patriotic!' to say it. And then the other articles would lament socialism with bated breath. I'm not taking sides here, other than to point out this one very specific and recent populist issue very viscerally demonstrated how this can happen. I should say it's also not entirely duplicitous, the same policy can be arrived at via different principles. In particular, populist-Constitutionalism can be a funny thing when it clashes with ideology, for example, the 1st Amendment doesn't protect 'free speech' at all in the way people think it does, many are surprised to learn. Edit: I should add, in the months leading up to the budgetary standoff, as 'one party' was pushing hard for said stimulus checks, there was no support at all among the Fox News commenting section, at least from my observance. And then when some 'other person supported it' the support was loud and clear.

AnthonyMouse 6y ago
> And then the other articles would lament socialism with bated breath. FWIW there is a line of reasoning in which neither of these is inconsistent. The strongest opposition to socialism is really opposition to central planning, with the consequent inefficiency and corruption that tends to imply. Giving everybody a uniform amount of money is about the smallest amount of central planning you can have and still be said to be doing anything. The decision of what to do with the money goes to the individual rather than the party apparatchiks. It's something you can do (help people) without doing the thing you don't want to do (give power to bureaucracies).
- jariel 6y ago
  Yes, you can try to bend that reed in the wind, but mass welfare and social assistance is fundamentally, straight up socialism. There is a completely unambiguous divide on that issue in the regular political context - Democrats are 100% on the side of more personal stimulus, and Republicans entirely on the other side. That war plays out like clock work every budgetary period. Trump's last minute monkey-wrench was really interesting for a whole slew of reasons beyond the scope of this, the flip-flop was crystal clear among the commenting proles. The evidence, is of course that 'large stimulus checks' had been pushed by the Dems for months (!) leading up to the final negotiations, and nobody thought they were a good idea until 'Trump Said It'.

samrmay 6y ago

A 15% shift, while quite substantive, is actually a little lower than I would've guessed. I could totally see this number shifting based on geopolitical climate, but that percentage switch is lower than it could be. Perhaps a minor silver lining?

pdevr 6y ago

There is nothing wrong in switching your opinion based on facts that come to light later. Parties and their supporters have every right to do that. However, when a party wrongly or subjectively changes its position, that is when things get murky. Supporters have to either fall in line, or be silent, to be accepted as "one of them".

wilg 6y ago

This is some excellent cynic bait! Is it bad? I dunno. I'm sure people who are Very Rational Independent Thinkers will interpret it that way. But maybe people aren't well informed about the issue, so they go with the group they trust on other issues, because of a shared value system. Maybe there's a public debate which convinces them, or something in the news that provides color on the issue. Or all these things together. Or something else. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

StanislavPetrov 6y ago
>But maybe people aren't well informed about the issue, so they go with the group they trust on other issues, because of a shared value system. There is one safeguard known generally to the wise, which is an advantage and security to all, but especially to democracies as against despots. What is it? Distrust. -Demosthenes
- wilg 6y ago
  I mean yea, sure. But I'm not sure we should expect everyone to have done a ton of research on every issue, and for something not very hot button (like presumably support for reducing unemployment benefits in Denmark), and you have a sensible default of the party you currently like's position.
satyrnein 6y ago
Yeah, especially since the effect is only 15%. It also seems possible that public sentiment was already shifting, which caused the party to shift, which influenced the undecided 15%. For example, if you look back now in the US, you could probably find that some Democrats started supporting gay marriage after the party changed its stance. It's also the case that the party changed its stance in the middle of a large scale shift in public opinion that was occurring.
leetcrew 6y ago
this is a good point. I can't possibly be well-informed on every single important issue. whenever I pick an issue to dive into deeply, I find that my conclusion almost reverses with each layer of the onion that I peel back. eventually I have to stop, still wondering whether the next piece of information would change my stance again.

lawwantsin17 6y ago

No mention of the role the media plays in repeating, repeating, repeating.

yters 6y ago

I have noticed this with Republicans after the advent of Trump. Suddenly things like close ties with Russia or moral transegence, major criticisms of past democrats, either no longer mattered or were suddenly a good thing, i.e. maybe Russia is our friend after all, and character doesn't count that much. It was very strange, especially trying to persuade fellow Republicans that this was happening. I found history started getting revised after the fact, and it felt like maybe I lived in an alternate timeline.

jariel 6y ago
It's shameful your comment is down voted because it speaks right to the heart of the issue. Republicans are historically far more Hawkish on Russia, Iran etc. and with Trump was saw the tables reversed. The answer is likely because people attune to groups and individual leaders of those groups more than ideology. Trump supporters accepted his 'Tough on China' but 'Weak on Russia' brand of personal foreign policy essentially because he told them to. It's about him, not ideology or even ideas. Especially with Syria, It's been equally funny watching the centrist Democrats have to push back and make big public statements in support of trying to keep the troops there and stop Trump from pulling out abruptly. People are more consistent with the people they follow than the ideas they maintain.

veridies 6y ago

It's worth noting that this study focuses on two Danish parties. It's honestly not clear that the magnitude of these shifts is consistent — see, for example, https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/797kzj/comment/dozt0rp?context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/797kzj/comment/do..., which convincingly argues that the American parties have different willingnesses to shift in order to follow party orthodox.

philyg 6y ago

Political parties can be harmful because once you have made your allegiance you do not need to expend much energy to research policies and can just support your party's position. That's why there is I think some merit to how some elections are run in Cuba where candidates essentially run as independents. Whatever the motivations of this system are I see multiple benefits: - candidates themselves have to show policy acumen and cannot rely on party policy - Each candidate's personal opinion is therefore more likely to be relayed to the public - less political conformism as large parties cannot dominate - Voters are forced to review policies every election rather than simply voting for the same party/party candidates

StanislavPetrov 6y ago
>Political parties can be harmful because once you have made your allegiance you do not need to expend much energy to research policies and can just support your party's position. This isn't just limited to political parties, but group "identity" in general.

ben509 6y ago

I'm skeptical, though not enough to drop $8 on the paper. The quote, "If citizens just blindly follow their party without thinking much about it..." sets of my BS detector, because it's one of those pat statements that (other) people are predictably dumb or gullible. The first problem with saying people take positions uncritically is that you need to determine how interested they are in the subject. Assuming this was a longitudinal study, I'd want to know how much thought respondents had put into an opinion when doing the survey. The simple explanation is the 15% who flipped likely never had strong (or well-developed) opinions in the first place. It's fairly unusual in politics to see reversals without any explanation, simply because politicians have to interact with people who are very invested in politics. And if you read those explanations charitably, most reversals aren't. For instance, government programs are sold to the public with warranties of fitness of purpose. If your welfare program was sold with such a guarantee and doesn't live up to that promise, then you're not reversing yourself to oppose it. It's right to be skeptical of reversals and the explanations, but if you're buying into the notion that people are "blindly" following their leadership, you're probably falling for some cheap partisan rhetoric yourself.

gruez 6y ago
>I'm skeptical, though not enough to drop $8 on the paper. you don't have to. https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12550 https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12550
- ben509 6y ago
  Thanks!
mparramon 6y ago
>The quote, "If citizens just blindly follow their party without thinking much about it..." sets of my BS detector, because it's one of those pat statements that (other) people are predictably dumb or gullible. Smart people don’t think others are stupid: https://rochemamabolo.com/2015/06/21/smart-people-dont-think-others-are-stupid/ https://rochemamabolo.com/2015/06/21/smart-people-dont-think...

gwbas1c 6y ago

Good leadership shifts public opinion. When I vote, I pick people who I trust to help me form opinions on subjects I don't know in detail. (Except for climate change,) I don't vote based on a strict adherence to issues; because I want to elect critical thinkers who are leaders.

crunchyfrog 6y ago

Here is a better example: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2017/04/11/daily-202-reflexive-partisanship-drives-polling-lurch-on-syria-strikes/58ec27d4e9b69b3a72331e6e/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-2... However, this won't fit those looking for a "all people/parties are the same" narrative. One party changed their opinion by 64%, the other party was unchanged.

KhoomeiK 6y ago

I've been noticing this shift recently taking place with US party opinions on foreign policy. Republicans have historically been more anti-Russia and hawkish, but during the Trump presidency, Democrats started calling out Trump for getting close with Russia. The Republican voter base has also suddenly turned into a bunch of doves, getting behind Trump's calls to pull out of Syria and Afghanistan.

castratikron 6y ago
Something I've been trying to understand lately is Republicans' view of "Big Tech" as the new bogeyman. My impression is that Republicans are generally "business friendly", which can take on forms like a certain Midwest state giving billions in tax cuts for a TV factory to the tune of $200k+/employee, seizing land by eminent domain when necessary. And now only a couple years later you have the same party berating tech CEOs and threatening to regulate or break up Facebook and Twitter. What happened to laissez faire? With regards to ending foreign conflicts, to me it seems more like a desire to return to America's pre-WWII isolationist position. It might be hard to imagine now, but up until Pearl Harbor there was virtually no desire among Americans to enter "Europe's" war (>90% opposed).
darksaints 6y ago
That isn't the only thing that Trump has flipped on Republicans. Trade issues are another...Donald Trump has more in common with the 1999 anti-WTO rioters in Seattle than he has had with any Republicans in the same time period. But in comes trump and all of a sudden Republicans and Trade Unionists are in bed together.
- newfriend 6y ago
  The problem is you people think all Republicans are the same. When there are only two parties, you get a wide variety of views funneled into those parties. Ron Paul was very popular among Republicans. And before him Ross Perot, who basically gave Clinton the White House in 1992 by taking a huge percentage of voters who would have voted for George H.W. Bush. His #1 issue was anti-NAFTA. They didn't "suddenly become doves" or "became anti-trade". They have always been there, but the party didn't have to listen until 2016.

roenxi 6y ago

This is extremely rational. Most people probably only care about 1-2 issues, and pick a party based on that. For all the other issues, the most sensible strategy is to advocate for their party, tying to sway people who care about other issues. That is to say - for any individual, they are part of a faction of their party. For the faction to prosper, the party must prosper. So the individual strategically should advocate for whatever the other factions want without worrying about the details too much.

Imnimo 6y ago

>their voters immediately moved their opinions by around 15% into line with their party. Maybe I don't totally understand what 15% means here, but it sounds like the vast majority of supporters did not switch their opinions? If my interpretation is correct, this title feels very misleading, but it's also possible I'm just misunderstanding.

panny 6y ago

When Fox News reversed their stance, they lost half their audience. This study seems almost like an anecdote as it only studied two issues in a single, small European country. I have a feeling the results aren't reproducible in any meaningful way.

dragonwriter 6y ago

That's kind of expected in a robust multiparty democracy, if you are examining the universe of party members before and members after a change, because people who don't follow where the party is going leave, and the system supports variations on multiple axes. (From the article here, I'm not sure if that's what was studied or not, and I haven't read the underlying study.)

penguin_booze 6y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuius_regio,_eius_religio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuius_regio,_eius_religio

tpoacher 6y ago

"We were always at war with Oceania".

tpoacher 6y ago

Kinda confirms Scott Adams' assertion that the large majority of people do not have personal opinions per se (at least not to the degree that they think they do); they choose an "opinion package" in the sense that their main choice is which media package they choose to consume, and are subsequently assigned their opinions from that; a far more economical heuristic for having a range of complex opinions, than having to weigh each one of them individually.

thinkingemote 6y ago

It's always the other side that polarises things.

voisin 6y ago

Parties have nothing to do with positions on issues and everything to do with choosing a clan to be a part of and a clan to be against.

retpirato 6y ago

I disagree. You should be a member of a party because they share your views, not the other way around.