
Noam Chomsky explains Donald Trump's recent success - drumttocs8
https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Donald-Trump-having-so-much-success-during-this-election-cycle?share=1
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Joof
I only partially agree.

I believe trumps success owes a lot to how differentiated he is from other
candidates; to the point where he is effectively a 'third party' within the
republican party. The other candidates split one pool of votes (because they
are so similar) and he takes a largely unopposed pool. This is even worse
because the republican party recently switched to a winner-takes-all voting
scheme for their primaries.

Example: Arkansas had 33% Trump, 31% Cruz, 25% Rubio. If only one of them ran,
then either Cruz or Rubio seems more likely to have won. Instead Trump got 2/3
of candidiates, Cruz got 1/3 of candidates and Rubio got nothing.

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dragonwriter
Cruz and Trump are competing on very similar grounds for the same groups (the
main differentiating factor seems to be that Cruz claims Trump's appeals to
the group are insincere, whereas Trump claims that Cruz is ineffective, both
based on the idea that he is widely unliked by other political actors and his
electoral performance so far) -- and this is supported by the fact that the
establishment organs are split over whether they see Cruz or Trump as the more
serious threat.

The rest of the candidates (of which Rubio is the only one with any even dim
signs of life at this point) seem to be mostly splitting the remaining group
with who gets the non-Trump/non-Cruz support determined by factors like
regional appeal and visibility (which mostly means Rubio gets the lion's
share, but Kasich's second-place -- after Trump -- showing in Vermont after
his unusually focused effort there is part of this.)

Now, even though Trump and Cruz are targeting very similar voters, there seems
to be enough enmity between the camps that voters that have committed to one
already (rather than undecided that might commit to one or the other) may be
unlikely to switch to the other if their preferred candidate goes away, so a
Cruz withdrawal, if it were to occur, might still benefit the remaining non-
Trump candidate (presumably Rubio), but I don't think Rubio (et al.) and Cruz
supporters are really a coherent block that is being split.

> This is even worse because the republican party recently switched to a
> winner-takes-all voting scheme for their primaries.

Its a lot more complicated than that; there isn't a single scheme used by all
state Republican Parties to allocate delegates:
[http://frontloading.blogspot.com/p/2016-republican-
delegate-...](http://frontloading.blogspot.com/p/2016-republican-delegate-
allocation-by.html)

(The Republicans have for some time had, overall, a far more disproportionate
system than the Democrats, and I believe its _more_ disproportionate in 2016
than it was previously, but its not "winner-take-all", except in a few
states.)

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Joof
Well there goes my theory.

On the other side, I see Bernie losing heavily in conservative states, but
nearly equal or slightly better in others. I'm assuming he's so polarizing
that republican voters are voting against him. This may be a good system for
Americans in general even if I'd love to see him win (it keeps candidates
towards the middle).

~~~
dragonwriter
> On the other side, I see Bernie losing heavily in conservative states, but
> nearly equal or slightly better in others.

He's losing heavily in states where the Democratic electorate has a large
black component, and, from the exit polling, losing heavily because Clinton is
getting pretty much all the black vote.

Those happen to also be largely southern, conservative states, but its not
conservatives or Republicans voting in Democratic primaries that are giving
Hillary big wins.

~~~
Joof
Fair enough. I'm happy to stay a programmer and not a political analyst :)

------
Torgo
As is par for Chomsky, he will mention neoliberalism and the demonization of
immigrants in the same breath, without ever directly bringing up the fact that
the flood of immigrants is both caused by and promoted in the interest of
neoliberal goals of deracinating populations and converting them into pools of
low-paid commodity laborers.

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hashberry
Chomsky's analysis is the same as the NYTimes--that Trump appeals primarily to
poor and uneducated voters, and that he has the same magnetism as Hitler. Too
much ivory tower intellectualization.

