12 ms·

How elites misread public opinion

44 points by robg 4y ago

JumpCrisscross 4y ago
This reflects the most effective mode of lobbying I’ve seen: identifying electeds voting against their constituents’ interests. It costs money to commission reliable polls. But once you have the data, it’s a 50%+ hit rate in getting outcomes. (The other 50% are some variation of subject to unique primary-general dynamics, sceptical of lobbyist-provided data to an unreasonable degree, obstinate or corrupt. The last is vanishingly rare in American federal politics. Much more in state and local.)
- lifeisstillgood 4y ago
  Sorry are you saying that if I have a lobbying interest (ie Green widget manufacturing) I need to find a State where the Senator votes agains t Green Widgets but the people of the State benefit from the Green Wudget factory? Then it's easy to convert / lobby / bribe the Senator?
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    > need to find a State where the Senator votes agains t Green Widgets but the people of the State benefit from the Green Wudget factory? Then it's easy to convert / lobby / bribe the Senator? Nope. Find a state where the Senator votes against (or, more likely, ignores) green widgets. Show that their people, specifically likely voters, even better if both in their party (primary) and generally, like them. Commission polls, run ads, show them the data if it exists, and if it doesn’t, credibly measure it. Most people opt out of this because (a) it’s tedious and unsexy and nobody makes an HBO drama where the protagonists are lobbyists and they don’t win with a massive protest, (b) they think the system is more corrupt than it is because (c) they think their leaders are more aware/plugged in/scheming/competent than they really are. It also doesn’t work for issues that have already polarised. But that is not most issues.
whimsicalism 4y ago
> What’s stopping elites and elected officials from accessing the public opinion polling that social scientists use to understand what the public wants? > Renshon: Absolutely nothing is stopping elites from using the same public opinion data ... it’s also not unusual for politicians to discount or dismiss public opinion polls when they don’t like the results I am curious if we are reasoning from stable ground here. Are opinion polls actually representative of what public opinion is - and more importantly, how the public will vote? It seems that on a lot of hot button issues - for instance, guns - opinion polls show considerable support for restrictions that simply do not manifest when there are actual referenda on the issue. Polling on guns tends to skew substantially to the left of the actual referenda.
- rayiner 4y ago
  A lot of political polling is poor and conducted in isolation. People consistently support addressing climate change, for example. What will they pay to address climate change? Less than $10/month: https://www.cato.org/blog/68-americans-wouldnt-pay-10-month-higher-electric-bills-combat-climate-change https://www.cato.org/blog/68-americans-wouldnt-pay-10-month-.... Most people support Roe. Meanwhile, most people oppose legalized second trimester abortions, which is guaranteed by Roe. With respect to gun—what people support and what they trust democrats enough to work with them on are two different things. A lot of issue polling is conducted by advocacy organizations and is useless. Pew and Gallup are some of the few organizations doing objective polling.
  - mike_hearn 4y ago
    Actually, even companies like Pew and Gallup have serious problems with poll accuracy. Beyond the well known issues with wording sensitivity there's a pervasive problem that they know about, but which isn't widely known by the general public, who tend to assume that professionally done polls are unbiased and accurate. I wrote an article about this last year [1] explaining the problem and providing references. The summary is as follows. The number of people who are willing to answer random phone calls by pollsters declined seriously over time to the point where almost all calls fail. As a consequence pollsters now rely heavily on panel polling, where people who are willing to answer polls are recorded and repeatedly re-polled over and over in return for trivial sums of money. This has created an enormous and unfixable bias problem, called pro-social or volunteering bias. It's exactly what it sounds like - the sort of people who are now being regularly polled are drastically more likely to be volunteers than normal people. This can be measured by polling panels on how many of them volunteer for things in their community and then comparing the answers against census results [2]: "While the level of voter registration is the same in the survey as in the Current Population Survey (75% among citizens in both surveys), the more difficult participatory act of contacting a public official to express one’s views is significantly overstated in the survey (31% vs. 10% in the Current Population Survey). Similarly, the survey finds 55% saying that they did some type of volunteer work for or through an organization in the past year, compared with 27% who report doing this in the Current Population Survey." This level of bias is extreme and unfortunately completely uncorrectable. It's inherent to polling the sort of people who are willing to regularly spend time filling out long forms in return for basically no compensation - you're getting a population of Ned Flanders style good neighbours who are, relatively speaking, obsessed with civic duty. That's why they're doing the polls - they think it's for the general good! Making things worse, panels get more dominated by such types over time because less volunteering-oriented people drop out at a higher rate. Thus a panel that might start out somewhat representative will become less so over time, and they don't really have a good way to control for that or even measure it. Pollsters argue that this doesn't matter for the types of polls they normally run (commercial/marketing surveys), and for elections and other votes where they have regular consistent reference points they can compute adjustment models. But it's an open secret in the polling community that any poll question that has a "pro-social" or "civic duty" component to the answers will get wildly disproportionate results to what the public actually thinks. And worse, such questions tend not to have any obvious reference points to which the results can be re-calibrated. The political scientist being interviewed in the article probably either doesn't know about these problems, or doesn't care, because he seems very willing to 'correct' politicians about what 'the public' really believes. But he has no real way to know that. He can only know what the sort of public that is willing to spend time talking to political scientists believes, and there's good reason to think they're not really representative. [1] https://dailysceptic.org/archive/do-online-opinion-polls-overestimate-public-support-for-covid-restrictions/ https://dailysceptic.org/archive/do-online-opinion-polls-ove... [2] https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2012/05/15/assessing-the-representativeness-of-public-opinion-surveys/#fn-20041070-2 https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2012/05/15/assessing-th...
lkrubner 4y ago
To my mind, the most interesting question is the other way around. We have an abundance of data about the public, we have relatively little data about how the elites operate. As I've gone up in my career, and begun to reach elite levels, I've been fascinated to learn about some of the upper levels of the economy, some of the odd rituals that it has. I have taken an almost sociological interest in some of the minor social codes of elite life, such as who is allowed to use curse words, and what they are actually communicating when they allow themselves to use curse words. But also the opposite: who never uses curse words, and why? But my point is, if I want to learn how coal miners in West Virginia use curse words, I can easily learn about that. I own several good books about working class life in Appalachia, I've read half of them. But good books about the use of curse words among the elites? That is much more rare, and the situation tends to evolve at a faster rate. Also, I'll point out, this form of journalism is fairly common. Over the last year I've seen several good essays that suggested various elite groups were misunderstanding the mood of the public. What is somewhat more rare is to read a book about how the public misreads the elites. Into this category I would, arguably, suggest that Democracy For Realists is the best: https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Realists-Elections-Responsive-Government/dp/0691178240/ https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Realists-Elections-Responsi... I read this at the end of last year, and posted a few excerpts here: https://demodexio.substack.com/p/democracy-for-realists-part-15-of https://demodexio.substack.com/p/democracy-for-realists-part... The public also seems to misunderstand how much any political system, but especially democratic systems, depend on certain elites, and in particular political parties, to allow the system to continue to function. Consider the Panama Exception: https://demodexio.substack.com/p/the-panama-exception https://demodexio.substack.com/p/the-panama-exception Occasionally someone is born into wealth and they turn out to be a great novelist, so they can write a novel that gives us some sense of growing up in the upper class. Interesting stuff. But in general, if I want to learn how poverty persists in Appalachia, I have many more books to read than books that teach me how the upper class transmits its status to its children. Some of the details of that operation are hidden, and difficult to learn about, save when we make friends with people who had that upbringing, and even then, we are only seeing a narrow slice of the overall process. And obviously, the life of the wealthy frequently shows up on television and movies, but not in a realistic way. Such shows amount to a kind of obfuscation of elite reality.
fullshark 4y ago
Man this was almost substance free, found it unreadable, what exactly are they doing? What is an example experiment and what does it show? The paper this Q and A is about is mostly surface level it seems. https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev-polisci-051120-013649 https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev-polisc...
jmyeet 4y ago
This is the real story of the 2016 election: an increasing number of people are sick of the status quo. This led Republican voters to choose Trump over any establishment candidate that in earlier years would've been the candidate. On the Democratic side, this almost led to Hilary being upset a second time (the first was in 2008 obviously). But this progressive movement ultimately failed due to the full force of the Democratic Party establishment uniting to defeat Bernie Sanders. Seriously, look into how the DNC funded the primaries and the career of Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, the then DNC chair who then joined the Hilary campaign. Democrats like to jump up and down about Russian interference, which is a huge distraction. Hilary was a terrible and unpopular candidate and (IMHO) the only person capable of getting Donald Trump elected. This context is important to understand the current political landscape. Nothing has changed. Here's a good comparison: Republicans fear their base. The Democrats despise their base. Republicans actually do things for their base out of this fear (eg court-stacking). Democrats throw their hands up and say there's nothing we can do while controlling the White House, the House and the Senate. Why? Because Democrats don't actually want to do anything. They want to fundraise off how terrible the Republicans are. They tell their voters to vote harder next time. These are the actions of a controlled opposition party. This is why any narrative about the "radical far left" is just so laughable.
- tanaros 4y ago
  While it’s clear the DNC didn’t want Sanders as the candidate, the reality is that he just didn’t have the votes, regardless of how many thumbs were on the scale. The RNC didn’t want Trump as the candidate either, but guess what? He got the votes.
  - UnpossibleJim 4y ago
    There were moderate Republicans who would have crossed the aisle to cast their vote for Bernie (according to polling) thanks to a strong ground campaign and (while poo poo-ed) YouTube and Podcast support as well as a strong minority support from African Americans and Latinos due to not just "expecting their vote" like the Democrats did, but doing the work and actually campaigning to them and addressing their concerns. Bernie support was stronger than was given credit, rather Hillary liked it or not, and that disenfranchisement was a large part of her loss, and led a lot of people to just not vote, or in the case of Latinos, vote on the single issue of abortion.
dylanwenzlau 4y ago
Forewarning: this page immediately redirected me to a fraud/malware website pretending to be a google alert.
- whimsicalism 4y ago
  could be malware on your computer... Politico is pretty reputable.
  - kortilla 4y ago
    If there was already malware on the computer, what would be the point of redirecting a page to install some malware? This has nothing to do with politico’s reputation. Likely one of the ad networks or 3rd party scripts got compromised that politico uses on its site.
  - matkoniecz 4y ago
    maybe an ad with malware?
e67f70028a46fba 4y ago
The elites don’t care about public opinion. They manufacture it when they can and ignore or demonize it when they can’t. source: any George Carlin set
b112 4y ago
Every time I hear someone talk about "the elites", I immediately think "bat shit crazy" person. If such a thing as "the elites" exists, you can be sure they are as fractured as any other part of humanity. Put two people in a room, and they will likely disagree on a variety of things. Put a group of people in a room, and good luck with consensus. And these 'elites' are supposedly world wide, drawn from all countries, religions, cultures, languages which exist. Yeah. Sure. They all have a plan, work together, etc, etc. If consensus and action was that easy, then the poor would work together, and remake the world their own.
- whimsicalism 4y ago
  I think you are attaching a lot of connotations on to a word. Simply by labeling a group of people does not suggest that this group "all have a plan, work together" or will not disagree or be fractured. Prefer steelmen over strawmen.
  - b112 4y ago
    The whole crazy WEF conspiracy movement won't shut up about "the elites", so forgive me if I immediately draw the crazy vibe when mentioned.
    - ellopoppit 4y ago
      >The whole crazy WEF conspiracy movement Isnt the World Economic Forum a real organization? Why do you call the WEF a crazy conspiracy movement?
      - b112 4y ago
        I call the "WEF is a conspiracy, they are secretly out to get us all" movement, a bunch of crazies.
        ellopoppit 4y ago
        Isn't the WEF the same group that published that video saying "you'll own nothing, and you'll be happy"? What is your opinion on the WEF?
ballenf 4y ago
If the elites understood the masses, that would imply that the elites believe the masses to be capable of rational thought. Otherwise there is no basis for comprehension. Elite by definition is believing that the opinions of the masses are not rationally based in logic or fact. The real question is what delusion allows the masses to believe that the elites are simply "out of touch" instead of actively adversarial. But that delusion breaking down is what drives more of these articles being written.
TexanFeller 4y ago
Elites are too busy writing public opinion to bother reading it accurately. They control the media and get the tech companies to censor inconvenient truths. The average person never sees the naked truth reported, only the propagandized version in the news. Average Joe’s “opinion” is just a regurgitation of what he was fed.
DuskStar 4y ago
> Think also about gun control, which we know is much more popular with the public than elites often think it is. One of the things that we’re seeing recently in American politics is an effort by activist groups to correct misperceptions about what the public does think to change the nature of the conversation in Washington. This bit right here made me trust the article a LOT less. Poll responses on Gun Control are very highly dependent on wording and how much information is provided. For instance, people might support "universal background checks", but oppose "you cannot legally loan a rifle to your brother for a hunting trip". Or they'll support "red flag laws", but balk at "laws that let police take anyone's guns on the basis of an anonymous complaint". Same policy, different presentation. Another example in a different field is "how much should the rich pay in income taxes?", where people will answer "more than they are now" (instead of "less" or "the same") but if asked to pick a percentage they'll choose one lower than current rates.
- hourago 4y ago
  Maybe you are an elite misinterpreting public opinion. The article is just about it.
  - DuskStar 4y ago
    My point was that one of their key examples of "the elites are wrong on what public opinion is" was a subject where "public opinion" is extremely dependent on wording, and that they themselves do not seem to realize this, and it's plausible that the elites might have a better view of the public than these polls do. Some polls are built to gather information, others are built to advance a cause.
- rayiner 4y ago
  > Another example in a different field is "how much should the rich pay in income taxes?", where people will answer "more than they are now" (instead of "less" or "the same") but if asked to pick a percentage they'll choose one lower than current rates. And if you ask them what counts as rich, they’ll say “someone who makes more money than me” even folks who make $200k+.
kkfx 4y ago
Hum... I've not read so far the study, just skimmed the article and honestly I'm not convinced at all. Modern era born essentially with the French, American and October Revolutions, witch are described in general as people revolutions, but if we read more carefully the history we have, their outcome they should probably be read as the banker's revolutions. The old élite was essentially a military and religious one, decoupled, the new one is essentially economical/merchant/financial with still a fragment of religion and military power aside. That means their power is mostly based on very deep understatement of the people behaviors, since they can't count on strong power to repress. Actual élite might be "disconnected from the real world" but definitively know VERY DEEPLY WELL the public opinion, they master it, also thanks to surveillance capitalism. What they misread probably is the physical reality, like they imaging a future that's totally surrealistic while to their eyes sound definitively possible, but hardly they ignore or misread the public, they are the master of propaganda more than ever.
throwaways85989 4y ago
Science goes were the data goes and the data on half of humankinds actual, unfiltered thoughts and actions, are in big four datacenters. This knowledge aggregated, mined and filtered, gives the "elites" a pretty good view on what human nature is really all about. And if you do not look on their words, but on their actions, one begins to grasp that hidden in that data, there was something ugly. Humanity is not the idealized version we like to think of ourselves. There is something in there, that made them abandon all dreams of a good future through technology and embrace totalitarianism without second thought. One actually can see it in those haunted faces. One can see it through there investments and political supports. They stare at us like we are a monster haunting their nightmares and will collapse into a anarchic butchering frenzy once push comes to shove.

44 points by robg 4y ago

This reflects the most effective mode of lobbying I’ve seen: identifying electeds voting against their constituents’ interests. It costs money to commission reliable polls. But once you have the data, it’s a 50%+ hit rate in getting outcomes. (The other 50% are some variation of subject to unique primary-general dynamics, sceptical of lobbyist-provided data to an unreasonable degree, obstinate or corrupt. The last is vanishingly rare in American federal politics. Much more in state and local.)

lifeisstillgood 4y ago
Sorry are you saying that if I have a lobbying interest (ie Green widget manufacturing) I need to find a State where the Senator votes agains t Green Widgets but the people of the State benefit from the Green Wudget factory? Then it's easy to convert / lobby / bribe the Senator?
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > need to find a State where the Senator votes agains t Green Widgets but the people of the State benefit from the Green Wudget factory? Then it's easy to convert / lobby / bribe the Senator? Nope. Find a state where the Senator votes against (or, more likely, ignores) green widgets. Show that their people, specifically likely voters, even better if both in their party (primary) and generally, like them. Commission polls, run ads, show them the data if it exists, and if it doesn’t, credibly measure it. Most people opt out of this because (a) it’s tedious and unsexy and nobody makes an HBO drama where the protagonists are lobbyists and they don’t win with a massive protest, (b) they think the system is more corrupt than it is because (c) they think their leaders are more aware/plugged in/scheming/competent than they really are. It also doesn’t work for issues that have already polarised. But that is not most issues.

whimsicalism 4y ago

> What’s stopping elites and elected officials from accessing the public opinion polling that social scientists use to understand what the public wants? > Renshon: Absolutely nothing is stopping elites from using the same public opinion data ... it’s also not unusual for politicians to discount or dismiss public opinion polls when they don’t like the results I am curious if we are reasoning from stable ground here. Are opinion polls actually representative of what public opinion is - and more importantly, how the public will vote? It seems that on a lot of hot button issues - for instance, guns - opinion polls show considerable support for restrictions that simply do not manifest when there are actual referenda on the issue. Polling on guns tends to skew substantially to the left of the actual referenda.

rayiner 4y ago
A lot of political polling is poor and conducted in isolation. People consistently support addressing climate change, for example. What will they pay to address climate change? Less than $10/month: https://www.cato.org/blog/68-americans-wouldnt-pay-10-month-higher-electric-bills-combat-climate-change https://www.cato.org/blog/68-americans-wouldnt-pay-10-month-.... Most people support Roe. Meanwhile, most people oppose legalized second trimester abortions, which is guaranteed by Roe. With respect to gun—what people support and what they trust democrats enough to work with them on are two different things. A lot of issue polling is conducted by advocacy organizations and is useless. Pew and Gallup are some of the few organizations doing objective polling.
- mike_hearn 4y ago
  Actually, even companies like Pew and Gallup have serious problems with poll accuracy. Beyond the well known issues with wording sensitivity there's a pervasive problem that they know about, but which isn't widely known by the general public, who tend to assume that professionally done polls are unbiased and accurate. I wrote an article about this last year [1] explaining the problem and providing references. The summary is as follows. The number of people who are willing to answer random phone calls by pollsters declined seriously over time to the point where almost all calls fail. As a consequence pollsters now rely heavily on panel polling, where people who are willing to answer polls are recorded and repeatedly re-polled over and over in return for trivial sums of money. This has created an enormous and unfixable bias problem, called pro-social or volunteering bias. It's exactly what it sounds like - the sort of people who are now being regularly polled are drastically more likely to be volunteers than normal people. This can be measured by polling panels on how many of them volunteer for things in their community and then comparing the answers against census results [2]: "While the level of voter registration is the same in the survey as in the Current Population Survey (75% among citizens in both surveys), the more difficult participatory act of contacting a public official to express one’s views is significantly overstated in the survey (31% vs. 10% in the Current Population Survey). Similarly, the survey finds 55% saying that they did some type of volunteer work for or through an organization in the past year, compared with 27% who report doing this in the Current Population Survey." This level of bias is extreme and unfortunately completely uncorrectable. It's inherent to polling the sort of people who are willing to regularly spend time filling out long forms in return for basically no compensation - you're getting a population of Ned Flanders style good neighbours who are, relatively speaking, obsessed with civic duty. That's why they're doing the polls - they think it's for the general good! Making things worse, panels get more dominated by such types over time because less volunteering-oriented people drop out at a higher rate. Thus a panel that might start out somewhat representative will become less so over time, and they don't really have a good way to control for that or even measure it. Pollsters argue that this doesn't matter for the types of polls they normally run (commercial/marketing surveys), and for elections and other votes where they have regular consistent reference points they can compute adjustment models. But it's an open secret in the polling community that any poll question that has a "pro-social" or "civic duty" component to the answers will get wildly disproportionate results to what the public actually thinks. And worse, such questions tend not to have any obvious reference points to which the results can be re-calibrated. The political scientist being interviewed in the article probably either doesn't know about these problems, or doesn't care, because he seems very willing to 'correct' politicians about what 'the public' really believes. But he has no real way to know that. He can only know what the sort of public that is willing to spend time talking to political scientists believes, and there's good reason to think they're not really representative. [1] https://dailysceptic.org/archive/do-online-opinion-polls-overestimate-public-support-for-covid-restrictions/ https://dailysceptic.org/archive/do-online-opinion-polls-ove... [2] https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2012/05/15/assessing-the-representativeness-of-public-opinion-surveys/#fn-20041070-2 https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2012/05/15/assessing-th...

lkrubner 4y ago

To my mind, the most interesting question is the other way around. We have an abundance of data about the public, we have relatively little data about how the elites operate. As I've gone up in my career, and begun to reach elite levels, I've been fascinated to learn about some of the upper levels of the economy, some of the odd rituals that it has. I have taken an almost sociological interest in some of the minor social codes of elite life, such as who is allowed to use curse words, and what they are actually communicating when they allow themselves to use curse words. But also the opposite: who never uses curse words, and why? But my point is, if I want to learn how coal miners in West Virginia use curse words, I can easily learn about that. I own several good books about working class life in Appalachia, I've read half of them. But good books about the use of curse words among the elites? That is much more rare, and the situation tends to evolve at a faster rate. Also, I'll point out, this form of journalism is fairly common. Over the last year I've seen several good essays that suggested various elite groups were misunderstanding the mood of the public. What is somewhat more rare is to read a book about how the public misreads the elites. Into this category I would, arguably, suggest that Democracy For Realists is the best: https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Realists-Elections-Responsive-Government/dp/0691178240/ https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Realists-Elections-Responsi... I read this at the end of last year, and posted a few excerpts here: https://demodexio.substack.com/p/democracy-for-realists-part-15-of https://demodexio.substack.com/p/democracy-for-realists-part... The public also seems to misunderstand how much any political system, but especially democratic systems, depend on certain elites, and in particular political parties, to allow the system to continue to function. Consider the Panama Exception: https://demodexio.substack.com/p/the-panama-exception https://demodexio.substack.com/p/the-panama-exception Occasionally someone is born into wealth and they turn out to be a great novelist, so they can write a novel that gives us some sense of growing up in the upper class. Interesting stuff. But in general, if I want to learn how poverty persists in Appalachia, I have many more books to read than books that teach me how the upper class transmits its status to its children. Some of the details of that operation are hidden, and difficult to learn about, save when we make friends with people who had that upbringing, and even then, we are only seeing a narrow slice of the overall process. And obviously, the life of the wealthy frequently shows up on television and movies, but not in a realistic way. Such shows amount to a kind of obfuscation of elite reality.

fullshark 4y ago

Man this was almost substance free, found it unreadable, what exactly are they doing? What is an example experiment and what does it show? The paper this Q and A is about is mostly surface level it seems. https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev-polisci-051120-013649 https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev-polisc...

jmyeet 4y ago

This is the real story of the 2016 election: an increasing number of people are sick of the status quo. This led Republican voters to choose Trump over any establishment candidate that in earlier years would've been the candidate. On the Democratic side, this almost led to Hilary being upset a second time (the first was in 2008 obviously). But this progressive movement ultimately failed due to the full force of the Democratic Party establishment uniting to defeat Bernie Sanders. Seriously, look into how the DNC funded the primaries and the career of Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, the then DNC chair who then joined the Hilary campaign. Democrats like to jump up and down about Russian interference, which is a huge distraction. Hilary was a terrible and unpopular candidate and (IMHO) the only person capable of getting Donald Trump elected. This context is important to understand the current political landscape. Nothing has changed. Here's a good comparison: Republicans fear their base. The Democrats despise their base. Republicans actually do things for their base out of this fear (eg court-stacking). Democrats throw their hands up and say there's nothing we can do while controlling the White House, the House and the Senate. Why? Because Democrats don't actually want to do anything. They want to fundraise off how terrible the Republicans are. They tell their voters to vote harder next time. These are the actions of a controlled opposition party. This is why any narrative about the "radical far left" is just so laughable.

tanaros 4y ago
While it’s clear the DNC didn’t want Sanders as the candidate, the reality is that he just didn’t have the votes, regardless of how many thumbs were on the scale. The RNC didn’t want Trump as the candidate either, but guess what? He got the votes.
- UnpossibleJim 4y ago
  There were moderate Republicans who would have crossed the aisle to cast their vote for Bernie (according to polling) thanks to a strong ground campaign and (while poo poo-ed) YouTube and Podcast support as well as a strong minority support from African Americans and Latinos due to not just "expecting their vote" like the Democrats did, but doing the work and actually campaigning to them and addressing their concerns. Bernie support was stronger than was given credit, rather Hillary liked it or not, and that disenfranchisement was a large part of her loss, and led a lot of people to just not vote, or in the case of Latinos, vote on the single issue of abortion.

dylanwenzlau 4y ago

Forewarning: this page immediately redirected me to a fraud/malware website pretending to be a google alert.

whimsicalism 4y ago
could be malware on your computer... Politico is pretty reputable.
- kortilla 4y ago
  If there was already malware on the computer, what would be the point of redirecting a page to install some malware? This has nothing to do with politico’s reputation. Likely one of the ad networks or 3rd party scripts got compromised that politico uses on its site.
- matkoniecz 4y ago
  maybe an ad with malware?

e67f70028a46fba 4y ago

The elites don’t care about public opinion. They manufacture it when they can and ignore or demonize it when they can’t. source: any George Carlin set

b112 4y ago

Every time I hear someone talk about "the elites", I immediately think "bat shit crazy" person. If such a thing as "the elites" exists, you can be sure they are as fractured as any other part of humanity. Put two people in a room, and they will likely disagree on a variety of things. Put a group of people in a room, and good luck with consensus. And these 'elites' are supposedly world wide, drawn from all countries, religions, cultures, languages which exist. Yeah. Sure. They all have a plan, work together, etc, etc. If consensus and action was that easy, then the poor would work together, and remake the world their own.

whimsicalism 4y ago
I think you are attaching a lot of connotations on to a word. Simply by labeling a group of people does not suggest that this group "all have a plan, work together" or will not disagree or be fractured. Prefer steelmen over strawmen.
- b112 4y ago
  The whole crazy WEF conspiracy movement won't shut up about "the elites", so forgive me if I immediately draw the crazy vibe when mentioned.
  - ellopoppit 4y ago
    >The whole crazy WEF conspiracy movement Isnt the World Economic Forum a real organization? Why do you call the WEF a crazy conspiracy movement?
    - b112 4y ago
      I call the "WEF is a conspiracy, they are secretly out to get us all" movement, a bunch of crazies.
      - ellopoppit 4y ago
        Isn't the WEF the same group that published that video saying "you'll own nothing, and you'll be happy"? What is your opinion on the WEF?

ballenf 4y ago

If the elites understood the masses, that would imply that the elites believe the masses to be capable of rational thought. Otherwise there is no basis for comprehension. Elite by definition is believing that the opinions of the masses are not rationally based in logic or fact. The real question is what delusion allows the masses to believe that the elites are simply "out of touch" instead of actively adversarial. But that delusion breaking down is what drives more of these articles being written.

TexanFeller 4y ago

Elites are too busy writing public opinion to bother reading it accurately. They control the media and get the tech companies to censor inconvenient truths. The average person never sees the naked truth reported, only the propagandized version in the news. Average Joe’s “opinion” is just a regurgitation of what he was fed.

DuskStar 4y ago

> Think also about gun control, which we know is much more popular with the public than elites often think it is. One of the things that we’re seeing recently in American politics is an effort by activist groups to correct misperceptions about what the public does think to change the nature of the conversation in Washington. This bit right here made me trust the article a LOT less. Poll responses on Gun Control are very highly dependent on wording and how much information is provided. For instance, people might support "universal background checks", but oppose "you cannot legally loan a rifle to your brother for a hunting trip". Or they'll support "red flag laws", but balk at "laws that let police take anyone's guns on the basis of an anonymous complaint". Same policy, different presentation. Another example in a different field is "how much should the rich pay in income taxes?", where people will answer "more than they are now" (instead of "less" or "the same") but if asked to pick a percentage they'll choose one lower than current rates.

hourago 4y ago
Maybe you are an elite misinterpreting public opinion. The article is just about it.
- DuskStar 4y ago
  My point was that one of their key examples of "the elites are wrong on what public opinion is" was a subject where "public opinion" is extremely dependent on wording, and that they themselves do not seem to realize this, and it's plausible that the elites might have a better view of the public than these polls do. Some polls are built to gather information, others are built to advance a cause.
rayiner 4y ago
> Another example in a different field is "how much should the rich pay in income taxes?", where people will answer "more than they are now" (instead of "less" or "the same") but if asked to pick a percentage they'll choose one lower than current rates. And if you ask them what counts as rich, they’ll say “someone who makes more money than me” even folks who make $200k+.

kkfx 4y ago

Hum... I've not read so far the study, just skimmed the article and honestly I'm not convinced at all. Modern era born essentially with the French, American and October Revolutions, witch are described in general as people revolutions, but if we read more carefully the history we have, their outcome they should probably be read as the banker's revolutions. The old élite was essentially a military and religious one, decoupled, the new one is essentially economical/merchant/financial with still a fragment of religion and military power aside. That means their power is mostly based on very deep understatement of the people behaviors, since they can't count on strong power to repress. Actual élite might be "disconnected from the real world" but definitively know VERY DEEPLY WELL the public opinion, they master it, also thanks to surveillance capitalism. What they misread probably is the physical reality, like they imaging a future that's totally surrealistic while to their eyes sound definitively possible, but hardly they ignore or misread the public, they are the master of propaganda more than ever.

throwaways85989 4y ago

Science goes were the data goes and the data on half of humankinds actual, unfiltered thoughts and actions, are in big four datacenters. This knowledge aggregated, mined and filtered, gives the "elites" a pretty good view on what human nature is really all about. And if you do not look on their words, but on their actions, one begins to grasp that hidden in that data, there was something ugly. Humanity is not the idealized version we like to think of ourselves. There is something in there, that made them abandon all dreams of a good future through technology and embrace totalitarianism without second thought. One actually can see it in those haunted faces. One can see it through there investments and political supports. They stare at us like we are a monster haunting their nightmares and will collapse into a anarchic butchering frenzy once push comes to shove.