Hacker News Reader

Comment by avazhi | Hacker News Reader

Same exact thing that happened in 2016: if you repeatedly demonise a section of the population, don’t expect that section of the population to be honest with you about its opinions when those opinions are what led you to demonise it in the first place.

View on HN

I would say from the outside American politics seems to have devolved into this ultra-polarised culture war/identity politics that doesn't seem to benefit the left at all electorally. It probably helps the biggest proponents of it (on either side) in terms of playing to their base, but it feels like it's overall a net win for the right.

But I don't know how big a factor this is in reality versus the economy.

What are you talking about?

In 2016, the majority of outlets gave Clinton a 90% chance or more. This time almost everyone said it was 50:50. The result is somewhat similar, the predictions could hardly be more different.

No, they didn't.

For one, they said Clinton had a 70% chance of winning.

But perhaps more importantly, people's poor understanding of stats meant that many people interpreted that as "She's going to get 70% of the vote" (i.e., a landslide, "and so I don't need to vote").

> they said Clinton had a 70% chance of winning.

No, they didn't.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/upshot/presidential...

https://www.reuters.com/article/world/clinton-has-90-percent...

Whilst this is objectively true - this result is basically within the margin of error of most polls. I highly doubt this argument is going to be accepted by most people. It'll be exactly like Nate Silver screaming into the void for the last 8 years pointing out he gave Trump a ~30% chance of winning and that happens... 30% of the time!

This isn’t an interesting statement. I could pull any numbers out of a hat in (0, 1) as probabilities and regardless of the outcome could use the same excuse because there is only a single event to observe.

But do you have literally anything to back this up factually? The polls were surprisingly accurate this time around. Several states were called as a tossup because it was a near 50/50 split.

Exactly this. In many work places, you can't say you vote for Trump. Many Democrats visibly say something along the line of "if you vote for Trump, you are dead to me", and these are your colleagues.

I don't know whether a poll is anonymous. The poll has no impact on my life. I'll either lie to be safe or just don't take the poll at all.

Demonize how?

On a regular day, you would be called racists and evils.

You can try an experiment where you say out loud that you vote for Trump in your work place, and you can see how it goes.

People support Democrats visibly at their workplaces, and that is totally fine. But if you support Republicans visibly, you will have a lot of issues at work.

So, if a poller asks you who you would vote for, you would not risk it. You would just say Dems or just avoid the poll altogether.

That's because Trump has said many racist things so the implication is if you vote for him, you must support that too.

It's a weird spot, because most Trump supporters don't really support him. They consider him a liar at worse, and a jokester at best. Telling Trump supporters what Trump has said is almost always met with "well he didn't mean that!"

Why do people vote for someone they don't even believe? Not sure, maybe they hate the other side just that much, or maybe they do believe him but don't want to admit it. Maybe they're hoping deep down Trump really is just joking.

I simply answered the original question: "Demonize how?"

Thank you for adding to the point that you can't let your colleagues know that you voted for Trump. Your work life would be completely fucked.

You are an ideal example. You think Trump supporters are evil. And how do you handle evil people? You make sure they don't succeed in life.

> Your work life would be completely fucked

Not mine, but actually every single company in the US, yours included. I don't know of any companies that tolerate racism or bigotry in general.

I don't think Trump supporters or conservatives are evil at all. I think they're largely radicalized at this point. Most conservatives I meet seem completely unable to voice conservative opinions without resorting to bigotry - this includes our president elect.

There's nothing wrong with conservative opinions and actually everyone is on the same page about that. But can you be pro-life without calling women sluts and whores? Can you be anti-gay without telling people they deserve AIDS? Can you be anti-trans without calling them tra*ies?

For a lot of conservatives, the answer to those questions is no. Okay, then the next question is - is that type of behavior allowed at work? Of course not.

So put the pieces together yourself - where does that leave those people? This isn't a rhetorical question.

It's more than that. Trump demonized sections of the population. I don't know where this lie is coming from that it's only the Democrats who did that.

It doesn't count. It will never count. Even if they see it, they won't acknowledge it. It's not hypocrisy, it's loyalty. The only real sin is disobeying the hierarchy or breaking the chain of command, which is what calling it out would be for them.

"You" in this case is "the people taking the polls". The media is only trusted by 12% of Republicans and 27% of Independents [0]. Right or wrong, most pollsters will be treated as belonging to "the media", and the lack of trust will almost certainly show in the polls. "The media" demonized the right wing, so "the media" can't expect to have people self-identify as such to them.

Democrats were absolutely demonized by Trump, but their trust in the media is double that of Independents and quadruple that of Republicans. So to the extent that pollsters are treated as part of the media, they'll get more accurate answers out of Democrats.

[0] https://news.gallup.com/poll/651977/americans-trust-media-re...

Did Palmer Luckey get fired from Meta/Oculus for being a Clinton or a Trump supporter?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com