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U.S. Political Party Preferences Shifted Greatly During 2021

70 points by drocer88 5y ago

laurent92 5y ago
They have shifted greatly in France too (towards the right, very unusual for France). So is this really linked with Biden or linked with the social isolation?
- yeetaccount4 5y ago
  In my view, the issue is short term memory among voters and frustration with the political class and its inability to do do much at all. Since the other team is in office right now, people don’t like them.
- _skzr 5y ago
  One of the parties has been branded as the “Lockdown party” during covid. So long as there is a collective with the view that closing people’s businesses at any given time, indefinitely, without recourse, is acceptable - we can expect an endless stream of voters rushing to the other side of the aisle. Speak to right wingers and you’ll find that many will tell you they weren’t convinced by some right wing youTuber. It’s often the policy or rhetoric of the left that drove them away. A specific example in 2021, lockdown policies of the left may have had a far more profound impact on pushing people away than any random guest on Joe Rogan.
  - whatshisface 5y ago
    They should set up a big clock, like the national debt clock, that counts up the lives saved through various pandemic response techniques (subtracting actual from forecast deaths?).
    - AlexandrB 5y ago
    - AlexTWithBeard 5y ago
      Agree. Add lives saved by various requirements. Subtract lives from increased traffic fatalities [1]. Multiply by the number of businesses decapitated by lockdowns. Do you know what we gonna end up with? I don't... [1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/climate-and-people/car-crashes-fatality-rate-covid-19s-paradoxical-impact-road/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/climate-and-people...
      - whatshisface 5y ago
        You would not literally want to multiply by the number of business but I would be open to a dollar to life conversion made on the basis that you can spend money to feed people and perform medical services.
    - chasd00 5y ago
      That's nonsense. So pedestrian fatalities go down because everyone is trapped inside. Does that count as lives saved? If so then put a sentry in everyone's home and keep them there forever. Think of the lives saved!
      - whatshisface 5y ago
        Keeping things grounded, fatalities prevented by a policy are indeed lives saved.
  - goalieca 5y ago
    Liberal values have been thoroughly rejected in favour of strong authoritarian measures. These policies often completely disregard decades of progressive policies. Lockdowns have definitely hurt nearly every major liberal issue and we don’t have much to show for it.
- throw__away7391 5y ago
  Agree, my thoughts exactly. There is something going on here related to the lockdowns/pandemic response. Just for myself personally, while no where near enough to change political affiliation, I've gotten quite sick of what appears to be hypocrisy, arrogance, and gross incompetence from the left establishment, expressed through the popular media, government policies, and generally the "blue check Twitter" crowd. We are now living in "TSA everywhere" land with all kinds of ridiculous sanctimony. I'm vaccinated, got a booster, caught and recovered from COVID initially and now again from omicron last month and still getting tested on a regular basis. When I go to a restaurant I have to show ID, vaccination proof, temperature check, leave a phone number, then wear a mask to walk 2 meters from the door to my table...where I can take off my mask and hang out for an hour surrounded by people doing the same...that is, unless I need to go to the bathroom. If I don't wear a mask while making the short walk from my table to the bathroom--oh my god, I'm basically single-handedly murdering old and immunocompromised people. It is hard for people to take you seriously when you are associated with this sort of emperor's new clothes COVID theater. This is literally the modern equivalent of the "or else the terrorists win" nonsense of the Global War on Terror era.
  - tlogan 5y ago
    Here is my personal example of how this COVID rules ends up being stupid: - me and wife got Covid but we do not have symptoms - I have surgery (quite important and relatively urgent since it hurts) but it is delayed because I’m positive - my wife is a nurse but she forced to go to work because she has no symptoms Should I blame democrats on this? I do not know but they really love being “COVID police” …
    - mitchdoogle 5y ago
      It's not surprising in either case, you have a surgery that can be put off so as to not risk spreading a deadly virus in an environment with compromised individuals. Meanwhile the same hospital probably has a major need for staff, so your wife is allowed to continue working despite the risks because she has been trained on how to properly use PPE, and follow safety procedures where everyone else working there is doing same. Of all the places to complain about, a hospital seems one of the least warranted
- avrionov 5y ago
  The ruling party during Covid will suffer independently from the orientation. Take a look what is happening in the UK (Covid policies combined with self destruction on the side of the PM): https://twitter.com/RedfieldWilton/status/1483121953166835714?t=2etbG6a2EIzPIZ4ZDRRXJQ&s=19 https://twitter.com/RedfieldWilton/status/148312195316683571...
ceejayoz 5y ago
It's the usual pattern. One party blows everything up. The other gets elected to fix it. That turns out to take longer than 2-4 years, especially with opposition and a thin margin in House and Senate, so the party that broke things campaigns on how bad things are now (due to their own actions).
- ahelwer 5y ago
  This isn’t an accident. It’s an intentional pattern that creates a ratchet effect. Dems are quite happy to keep many things in place that they could easily reverse. Policies continuing to exist don’t get much press, so they don’t have to give the game away in getting what they want. On a year to year basis it’s difficult to see. But look over decades: this is a party that not only failed to advance anything building on the New Deal, but failed at every step to arrest its complete demolition. If you really believe that the reason the dems can’t accomplish anything is because of Manchin, Sinema, The Parliamentarian, or $WEEKLY_SCAPEGOAT_NAME, I’m sorry to say you’re a mark. It’s like that Key & Peele “hold me back” skit.
  - nerdponx 5y ago
    It's hard to not feel like the US Democratic party is like Firefox: it exists to give voters the illusion of choice.
    - uejfiweun 5y ago
      I mean it's great PR for the west, no doubt about it. I think the South Park episode "I'm a Little Bit Country" is very relevant here - the US is a country founded on the basis of "saying one thing and doing another".
  - mywittyname 5y ago
    > Dems are quite happy to keep many things in place that they could easily reverse. As are the Pubs. Ex. they left the ACA in place.
    - 5y ago
jeffbee 5y ago
- tyleo 5y ago
  Independent does not mean coward. This is a poor take. Believe it or not, there are people who don’t vote a straight red/blue ticket.
  - vmception 5y ago
    independents, moderates, and people in the center always swing everything, its hardly news I was curious though, is anyone else bothered by not being able to participate in primaries and party level events and elections?
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - peapicker 5y ago
      In Colorado, at least, independents get to vote in primaries. In 2016, Colorado Proposition 108 passed allowing independent voters to vote in the primary elections. Now, independents can request a party’s ballot before the election. If they don’t, they’ll be mailed all parties’ ballots but are instructed to fill out just one. If they turn in more than one, their vote is invalidates for all primaries voted in. Other states could also require laws like this.
    - person22 5y ago
      Primaries are a unique situation. Very few people vote in primaries. In fact the people who vote in primaries care a great deal about their candidates. The people who care the most about their candidates tend to the far left/right. The end result is one of two outcomes: 1.) the voters in the main election have to pick from a list (two in the U.S.) candidates that are much more left/right wing than the actual voter considers themselves. Or 2.) the party realizes that the candidate that is leading is not generally electable and ignores votes to find someone more appropriate. I think that the republicans in 2020 followed (1) and the democrates followed (2). This is how we get biden. If a more progressive democrat was the candidate, would trump have won? That was the fear of the democratic party. (I just made this up so take it for what its worth)
seibelj 5y ago
The inflation issue - “it’s the economy, stupid” - is causing food and housing to spike. Shelves are often empty where I live for random things. This week it was chicken, next week it’s cream cheese, and so on. Very abnormal for the US and the people in power are not focusing on this.
datameta 5y ago
It's shocking how unaffected the graph is by who "ran" the country 2016-2020 in comparison to the other change-overs in the 90s and 00s. Is social media reinforcing echo chambers which let one have no doubt in their views? Are our areas of discourse now more one-sided? Insular subreddits, feeds that are curated by a self reinforcing algorithms to not show you what you might disagree with... There is Hypernormalization [0] through popular/state media's simultaenous support of opposing views, i.e. disinformation through doubt and plausible deniability (perfected by world powers, particularly Soviet/Russian regimes in the modern era). [0] https://youtu.be/thLgkQBFTPw https://youtu.be/thLgkQBFTPw
- mym1990 5y ago
  I had an argument this past weekend with one of my former best friends from high school and through 10 years of watching the TV he has become a literal walking Fox News parrot. An incredibly smart guy and all he could come up with was 'look at the Fox News polls for this issue and if you can find me a counter CNN poll, we can talk'. It feels like a lot of people have turned like this, its almost like a zombie apocalypse of the mind.
jimbob45 5y ago
>These results are based on aggregated data from all U.S. Gallup telephone surveys in 2021, which included interviews with more than 12,000 randomly sampled U.S. adults. I hate to be so cynical but I have no faith in these phone surveys anymore. Most adults I know avoid surveyors on principle. Even further, most adults I know won’t answer any number that isn’t already in their address book. It seems like the only type of person that a survey like this might reach is the stereotypical technology-fearing conservative. That’s not to say that these results are inaccurate in any way. I just don’t believe the methodology backs up the results here.
- hammock 5y ago
  A truly "randomly sampled" phone survey would skew to a very old demographic, and successfully recruiting younger generations with this tactic is a notorious challenge (online works better). What they don't tell you though is that it's not truly random as claimed. They recruit a representative sample of respondents. So there are young people in the sample, it just takes more calls to get the data. Source: I run these surveys
adlorger 5y ago
I suspect, like all political shifts of independents, that this would have a strong moderating impact on the Republican Party. Swing independents tend to be more political practical and less ideological.
- CurtHagenlocher 5y ago
  Unfortunately, the primary system discourages this type of moderation.
Damogran6 5y ago
Since I won't ever get to vote for a Pro-Choice Pro-2nd Amendment president, I guess I'll just stop watching the news, because I can not fathom how we can be skewing Republican after everything that's happened.
- coding123 5y ago
  Things went too left, now "everyone" wants a republican to undo it. Well when I say "everyone" I just mean a lot of moderate democrats.
  - neutronicus 5y ago
    Personally, I would guess it has more to do with people's attitudes shifting away from the COVID-cautious attitude the Dems staked out towards the Republicans' back-to-normal, outraged-at-restrictions stance.
  - AlexandrB 5y ago
    Undo what? The only government-controlled "left" thing that happened is adding CRT to some school curriculums. Oh, and anti-trust enforcement is ramping up again - though that seems bipartisan. "Wokeism" and other right-wing boogeymen are cultural or corporate in nature. I think the current Democratic administration is most notable for its fecklessness and inability to get anything at all done. Maybe that's what's driving voters away.
    - thereddaikon 5y ago
      On the federal level the biggest problem is the economy in general and inflation and jobs specifically. As the the saying goes, its the economy stupid. Whether its the big guy's fault doesn't ever matter. People will always hold the president responsible for the economy. The effects of inflation has just hit us and prices jumped. The job market is also a mess, there's the great resignation of course but I think I speaks to a larger cultural shift in American work culture that will have long term implications. On the state and local levels there is the tug of war between governments trying to keep covid under control and those same measures being deeply unpopular. I don't know what the solution to that is but there is a sizeable enough group of voters who just want to get on with their lives that its having an effect.
savant_penguin 5y ago
I'd guess this has something to do with the constant use of force. Don't want to take the vaccine? We'll find a way to make you Disagree with me politically on Twitter? We'll look for your employer and coerce him into firing you Stay two weeks at home, by the way stay in two more weeks and it's been two years. Some places even had curfews (but then if it's a BLM protest we'll ignore the existence of the virus) We follow the science! (Except if the scientist disagrees with you. Check the interview with Don lemon and Sanjay Gupta when he's about to make a point about Joe Rogan. Lemon cuts him off and wont let him finish)
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- atlantas 5y ago
  This. I was a lifelong Democrat, but no longer. I am still gobsmacked with how they abandoned free speech, the working class, bodily autonomy, and turned science into religion. They've been captured by the Twitter laptop class.
  - weberer 5y ago
    Why is this comment being flagged?
    - the_only_law 5y ago
      It was [flagged] it was [dead] which sometimes happens on new accounts for reasons I don’t quite understand. I thought it was to discourage throwaways, but others have noted they’ve created throwaways without the “auto-dead” behavior.
- lalaland1125 5y ago
  > Disagree with me politically on Twitter? We'll look for your employer and coerce him into firing you It seems really weird to blame the Democratic party for this or Democrats as a whole since this is completely unrelated to the government or administration or elected Democrat officials. Electing Republicans won't "fix" this for you at all. > Don't want to take the vaccine? We'll find a way to make you For interest's sake, are you consistent in wanting to remove all vaccine requirements, including for things like the measles vaccine?
assbuttbuttass 5y ago
The real story here seems to be the increasing numbers of independents. We've just had a republican president fuck everything up, and now a democrat is making everything worse. No surprise people are tired of our 2 party system.
rayiner 5y ago
Relevant: https://theliberalpatriot.substack.com/p/the-democrats-coming-asian-voter https://theliberalpatriot.substack.com/p/the-democrats-comin... I'm quite shocked at how, after Biden decisively defeated his progressive opponents in the 2020 primary, Democrats have continued to allow themselves to be defined by their socially progressive left flank. Even my dad--a die-hard Carter fan who has voted straight-ticket blue since he became a naturalized citizen--is getting disillusioned. I think Democratic elites have this notion that people like my parents "really wanted Warren, but voted Biden because of electability." They don't like Warren and they don't like Harris. They don't think the U.S. is a "white supremacist" country, they don't care about "voting rights," they don't think Republicans are "insurrectionists," they don't really care about climate change, etc. They didn't like how Trump talks, or his stance on COVID, and they support more funding for healthcare and education.
- atlantas 5y ago
  [flagged]
- ryathal 5y ago
  As an outsider, Biden decisively defeating progressive opponents seems like fiction. It appears that varying levels of progressive candidates were forced into supporting Biden instead of supporting any "not Biden." Democrats continue to force establishment candidates despite the extreme levels of anti-establishment sentiment in the country.
  - rayiner 5y ago
    Biden decisively defeating progressive opponents was far from a fiction. In fact the opposite is true: the media wrote off Biden at the outset, and his campaign nearly ran out of money until key endorsements later in the process. Instead, the media propped up progressive candidates like Elizabeth Warren for most of 2019, who in retrospect were not remotely viable. The Democratic Party in America can win national elections only by getting a super-majority of Black voters in the south and Latino voters in the southwest. In Texas, Warren won just 7% of Latinos, and in Virginia she won just 7% of Black voters. Michael Bloomberg beat her for third among both groups. Bernie Sanders, meanwhile, did well among Latinos. But he was a distant second to Biden among Black voters. And he alienates many among the dominant part of the Democratic coalition--affluent, highly-educated white professionals. There is a lot of anti-establishment sentiment in the U.S., but what I think outsiders don't understand is that it's fragmented between the parties. Many anti-establishment, working class people are socially conservative as well, and vote Republican. They have no place in a party that talks more about race and sexual orientation than about immigrants taking American jobs. By the same token, many progressives are social liberals first and foremost. For them, opposing second trimester abortions is a bigger sin than working on Wall Street. That divide exists to an extent even within the Democratic Party--most of the "progressives" I know hate Sanders and think he's a "racist" and "sexist" "old white man." This means that a key progressive premise--the idea that if the party only moved sufficiently left voters would "turn out"--is a mirage. Yes, there's a lot of anti-establishment, apathetic voters out there. There was a huge surge in turnout in 2020. But out of people who voted in 2020, but not in 2018 or 2016, fully 47% voted for Trump, versus 49% for Biden: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/06/30/behind-bidens-2020-victory https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/06/30/behind-biden.... There is just about zero chance that any of those Trump voters would have turned out for any of the progressives apart from Sanders. (But, as discussed above, Sanders couldn't carry the social liberal wing of the Democratic party that Biden carried.)
hourislate 5y ago
Does it really matter who you vote for? We live in a kakistocracy where corporations run the country. I think it's safe to say we are in the 4th Turning, it likely plays out by the end of this decade.
mywittyname 5y ago
>Independents Are Still the Largest Political Group in the U.S. Really? I find this kind of hard to believe. I call myself an "independent", but I vote 90% of the time for one party. I wish we had metadata on voting information so we could see how many people are straight-ticket voters, because I have to imagine that it's a lot. I think most of the election swings come from apathetic voters coming out.
- Glyptodon 5y ago
  I call myself an independent and used to reliably vote for a mix of both parties and third parties, particularly locally. But I'm now more or less aligned with Democrats that in many respects I don't agree with just because they aren't theocrat monarchist traitors.
- cool_dude85 5y ago
  I don't have hard data at hand, but I think most investigations into this phenomenon show the same pattern. People identify as independent when given the choice between that, R, or D, but in practice many of those vote almost exclusively for one party. My recollection is that there are somewhat more people who identify as Independent who vote primarily for Republicans, but that might not be true.
- tharne 5y ago
  You're both right. "Unaffiliated" votes are the single largest voting block in the U.S. However, the vast majority of unaffiliated votes reliably vote for the same party in each election, so while they are officially independent of a party, in practice they associate themselves with a party in the way they vote. This discovery and the ability to quantify it was one of the breakthroughs of the Obama campaign in 2008 (the Bush campaign did this too, but the Obama folks really brought it to the next level).
- chasd00 5y ago
  Unfortunately, what the mainstream would consider non-independent is someone that would vote for one party 100% of the time even if completely uninformed. Basically, a political zealot and there are a LOT on both sides. Everyone else? Independent voter.
JohnJamesRambo 5y ago
It makes me so angry that people don’t see how the current administration was given a hand grenade with the pin pulled by the previous one. Pumping the stock market at the cost of all else by unprecedented money printing, seeding incredible division into America, ignoring Covid and refusing to even wear a mask and then handing that mess off to the next guy. The American public blaming the next guy because he couldn’t put the grenade back together seems so short sighted and ignorant.
- lalaland1125 5y ago
  That combined with how foreign actors work to hurt Democrats through the economy. The rise in gas prices wasn't a coincidence or due to Biden's actions. OPEC (which includes such wonderful actors like Saudi Arabia and Russia) intentionally reduced production and raised prices in part to punish Biden's admin for working against authoritarian nations.
  - Ekaros 5y ago
    The low prices in recent times was anomaly from demand shock. Looking back to 2018 the prices don't seem that different. At least for crude oil.
- tmaly 5y ago
  - karmakurtisaani 5y ago
    We can leave one liner memes in Reddit. No harm done.
- yesco 5y ago
  Well Biden confidently went in front of the public and claimed he could, I thinks it's reasonable to be upset with politicians who fail to meet their promises
  - 5y ago
tehjoker 5y ago
Biden didn't do anything. No major bills passed, they didn't fight for abortion, and seems to be making the pandemic worse intentionally so voters switch from Coke to Pepsi since the only hope for change is to punish the dems. Too bad they're nearly the same as the republicans except in style and rhetoric. When the choices are plugged in from the top, democracy is a sham. We live in an authoritarian state. We need a new republic that would do away with all the mechanisms of minoritarian rule.
throw0101a 5y ago
For a history of the process in the US I recommend Ezra Klein's 2020 book: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_We%27re_Polarized https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_We%27re_Polarized While the public tended to have particular leanings, the Democrats and the GOP didn't really bother 'sorting' themselves until the Southern Strategy where the GOP went after the southern Dixiecrats: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixiecrat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixiecrat It's worth noting that there's decent evidence that one's political leanings may also influenced by brain structure: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biology_and_political_orientation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biology_and_political_orientat... * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/853648.The_Political_Brain https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/853648.The_Political_Bra... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_Politics_(book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_Politics_(book)
uejfiweun 5y ago
I voted for Biden in 2020, and I have been very disappointed with his presidency. He started out saying that he wanted to unite the country and turn down the temperature, and this was exactly what I voted for. In the first 6 months of his presidency I actually thought he was doing a decent job. However, he has really lost me in recent months. His administration spent so long trying to deny that inflation even existed, all while pushing for a gargantuan spending package. WTF? Then all this hyperbolic crap about Jan 6 started getting pushed, with the VP comparing it to 9/11 and Pearl Harbor. Extremely disrespectful, in my opinion. And finally, the nail in the coffin was this Voter ID nonsense. I absolutely support Voter ID, it seems like a common sense policy. And I don't support giving illegal immigrants the right to vote, like they did in NYC. But according to Biden, this makes me a racist who is on the side of Jefferson Davis. Are you freaking serious!? My response to Biden is - go fuck yourself, asshole. In summary, he has disappointed me in many ways. The left hasn't calmed down in the slightest, and cancel culture is at an all time high. Inflation is spiking and people like me may never get to own a house. Biden is too busy calling us racists to have any chance at uniting the country. And covid is at an all time high. Very disappointing, and I hope someone more moderate runs in 2024 for BOTH sides. Trump and Biden are clearly a bunch of old curmudgeons who can't unite shit. Let's get some moderates in there, like Manchin or Romney.
- nitwit005 5y ago
  > And I don't support giving illegal immigrants the right to vote, like they did in NYC. Except they didn't. They changed the law to let legal immigrants vote.
  - uejfiweun 5y ago
    I apologize, clearly I was misinformed. Unfortunately I am unable to edit the comment, thank you for correcting the record.
    - quadrifoliate 5y ago
      An ability to distinguish between illegal and legal immigrants as well as local and national elections is exactly the sort of thing that voters should be well-informed about. Honestly, this lack of ability demonstrated in your comment nullifies most of the ranting you have built up afterwards. I suggest you seriously examine how much of a "pressure head" of resentment you have built up based on these equivalents of software bugs. Running a linter over your other assumptions might also help a bit.
newbamboo 5y ago
Just wait until everyone’s 401k loses all the gains made during the pandemic while inflation continues and job growth falters. Oh, and international turmoil and potential war following a series of diplomatic and military blunders that have weakened America’s stance abroad. How can people not understand the reaction of moderates and independents? Perhaps they are watching propaganda that masquerades as news. The next few years will be confusing times for many. The pendulum swings as they say.
LostJourneyman 5y ago
Telephone-based sampling is hardly random sampling, given that most people don't answer calls they don't recognize the caller ID for. Those who do might be pre-disposed to certain sets of political ideology. What we may be seeing is a shift of people who are willing to answer the telephone and take a survey, not a net shift in political opinion. A practical example, given in good faith: It may be that in their "random telephone sampling" they are only connecting with older people (who are usually more likely to answer calls from an unknown number), leading to unintentional selection bias. In this example, the confounding factor is age, and as such the gallop graphs could be simply showing that younger (ostensibly left-leaning) people are growing less willing to answer the phone (as opposed to the claim that Americans are moving right, idiologically)
- arprocter 5y ago
  Seems like the polling gets spun no matter what it says There was a lot of 'even though polls predict a certain someone is going to lose, he might still win because voters are "shy"' copy written going into 2020
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
indymike 5y ago
I'd just like a decent candidate, please. I'm not sure I've had a single election since I was old enough to vote where I wasn't choosing the lesser of two evils... or the less stupid of the two. I'd really like to be able to vote without holding my nose.
- chasd00 5y ago
  how many elections have you voted in? they're all like that.
  - indymike 5y ago
    First presidential election was the year Bill Clinton won.
_skzr 5y ago
One of the parties has been branded as the “Lockdown party” during covid. So long as there is a collective with the view that closing people’s businesses at any given time, indefinitely, without recourse, is acceptable - we can expect an endless stream of voters rushing to the other side of the aisle. Speak to right wingers and you’ll find that many will tell you they weren’t convinced by some right wing youTuber. It’s often the policy or rhetoric of the left that drove them away. A specific example in 2021, lockdown policies of the left may have had a far more profound impact on pushing people away than any random guest on Joe Rogan.

70 points by drocer88 5y ago

They have shifted greatly in France too (towards the right, very unusual for France). So is this really linked with Biden or linked with the social isolation?

yeetaccount4 5y ago
In my view, the issue is short term memory among voters and frustration with the political class and its inability to do do much at all. Since the other team is in office right now, people don’t like them.
_skzr 5y ago
One of the parties has been branded as the “Lockdown party” during covid. So long as there is a collective with the view that closing people’s businesses at any given time, indefinitely, without recourse, is acceptable - we can expect an endless stream of voters rushing to the other side of the aisle. Speak to right wingers and you’ll find that many will tell you they weren’t convinced by some right wing youTuber. It’s often the policy or rhetoric of the left that drove them away. A specific example in 2021, lockdown policies of the left may have had a far more profound impact on pushing people away than any random guest on Joe Rogan.
- whatshisface 5y ago
  They should set up a big clock, like the national debt clock, that counts up the lives saved through various pandemic response techniques (subtracting actual from forecast deaths?).
  - AlexandrB 5y ago
  - AlexTWithBeard 5y ago
    Agree. Add lives saved by various requirements. Subtract lives from increased traffic fatalities [1]. Multiply by the number of businesses decapitated by lockdowns. Do you know what we gonna end up with? I don't... [1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/climate-and-people/car-crashes-fatality-rate-covid-19s-paradoxical-impact-road/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/climate-and-people...
    - whatshisface 5y ago
      You would not literally want to multiply by the number of business but I would be open to a dollar to life conversion made on the basis that you can spend money to feed people and perform medical services.
  - chasd00 5y ago
    That's nonsense. So pedestrian fatalities go down because everyone is trapped inside. Does that count as lives saved? If so then put a sentry in everyone's home and keep them there forever. Think of the lives saved!
    - whatshisface 5y ago
      Keeping things grounded, fatalities prevented by a policy are indeed lives saved.
- goalieca 5y ago
  Liberal values have been thoroughly rejected in favour of strong authoritarian measures. These policies often completely disregard decades of progressive policies. Lockdowns have definitely hurt nearly every major liberal issue and we don’t have much to show for it.
throw__away7391 5y ago
Agree, my thoughts exactly. There is something going on here related to the lockdowns/pandemic response. Just for myself personally, while no where near enough to change political affiliation, I've gotten quite sick of what appears to be hypocrisy, arrogance, and gross incompetence from the left establishment, expressed through the popular media, government policies, and generally the "blue check Twitter" crowd. We are now living in "TSA everywhere" land with all kinds of ridiculous sanctimony. I'm vaccinated, got a booster, caught and recovered from COVID initially and now again from omicron last month and still getting tested on a regular basis. When I go to a restaurant I have to show ID, vaccination proof, temperature check, leave a phone number, then wear a mask to walk 2 meters from the door to my table...where I can take off my mask and hang out for an hour surrounded by people doing the same...that is, unless I need to go to the bathroom. If I don't wear a mask while making the short walk from my table to the bathroom--oh my god, I'm basically single-handedly murdering old and immunocompromised people. It is hard for people to take you seriously when you are associated with this sort of emperor's new clothes COVID theater. This is literally the modern equivalent of the "or else the terrorists win" nonsense of the Global War on Terror era.
- tlogan 5y ago
  Here is my personal example of how this COVID rules ends up being stupid: - me and wife got Covid but we do not have symptoms - I have surgery (quite important and relatively urgent since it hurts) but it is delayed because I’m positive - my wife is a nurse but she forced to go to work because she has no symptoms Should I blame democrats on this? I do not know but they really love being “COVID police” …
  - mitchdoogle 5y ago
    It's not surprising in either case, you have a surgery that can be put off so as to not risk spreading a deadly virus in an environment with compromised individuals. Meanwhile the same hospital probably has a major need for staff, so your wife is allowed to continue working despite the risks because she has been trained on how to properly use PPE, and follow safety procedures where everyone else working there is doing same. Of all the places to complain about, a hospital seems one of the least warranted
avrionov 5y ago
The ruling party during Covid will suffer independently from the orientation. Take a look what is happening in the UK (Covid policies combined with self destruction on the side of the PM): https://twitter.com/RedfieldWilton/status/1483121953166835714?t=2etbG6a2EIzPIZ4ZDRRXJQ&s=19 https://twitter.com/RedfieldWilton/status/148312195316683571...

ceejayoz 5y ago

It's the usual pattern. One party blows everything up. The other gets elected to fix it. That turns out to take longer than 2-4 years, especially with opposition and a thin margin in House and Senate, so the party that broke things campaigns on how bad things are now (due to their own actions).

ahelwer 5y ago
This isn’t an accident. It’s an intentional pattern that creates a ratchet effect. Dems are quite happy to keep many things in place that they could easily reverse. Policies continuing to exist don’t get much press, so they don’t have to give the game away in getting what they want. On a year to year basis it’s difficult to see. But look over decades: this is a party that not only failed to advance anything building on the New Deal, but failed at every step to arrest its complete demolition. If you really believe that the reason the dems can’t accomplish anything is because of Manchin, Sinema, The Parliamentarian, or $WEEKLY_SCAPEGOAT_NAME, I’m sorry to say you’re a mark. It’s like that Key & Peele “hold me back” skit.
- nerdponx 5y ago
  It's hard to not feel like the US Democratic party is like Firefox: it exists to give voters the illusion of choice.
  - uejfiweun 5y ago
    I mean it's great PR for the west, no doubt about it. I think the South Park episode "I'm a Little Bit Country" is very relevant here - the US is a country founded on the basis of "saying one thing and doing another".
- mywittyname 5y ago
  > Dems are quite happy to keep many things in place that they could easily reverse. As are the Pubs. Ex. they left the ACA in place.
  - 5y ago

jeffbee 5y ago

tyleo 5y ago
Independent does not mean coward. This is a poor take. Believe it or not, there are people who don’t vote a straight red/blue ticket.
- vmception 5y ago
  independents, moderates, and people in the center always swing everything, its hardly news I was curious though, is anyone else bothered by not being able to participate in primaries and party level events and elections?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - peapicker 5y ago
    In Colorado, at least, independents get to vote in primaries. In 2016, Colorado Proposition 108 passed allowing independent voters to vote in the primary elections. Now, independents can request a party’s ballot before the election. If they don’t, they’ll be mailed all parties’ ballots but are instructed to fill out just one. If they turn in more than one, their vote is invalidates for all primaries voted in. Other states could also require laws like this.
  - person22 5y ago
    Primaries are a unique situation. Very few people vote in primaries. In fact the people who vote in primaries care a great deal about their candidates. The people who care the most about their candidates tend to the far left/right. The end result is one of two outcomes: 1.) the voters in the main election have to pick from a list (two in the U.S.) candidates that are much more left/right wing than the actual voter considers themselves. Or 2.) the party realizes that the candidate that is leading is not generally electable and ignores votes to find someone more appropriate. I think that the republicans in 2020 followed (1) and the democrates followed (2). This is how we get biden. If a more progressive democrat was the candidate, would trump have won? That was the fear of the democratic party. (I just made this up so take it for what its worth)

seibelj 5y ago

The inflation issue - “it’s the economy, stupid” - is causing food and housing to spike. Shelves are often empty where I live for random things. This week it was chicken, next week it’s cream cheese, and so on. Very abnormal for the US and the people in power are not focusing on this.

datameta 5y ago

It's shocking how unaffected the graph is by who "ran" the country 2016-2020 in comparison to the other change-overs in the 90s and 00s. Is social media reinforcing echo chambers which let one have no doubt in their views? Are our areas of discourse now more one-sided? Insular subreddits, feeds that are curated by a self reinforcing algorithms to not show you what you might disagree with... There is Hypernormalization [0] through popular/state media's simultaenous support of opposing views, i.e. disinformation through doubt and plausible deniability (perfected by world powers, particularly Soviet/Russian regimes in the modern era). [0] https://youtu.be/thLgkQBFTPw https://youtu.be/thLgkQBFTPw

mym1990 5y ago
I had an argument this past weekend with one of my former best friends from high school and through 10 years of watching the TV he has become a literal walking Fox News parrot. An incredibly smart guy and all he could come up with was 'look at the Fox News polls for this issue and if you can find me a counter CNN poll, we can talk'. It feels like a lot of people have turned like this, its almost like a zombie apocalypse of the mind.

jimbob45 5y ago

>These results are based on aggregated data from all U.S. Gallup telephone surveys in 2021, which included interviews with more than 12,000 randomly sampled U.S. adults. I hate to be so cynical but I have no faith in these phone surveys anymore. Most adults I know avoid surveyors on principle. Even further, most adults I know won’t answer any number that isn’t already in their address book. It seems like the only type of person that a survey like this might reach is the stereotypical technology-fearing conservative. That’s not to say that these results are inaccurate in any way. I just don’t believe the methodology backs up the results here.

hammock 5y ago
A truly "randomly sampled" phone survey would skew to a very old demographic, and successfully recruiting younger generations with this tactic is a notorious challenge (online works better). What they don't tell you though is that it's not truly random as claimed. They recruit a representative sample of respondents. So there are young people in the sample, it just takes more calls to get the data. Source: I run these surveys

adlorger 5y ago

I suspect, like all political shifts of independents, that this would have a strong moderating impact on the Republican Party. Swing independents tend to be more political practical and less ideological.

CurtHagenlocher 5y ago
Unfortunately, the primary system discourages this type of moderation.

Damogran6 5y ago

Since I won't ever get to vote for a Pro-Choice Pro-2nd Amendment president, I guess I'll just stop watching the news, because I can not fathom how we can be skewing Republican after everything that's happened.

coding123 5y ago
Things went too left, now "everyone" wants a republican to undo it. Well when I say "everyone" I just mean a lot of moderate democrats.
- neutronicus 5y ago
  Personally, I would guess it has more to do with people's attitudes shifting away from the COVID-cautious attitude the Dems staked out towards the Republicans' back-to-normal, outraged-at-restrictions stance.
- AlexandrB 5y ago
  Undo what? The only government-controlled "left" thing that happened is adding CRT to some school curriculums. Oh, and anti-trust enforcement is ramping up again - though that seems bipartisan. "Wokeism" and other right-wing boogeymen are cultural or corporate in nature. I think the current Democratic administration is most notable for its fecklessness and inability to get anything at all done. Maybe that's what's driving voters away.
  - thereddaikon 5y ago
    On the federal level the biggest problem is the economy in general and inflation and jobs specifically. As the the saying goes, its the economy stupid. Whether its the big guy's fault doesn't ever matter. People will always hold the president responsible for the economy. The effects of inflation has just hit us and prices jumped. The job market is also a mess, there's the great resignation of course but I think I speaks to a larger cultural shift in American work culture that will have long term implications. On the state and local levels there is the tug of war between governments trying to keep covid under control and those same measures being deeply unpopular. I don't know what the solution to that is but there is a sizeable enough group of voters who just want to get on with their lives that its having an effect.

savant_penguin 5y ago

I'd guess this has something to do with the constant use of force. Don't want to take the vaccine? We'll find a way to make you Disagree with me politically on Twitter? We'll look for your employer and coerce him into firing you Stay two weeks at home, by the way stay in two more weeks and it's been two years. Some places even had curfews (but then if it's a BLM protest we'll ignore the existence of the virus) We follow the science! (Except if the scientist disagrees with you. Check the interview with Don lemon and Sanjay Gupta when he's about to make a point about Joe Rogan. Lemon cuts him off and wont let him finish)

deleted 5y ago
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atlantas 5y ago
This. I was a lifelong Democrat, but no longer. I am still gobsmacked with how they abandoned free speech, the working class, bodily autonomy, and turned science into religion. They've been captured by the Twitter laptop class.
- weberer 5y ago
  Why is this comment being flagged?
  - the_only_law 5y ago
    It was [flagged] it was [dead] which sometimes happens on new accounts for reasons I don’t quite understand. I thought it was to discourage throwaways, but others have noted they’ve created throwaways without the “auto-dead” behavior.
lalaland1125 5y ago
> Disagree with me politically on Twitter? We'll look for your employer and coerce him into firing you It seems really weird to blame the Democratic party for this or Democrats as a whole since this is completely unrelated to the government or administration or elected Democrat officials. Electing Republicans won't "fix" this for you at all. > Don't want to take the vaccine? We'll find a way to make you For interest's sake, are you consistent in wanting to remove all vaccine requirements, including for things like the measles vaccine?

assbuttbuttass 5y ago

The real story here seems to be the increasing numbers of independents. We've just had a republican president fuck everything up, and now a democrat is making everything worse. No surprise people are tired of our 2 party system.

rayiner 5y ago

Relevant: https://theliberalpatriot.substack.com/p/the-democrats-coming-asian-voter https://theliberalpatriot.substack.com/p/the-democrats-comin... I'm quite shocked at how, after Biden decisively defeated his progressive opponents in the 2020 primary, Democrats have continued to allow themselves to be defined by their socially progressive left flank. Even my dad--a die-hard Carter fan who has voted straight-ticket blue since he became a naturalized citizen--is getting disillusioned. I think Democratic elites have this notion that people like my parents "really wanted Warren, but voted Biden because of electability." They don't like Warren and they don't like Harris. They don't think the U.S. is a "white supremacist" country, they don't care about "voting rights," they don't think Republicans are "insurrectionists," they don't really care about climate change, etc. They didn't like how Trump talks, or his stance on COVID, and they support more funding for healthcare and education.

atlantas 5y ago
[flagged]
ryathal 5y ago
As an outsider, Biden decisively defeating progressive opponents seems like fiction. It appears that varying levels of progressive candidates were forced into supporting Biden instead of supporting any "not Biden." Democrats continue to force establishment candidates despite the extreme levels of anti-establishment sentiment in the country.
- rayiner 5y ago
  Biden decisively defeating progressive opponents was far from a fiction. In fact the opposite is true: the media wrote off Biden at the outset, and his campaign nearly ran out of money until key endorsements later in the process. Instead, the media propped up progressive candidates like Elizabeth Warren for most of 2019, who in retrospect were not remotely viable. The Democratic Party in America can win national elections only by getting a super-majority of Black voters in the south and Latino voters in the southwest. In Texas, Warren won just 7% of Latinos, and in Virginia she won just 7% of Black voters. Michael Bloomberg beat her for third among both groups. Bernie Sanders, meanwhile, did well among Latinos. But he was a distant second to Biden among Black voters. And he alienates many among the dominant part of the Democratic coalition--affluent, highly-educated white professionals. There is a lot of anti-establishment sentiment in the U.S., but what I think outsiders don't understand is that it's fragmented between the parties. Many anti-establishment, working class people are socially conservative as well, and vote Republican. They have no place in a party that talks more about race and sexual orientation than about immigrants taking American jobs. By the same token, many progressives are social liberals first and foremost. For them, opposing second trimester abortions is a bigger sin than working on Wall Street. That divide exists to an extent even within the Democratic Party--most of the "progressives" I know hate Sanders and think he's a "racist" and "sexist" "old white man." This means that a key progressive premise--the idea that if the party only moved sufficiently left voters would "turn out"--is a mirage. Yes, there's a lot of anti-establishment, apathetic voters out there. There was a huge surge in turnout in 2020. But out of people who voted in 2020, but not in 2018 or 2016, fully 47% voted for Trump, versus 49% for Biden: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/06/30/behind-bidens-2020-victory https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/06/30/behind-biden.... There is just about zero chance that any of those Trump voters would have turned out for any of the progressives apart from Sanders. (But, as discussed above, Sanders couldn't carry the social liberal wing of the Democratic party that Biden carried.)

hourislate 5y ago

Does it really matter who you vote for? We live in a kakistocracy where corporations run the country. I think it's safe to say we are in the 4th Turning, it likely plays out by the end of this decade.

mywittyname 5y ago

>Independents Are Still the Largest Political Group in the U.S. Really? I find this kind of hard to believe. I call myself an "independent", but I vote 90% of the time for one party. I wish we had metadata on voting information so we could see how many people are straight-ticket voters, because I have to imagine that it's a lot. I think most of the election swings come from apathetic voters coming out.

Glyptodon 5y ago
I call myself an independent and used to reliably vote for a mix of both parties and third parties, particularly locally. But I'm now more or less aligned with Democrats that in many respects I don't agree with just because they aren't theocrat monarchist traitors.
cool_dude85 5y ago
I don't have hard data at hand, but I think most investigations into this phenomenon show the same pattern. People identify as independent when given the choice between that, R, or D, but in practice many of those vote almost exclusively for one party. My recollection is that there are somewhat more people who identify as Independent who vote primarily for Republicans, but that might not be true.
tharne 5y ago
You're both right. "Unaffiliated" votes are the single largest voting block in the U.S. However, the vast majority of unaffiliated votes reliably vote for the same party in each election, so while they are officially independent of a party, in practice they associate themselves with a party in the way they vote. This discovery and the ability to quantify it was one of the breakthroughs of the Obama campaign in 2008 (the Bush campaign did this too, but the Obama folks really brought it to the next level).
chasd00 5y ago
Unfortunately, what the mainstream would consider non-independent is someone that would vote for one party 100% of the time even if completely uninformed. Basically, a political zealot and there are a LOT on both sides. Everyone else? Independent voter.

JohnJamesRambo 5y ago

It makes me so angry that people don’t see how the current administration was given a hand grenade with the pin pulled by the previous one. Pumping the stock market at the cost of all else by unprecedented money printing, seeding incredible division into America, ignoring Covid and refusing to even wear a mask and then handing that mess off to the next guy. The American public blaming the next guy because he couldn’t put the grenade back together seems so short sighted and ignorant.

lalaland1125 5y ago
That combined with how foreign actors work to hurt Democrats through the economy. The rise in gas prices wasn't a coincidence or due to Biden's actions. OPEC (which includes such wonderful actors like Saudi Arabia and Russia) intentionally reduced production and raised prices in part to punish Biden's admin for working against authoritarian nations.
- Ekaros 5y ago
  The low prices in recent times was anomaly from demand shock. Looking back to 2018 the prices don't seem that different. At least for crude oil.
tmaly 5y ago
- karmakurtisaani 5y ago
  We can leave one liner memes in Reddit. No harm done.
yesco 5y ago
Well Biden confidently went in front of the public and claimed he could, I thinks it's reasonable to be upset with politicians who fail to meet their promises
- 5y ago

tehjoker 5y ago

Biden didn't do anything. No major bills passed, they didn't fight for abortion, and seems to be making the pandemic worse intentionally so voters switch from Coke to Pepsi since the only hope for change is to punish the dems. Too bad they're nearly the same as the republicans except in style and rhetoric. When the choices are plugged in from the top, democracy is a sham. We live in an authoritarian state. We need a new republic that would do away with all the mechanisms of minoritarian rule.

throw0101a 5y ago

For a history of the process in the US I recommend Ezra Klein's 2020 book: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_We%27re_Polarized https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_We%27re_Polarized While the public tended to have particular leanings, the Democrats and the GOP didn't really bother 'sorting' themselves until the Southern Strategy where the GOP went after the southern Dixiecrats: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixiecrat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixiecrat It's worth noting that there's decent evidence that one's political leanings may also influenced by brain structure: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biology_and_political_orientation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biology_and_political_orientat... * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/853648.The_Political_Brain https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/853648.The_Political_Bra... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_Politics_(book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_Politics_(book)

uejfiweun 5y ago

I voted for Biden in 2020, and I have been very disappointed with his presidency. He started out saying that he wanted to unite the country and turn down the temperature, and this was exactly what I voted for. In the first 6 months of his presidency I actually thought he was doing a decent job. However, he has really lost me in recent months. His administration spent so long trying to deny that inflation even existed, all while pushing for a gargantuan spending package. WTF? Then all this hyperbolic crap about Jan 6 started getting pushed, with the VP comparing it to 9/11 and Pearl Harbor. Extremely disrespectful, in my opinion. And finally, the nail in the coffin was this Voter ID nonsense. I absolutely support Voter ID, it seems like a common sense policy. And I don't support giving illegal immigrants the right to vote, like they did in NYC. But according to Biden, this makes me a racist who is on the side of Jefferson Davis. Are you freaking serious!? My response to Biden is - go fuck yourself, asshole. In summary, he has disappointed me in many ways. The left hasn't calmed down in the slightest, and cancel culture is at an all time high. Inflation is spiking and people like me may never get to own a house. Biden is too busy calling us racists to have any chance at uniting the country. And covid is at an all time high. Very disappointing, and I hope someone more moderate runs in 2024 for BOTH sides. Trump and Biden are clearly a bunch of old curmudgeons who can't unite shit. Let's get some moderates in there, like Manchin or Romney.

nitwit005 5y ago
> And I don't support giving illegal immigrants the right to vote, like they did in NYC. Except they didn't. They changed the law to let legal immigrants vote.
- uejfiweun 5y ago
  I apologize, clearly I was misinformed. Unfortunately I am unable to edit the comment, thank you for correcting the record.
  - quadrifoliate 5y ago
    An ability to distinguish between illegal and legal immigrants as well as local and national elections is exactly the sort of thing that voters should be well-informed about. Honestly, this lack of ability demonstrated in your comment nullifies most of the ranting you have built up afterwards. I suggest you seriously examine how much of a "pressure head" of resentment you have built up based on these equivalents of software bugs. Running a linter over your other assumptions might also help a bit.

newbamboo 5y ago

Just wait until everyone’s 401k loses all the gains made during the pandemic while inflation continues and job growth falters. Oh, and international turmoil and potential war following a series of diplomatic and military blunders that have weakened America’s stance abroad. How can people not understand the reaction of moderates and independents? Perhaps they are watching propaganda that masquerades as news. The next few years will be confusing times for many. The pendulum swings as they say.

LostJourneyman 5y ago

Telephone-based sampling is hardly random sampling, given that most people don't answer calls they don't recognize the caller ID for. Those who do might be pre-disposed to certain sets of political ideology. What we may be seeing is a shift of people who are willing to answer the telephone and take a survey, not a net shift in political opinion. A practical example, given in good faith: It may be that in their "random telephone sampling" they are only connecting with older people (who are usually more likely to answer calls from an unknown number), leading to unintentional selection bias. In this example, the confounding factor is age, and as such the gallop graphs could be simply showing that younger (ostensibly left-leaning) people are growing less willing to answer the phone (as opposed to the claim that Americans are moving right, idiologically)

arprocter 5y ago
Seems like the polling gets spun no matter what it says There was a lot of 'even though polls predict a certain someone is going to lose, he might still win because voters are "shy"' copy written going into 2020

deleted 5y ago

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indymike 5y ago

I'd just like a decent candidate, please. I'm not sure I've had a single election since I was old enough to vote where I wasn't choosing the lesser of two evils... or the less stupid of the two. I'd really like to be able to vote without holding my nose.

chasd00 5y ago
how many elections have you voted in? they're all like that.
- indymike 5y ago
  First presidential election was the year Bill Clinton won.

_skzr 5y ago

One of the parties has been branded as the “Lockdown party” during covid. So long as there is a collective with the view that closing people’s businesses at any given time, indefinitely, without recourse, is acceptable - we can expect an endless stream of voters rushing to the other side of the aisle. Speak to right wingers and you’ll find that many will tell you they weren’t convinced by some right wing youTuber. It’s often the policy or rhetoric of the left that drove them away. A specific example in 2021, lockdown policies of the left may have had a far more profound impact on pushing people away than any random guest on Joe Rogan.