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"By people who aren’t listening to you." This is the part everyone wants to say but isn't right. They are usually listening to people, just not people who agre
by DannyBee 3y ago
"By people who aren’t listening to you."
This is the part everyone wants to say but isn't right. They are usually listening to people, just not people who agree with you :)
One of the grand follies is to assume politicians are not doing what their constituents support.
They almost always are, and often enjoy incredibly high local support/satisfaction ratings, even when the national ones are in the toilet.
They spend significant amounts of time polling and understanding how their constituents will react to issues and votes.
Now, you may want to argue those constituents are ignorant, or don't know what the vote really means, or whatever, but it's a sideshow.
I often see people say "well 70% of people in the country support X so politicians aren't listening". But when you break it down, they are usually voting in alignment with constituent support, and it's just a variant of Simpson's paradox in action (overall population vs subgroups).
- anigbrowl 3y agoRegional constituencies allow politicians to select the voters they want in many respects. The UK might look very different if they had a party list or some other form of PR.
- DannyBee 3y agoSure, i have no doubt the system is broken in lots of ways. I'm just saying that one way in which it's not particularly broken is whether they listen. They do nothing but listen, have dedicated staffers and help that do nothing but analyze constituent opinion/views/etc. You will rarely find them doing anything that is going to go against that. The exception is the small number of places where they are forced to deal with multiple constituencies for real.
- jabradoodle 3y agoWell, for example, our national politicans have delayed a plan to clean our waters (that are almost all polluted to a level illegal under EU law) until 2063. They are clearly not representing the people even on non partisan issues.