
Does prospect theory explain Trump and Brexit votes? - msravi
http://cognitionandculture.net/blog/christophe-heintzs-blog/does-prospect-theory-explain-trump-and-brexit-votes
======
mixedCase
"we face people who, perceiving that they have lost something, are willing to
take high risks."

I love how throughout the post the author keeps on pushing the point that
people simply have a misguided perception of reality, under no circumstance it
is considered that these people are directly or indirectly affected by current
policy.

There are too many people living in opaque bubbles blogging about "what REALLY
happened!".

~~~
nikanj
Pundits who were 99.9 percent sure Clinton was going to win, are making new
predictions and analyses with equal confidence.

~~~
rdtsc
One of my favorite cases happened on NBC on the election night.

After crying and being distraught for an hour or two, a glimmer of hope arose
- after-hours and international stock market was down. And suddenly their
demeanor changed, there was a chance again of a tiny victory. They were
predicting disaster with the same certainty as they predicted Hillary winning.
There was talk of everyone's accounts being wiped out, a lot of "we told you"
and so on.

And of course next day stocks went right up and nothing happened.

I just liked it because right after talking how they mispredicted the election
so badly, they turned around and predicted something else, which again was
quickly shown to be false.

So I do recommend watching the popular news channels, they are a pretty good
source of entertainment. Read Manufacturing Consent by Herman and Chomsky and
it becomes even funnier.

~~~
adamkittelson
It felt like they weren't just predicting disaster, but hoping for it. Like
being right about Trump's election victory having dire consequences is somehow
preferable to everything turning out ok despite their candidate losing.

------
clumsysmurf
Sadly, at least for Trump, i think it came down to

1 party loyalty

2 identity politics

3 active voter suppression in key states

4 The Electoral College, which was designed to prevent this exact thing
(demagoguery)

#1 & #2 are discussed in "Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce
Responsive Government (Princeton Studies in Political Behavior)"
[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0691169446](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0691169446)

#2 also discussed in "The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in
Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker (Chicago Studies in American Politics)"
[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/022634911X](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/022634911X)

#3 and other dirty tricks discussed in "Ratf __ked: The True Story Behind the
Secret Plan to Steal America 's Democracy" [https://www.amazon.com/Ratf-ked-
Behind-Americas-Democracy/dp...](https://www.amazon.com/Ratf-ked-Behind-
Americas-Democracy/dp/1631491628)

and

"The Great Suppression: Voting Rights, Corporate Cash, and the Conservative
Assault on Democracy"
[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/110190576X](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/110190576X)

~~~
TTPrograms
Yeah, it probably didn't have much to do with the economically left-behind
working class that constitutes the majority of the country and wasn't appealed
to at all by the Democratic campaign.

~~~
clumsysmurf
Lets remember, at this point Hillary is 1.7 million popular votes ahead of
Trump.

~~~
tedunangst
None of those votes do anything to change the result in Pennsylvania, which
until recently was part of a "Blue Firewall" that made a Trump victory
impossible.

------
clock_tower
Note to moderators: the typo in "Brexit" is really distracting. When I saw
"Brezit", I thought it was about a possible Breton (Breizh) secession from
France!

~~~
msravi
Sorry, fixed the typo.

~~~
clock_tower
Thanks!

------
PhantomGremlin
Interesting essay. But it starts with: _The quantity of votes in favor of the
Brexit and in favor of Trump surprised most of us._

It's only "most of us" if you live in a liberal echo chamber. E.g. the NY
Times has done some recent naval gazing, but it would be fascinating to find
out what percent of their employees voted for Trump. Fewer than 10%? Fewer
than 1%? So, certainly, the result "surprised" them.

Meanwhile in the real world the popular vote breakdown was:

    
    
       Clinton 63,515,588
       Trump   61,917,320
    

That's about a 1% difference. I don't see how that translates to "surprised
most of us"!

~~~
nandemo
This has nothing to do with "liberal echo chamber". Most opinion polls
indicated that Clinton would win, and most people believed so. That's all
there is to it.

> _That 's about a 1% difference. I don't see how that translates to
> "surprised most of us"!_

You can't use the result of the elections to claim that the result was
"expected"!

The stock market expected a Clinton win, and so did betting markets outside
the US:

[http://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/07/betting-sites-see-record-
wage...](http://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/07/betting-sites-see-record-wagering-on-
us-presidential-election.html)

Arguably, at some point even Trump indicated that he believed Clinton would
win, when he claimed the elections were "rigged".

~~~
philovivero
You don't think maybe the elections really were rigged?

Here's a video where a computer programmer who worked on voting systems is
questioned under oath, and he makes some pretty good arguments that elections
are rigged. At least the ones where electronic voting machines are used.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcxGGnmRQAs&t=92s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcxGGnmRQAs&t=92s)

I'll admit, I didn't bother researching, but I'd understood a lot of
electronic voting machines were used in the election we just underwent.

The results of the election only slightly surprised me, but I've gone to great
lengths to avoid ingesting media from mainstream sources. Outside the
mainstream, Trump's popularity was quite a bit more obvious.

~~~
nandemo
To be honest, I have no opinion on the rigging claim. I'm not a US citizen or
resident and I don't know much about how y'all go about actually voting.

My point is that candidate B claimed the election would be rigged against him;
it's not a stretch to assume he thought candidate A would probably win at that
point.

------
empressplay
Trump won because people got sick of liberalism, and to make matters worse we
(I'm a liberal) created an environment where they couldn't express that in a
shared public area without being berated or shamed.

That's it, honestly.

We on the left need to dial it back a bit and have a discussion, and move
forward with consensus rather than trying to drag everyone kicking-and-
screaming along with our agenda regardless of if we feel it's "right" or not.

You don't win the tolerance argument with a stick, you win it with a carrot.

~~~
intended
I disagree. (Edited this for tone)

I'm not American and I've watched American politics for fun and profit for a
long time now.

Firstly - "you" have already tried cooperation.

The day Obama won, the republicans regrouped from a devastating loss and
promised to make him a one term president. They've converted the routine and
boring debt ceiling increase into political theater, grinding America to a
halt.

Iirc they've fought Medicare tooth and nail, even though it's modeled on a
republican program.

Many things have aligned to create this situation. As i recall working with
people on the other side is considered bad form.

This isn't simply because of a liberal agenda or because people haven't been
listening. It's because people have actively been injecting narrative and
false data in order to move voting populations in specific directions.

~~~
mzw_mzw
I don't think your understanding of American politics is very accurate. For
example:

> Iirc they've fought Medicare tooth and nail, even though it's modeled on a
> republican program.

First, you're thinking of Obamacare, not Medicare (actually, the Affordable
Care Act); the narrative you're reaching for is that the _ACA_ is modeled on
Republican ideas, therefore the GOP isn't allowed to object to it. Medicare is
something completely different, a health insurance entitlement aimed at
seniors that's existed for decades.

And even then, neither half of the story is really true, _because the GOP is
not a monolith_. Yes, the Heritage Foundation proposed something vaguely
similar in the '90s, and Mitt Romney -- a liberal Republican governing one of
our most liberal states -- pushed a vaguely similar plan as well many years
ago, but the majority of Republicans disagreed with both on the idea. And even
if it was based entirely on an old GOP idea, there's no logical way to
therefore decide the GOP can't have problems with this implementation of it,
or not believe the Obama administration would be competent to execute it.

Think of it this way. Bill Clinton supported military action against Iraq
during his term, and even carried it out. Does that mean no Democrats were
allowed to object to George W. Bush's Iraq war, because it was "based on a
Democratic idea"? Of course not; the very idea is absurd. Same deal here.

~~~
intended
Thanks, It helps to understand it better. I thought Obamacare was a pejorative
term for medicare, but I see it is a pejorative term for the ACA.

But as I just checked, it seems that all the republicans voted against it and
that support for ACA was considered toxic, and that this negatively affected
Mitt Romney's standing in the party. I am of course happy to understand more.

Do note, that I have been watching and learning more about American politics
and history since 1990, since before the Gulf War. Theres a distinct trend
towards partisanship, which got enhanced during the era of Fox news, and has
now resulted in hyper-partisanship.

(Do note that America is not particular alone in dealing with this trend)

------
crimsonalucard
There's no point for someone who voted for Hillary to guess why another person
voted for Trump. What is the point of prospect theory when you can just ask
the people and get it straight from the horses mouth.

If you voted for Trump... Why did you vote for him over Hillary?

~~~
antisthenes
Some would argue that voting for the opposing candidate leads the other party
to produce better candidates in the next election cycle.

In other words, it takes a swing to the other side in order to radicalize the
other side and swing the pendulum of discussion back in their favor.

Maybe the ACA repeal will lead us to actually have single payer with the next
cycle?

------
futureguy
People not voting are as important in this equation as those who voted. At
least in the instance of the Trump situation.

