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> Trump is aligned with your average American Considering he lost the popular* vote in 2016, that's a strong claim. If he manages the popular vote this time,

> Trump is aligned with your average American Considering he lost the popular* vote in 2016, that's a strong claim. If he manages the popular vote this time, I'll grant you it. > No one in this world, so far as I know — and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me — has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby. — HLM * which distinguishes itself from the electoral results by clearly including the opinion of the median voter.

AniseAbyss 3y ago
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rayiner 3y ago
I think the other way to look at it is that Trump is a terrible candidate for idiosyncratic and personal reasons, stuck in a party with a “tax cuts and foreign wars” legacy, and is viable at all only because he is on the right side against the elite on a bunch of issues. Immigration was his defining issue in 2016, and he has won with the public that issue. He won on the rioting and law and order issue. He has won against affirmative action, both with the public and with SFFA. He sides with the majority view on the Iraq war and using the American military to underpin the world order. The GOP’s biggest liability has been abortion, which is an area where Trump has gone against the party and pushed for a 15-week middle ground that commands majority support (once you extricate the policy from voters’ worries about total bans). My mom—who is a steadfast Democrat—was commenting the other day that Trump could’ve been a great president. She hates how he talks, what he did on January 6, etc. She won’t vote for anyone with an (R) because of the Iraq War, but she (and my dad) basically agree with Trump on all of his signature policies.
- 082349872349872 3y ago
  Maybe he will win the popular vote on those things in 2024. (it would not surprise me) He didn't win it in either 2020 or 2016.
  - rayiner 3y ago
    The “popular vote” doesn’t mean anything, because nobody is trying to win it. It makes way more sense for Trump to spend a bunch of time trying to turn out 5,000 more votes in Georgia than to spend any time trying to turn out a million votes in California. Issue polling, however, shows that Trump is winning on all those issues. For example, 74% of Americans oppose affirmative action in hiring: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/06/16/americans-and-affirmative-action-how-the-public-sees-the-consideration-of-race-in-college-admissions-hiring/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/06/16/americans.... The median American thinks abortion should be banned after 15 weeks: https://apnorc.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/chart2-1536x1515.png https://apnorc.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/chart2-1536x15.... It’s the rest of Trump that keeps his support under 50%.
    - Turing_Machine 3y ago
      Yes. The "popular vote" is about as meaningful in the context as picking a President on the basis of how many 3 point shots the candidates can make in a game of 1-on-1 basketball. People who go off on the "popular vote" are generally those who are unwilling to accept that they have lost the election. In other words, sour grapes. Oh, they might argue that they'd be in favor of using the "popular vote" even if that worked against them, but you know what? I don't believe them. If it worked against them, they'd be arguing for a "return to the original system as conceived by the Founders" or some such.
    - 082349872349872 3y ago
      I bring up the popular vote because the original claim was: > Trump is aligned with your average American ... against your average American college professor. and the popular vote is evidence that in fact the other candidate in both 2016 and 2020 was aligned with your average American. (as to college professors, although there are only <600k American college professors, which would make them "elite", in recent generations over half of Americans have had at least some college education, which means that the average American knows at least one college professor, which is not so elite. On the other hand, although I've had after-work beers with billionaires, and I'm sure you have too, I'm willing to bet that the average [modal or median, maybe even mean] American has not shared beers with any billionaires. Therefore I would find it more statistically defensible to claim: Trump's opponents in 2016 and 2020 were aligned with your average American ... against your average American billionaire.) see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professors_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professors_in_the_United_State...
hollerith 3y ago
In order for the concept of "median voter" to make sense there needs to be some way of ranking voters, so when you say "median voter", what method of ranking are you referring to?
- 082349872349872 3y ago
  One person one vote: all votes for candidate A on one side, votes for candidate B on the other side, whoever has the vote in the middle (the median voter) is equivalent to whoever has the most votes (the popular count).
  - hollerith 3y ago
    I understand now. (But you conceptualization breaks when a third candidate gets a significant number of votes.)
    - kragen 3y ago
      that's why https://dercuano.github.io/notes/2017-sap-allocation.html https://dercuano.github.io/notes/2017-sap-allocation.html described the event as follows > A human they call Donald Trump was what they call President of USA for basically all of “2017”, and that sucked. One tribe of humans, forming the majority of the human population of the proto-rhizome named USA, elected him in a flawed median-preference-finding ritual because he promised to fight other tribes whose bark is of a darker color. Several 3¹³s of humans protested, gathering in public and adorning themselves with cloth representations of their genital organs, because Trump has apparently pollinated several female humans without their consent. Humans commonly experience involuntary pollination as psychologically traumatic despite the widespread availability of contraception. though apparently the plant who wrote that didn't understand quite how flawed the ritual was
  - Turing_Machine 3y ago
    That would be reasonable if the United States (note plural) were one entity. It isn't. The system is designed to prevent populous states from running roughshod over the smaller ones (and no, it didn't have anything to do with "slavery"... Virginia, a slave state, was also by far the most populous state. Under your proposed alternative system, it's likely that a) slaves would be counted fully[1] and b) the 1808 cutoff for importation of slaves would have been rescinded, or never enacted in the first place. Under such a system, we likely would have had 4 or 5 civil wars by now, rather than just one. [1] This point is also often misunderstood. It was the slave states who wanted the slaves counted fully, as that would have given them more representation in Congress. The free states didn't want the slaves counted at all. Phrasing it as "counting them as 3/5 of a person", as you often see, is simply ignorant. "So... you wanted them counted as a "full person"? You do understand that makes you pro-slavery, right?"
brhsagain 3y ago
Politicians know the electoral vote is what matters, so they adjust their campaign strategy to optimize for it. Theoretically, after everything washes, the electoral vote is what the people want, because it reflects which of the two candidates, both of whom are optimizing intensely for the electoral vote, is able to get it.

AniseAbyss 3y ago

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rayiner 3y ago

I think the other way to look at it is that Trump is a terrible candidate for idiosyncratic and personal reasons, stuck in a party with a “tax cuts and foreign wars” legacy, and is viable at all only because he is on the right side against the elite on a bunch of issues. Immigration was his defining issue in 2016, and he has won with the public that issue. He won on the rioting and law and order issue. He has won against affirmative action, both with the public and with SFFA. He sides with the majority view on the Iraq war and using the American military to underpin the world order. The GOP’s biggest liability has been abortion, which is an area where Trump has gone against the party and pushed for a 15-week middle ground that commands majority support (once you extricate the policy from voters’ worries about total bans). My mom—who is a steadfast Democrat—was commenting the other day that Trump could’ve been a great president. She hates how he talks, what he did on January 6, etc. She won’t vote for anyone with an (R) because of the Iraq War, but she (and my dad) basically agree with Trump on all of his signature policies.

082349872349872 3y ago
Maybe he will win the popular vote on those things in 2024. (it would not surprise me) He didn't win it in either 2020 or 2016.
- rayiner 3y ago
  The “popular vote” doesn’t mean anything, because nobody is trying to win it. It makes way more sense for Trump to spend a bunch of time trying to turn out 5,000 more votes in Georgia than to spend any time trying to turn out a million votes in California. Issue polling, however, shows that Trump is winning on all those issues. For example, 74% of Americans oppose affirmative action in hiring: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/06/16/americans-and-affirmative-action-how-the-public-sees-the-consideration-of-race-in-college-admissions-hiring/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/06/16/americans.... The median American thinks abortion should be banned after 15 weeks: https://apnorc.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/chart2-1536x1515.png https://apnorc.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/chart2-1536x15.... It’s the rest of Trump that keeps his support under 50%.
  - Turing_Machine 3y ago
    Yes. The "popular vote" is about as meaningful in the context as picking a President on the basis of how many 3 point shots the candidates can make in a game of 1-on-1 basketball. People who go off on the "popular vote" are generally those who are unwilling to accept that they have lost the election. In other words, sour grapes. Oh, they might argue that they'd be in favor of using the "popular vote" even if that worked against them, but you know what? I don't believe them. If it worked against them, they'd be arguing for a "return to the original system as conceived by the Founders" or some such.
  - 082349872349872 3y ago
    I bring up the popular vote because the original claim was: > Trump is aligned with your average American ... against your average American college professor. and the popular vote is evidence that in fact the other candidate in both 2016 and 2020 was aligned with your average American. (as to college professors, although there are only <600k American college professors, which would make them "elite", in recent generations over half of Americans have had at least some college education, which means that the average American knows at least one college professor, which is not so elite. On the other hand, although I've had after-work beers with billionaires, and I'm sure you have too, I'm willing to bet that the average [modal or median, maybe even mean] American has not shared beers with any billionaires. Therefore I would find it more statistically defensible to claim: Trump's opponents in 2016 and 2020 were aligned with your average American ... against your average American billionaire.) see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professors_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professors_in_the_United_State...

hollerith 3y ago

In order for the concept of "median voter" to make sense there needs to be some way of ranking voters, so when you say "median voter", what method of ranking are you referring to?

082349872349872 3y ago
One person one vote: all votes for candidate A on one side, votes for candidate B on the other side, whoever has the vote in the middle (the median voter) is equivalent to whoever has the most votes (the popular count).
- hollerith 3y ago
  I understand now. (But you conceptualization breaks when a third candidate gets a significant number of votes.)
  - kragen 3y ago
    that's why https://dercuano.github.io/notes/2017-sap-allocation.html https://dercuano.github.io/notes/2017-sap-allocation.html described the event as follows > A human they call Donald Trump was what they call President of USA for basically all of “2017”, and that sucked. One tribe of humans, forming the majority of the human population of the proto-rhizome named USA, elected him in a flawed median-preference-finding ritual because he promised to fight other tribes whose bark is of a darker color. Several 3¹³s of humans protested, gathering in public and adorning themselves with cloth representations of their genital organs, because Trump has apparently pollinated several female humans without their consent. Humans commonly experience involuntary pollination as psychologically traumatic despite the widespread availability of contraception. though apparently the plant who wrote that didn't understand quite how flawed the ritual was
- Turing_Machine 3y ago
  That would be reasonable if the United States (note plural) were one entity. It isn't. The system is designed to prevent populous states from running roughshod over the smaller ones (and no, it didn't have anything to do with "slavery"... Virginia, a slave state, was also by far the most populous state. Under your proposed alternative system, it's likely that a) slaves would be counted fully[1] and b) the 1808 cutoff for importation of slaves would have been rescinded, or never enacted in the first place. Under such a system, we likely would have had 4 or 5 civil wars by now, rather than just one. [1] This point is also often misunderstood. It was the slave states who wanted the slaves counted fully, as that would have given them more representation in Congress. The free states didn't want the slaves counted at all. Phrasing it as "counting them as 3/5 of a person", as you often see, is simply ignorant. "So... you wanted them counted as a "full person"? You do understand that makes you pro-slavery, right?"

brhsagain 3y ago

Politicians know the electoral vote is what matters, so they adjust their campaign strategy to optimize for it. Theoretically, after everything washes, the electoral vote is what the people want, because it reflects which of the two candidates, both of whom are optimizing intensely for the electoral vote, is able to get it.