2016 US ELECTION: Official Results Thread

[Joun_Lord]

If you can't be a thinking voter, you don't deserve to be a voter at all.

That does not track pal.

Intelligence nor thought nor education should be a required part of democracy. It would be nice if it involved, sure, but even when it isn't its still part of the process. Stupid people, people we don't like, uneducated simpletons with the IQ of a bag of rocks, even racists assholes are part of a democratic society and should have a say.

Disbarring people for not thinking or not thinking the right way would lead to all sorts of trouble.

The thing is, thinking voter DID vote in this election. Maybe didn't think the way you wanted or agree with (or I agree with really) but they still were thinking. They were thinking about what Trump said, what he's done, what the media has said about him, what Hillary said, what she's done, what the media said about her. Thinking about their lives and values, their jobs and homes. Thinking about guns and Gawd. Thinking about gays and gurls. People act flustered and say "how could they, how did they, why did they, clearly they were uninformed or not thinking". No, nope, no, They were thinking, just not how others were.

And they thought to vote for Hitler.......I mean Trump.

People would probably say the same thing if it was Hillary getting into the WH. How could people vote for a corrupt politician? Why would they vote for someone who is about as left as my right foot? Blah blah Benghazi? Were they not informed of her history with fucking people over? Did they not know about her alleged ties to naughty people? Were they not thinking?

They were thinking too.

Don't discount the intelligence of someone just because you disagree with them. Don't be so full of yourself (no offense intended) as to think your position is automatically right or just and the opposition is wrong and unjust. Don't think that those who do things differently from you aren't thinking of their actions.

And to put no confusion out there, this isn't a defense of Trump voters or Clinton voters or even Harambe voters.

[Wild Zontargs]

Citizens in a democracy have a responsibility to know who and what they support, and to comprehend the realistic consequences of policies proposed by the people running for office. If you can't be a thinking voter, you don't deserve to be a voter at all.

There's a slight catch here. Using available data about political knowledge and voting trends, someone already tried modelling what would have happened if we weighted the election results towards "thinking voters". It would have given Trump the popular vote as well as the electoral vote.

WOULD CLINTON HAVE DEFEATED TRUMP IN AN EPISTOCRACY?

The big story of the 2016 presidential election is that Trump appears to have won an unprecedented share of whites without college degrees, especially men. According to the exit polls, Trump had a 49 point advantage over Clinton among non-degreed white men, compared with a 31 point advantage for Romney in 2012 and a 20 point advantage for McCain in 2008. Trump also performed relatively well with non-degreed white women. McCain won them by 17 points, Romney by 20, and Trump by 28. (These shifts relate to Trump’s white nationalist priorities, something that appealed to the self-interest of less-educated whites.)

Pre-election polls had suggested a smaller Trumpward shift among non-degreed whites that would be more than offset by a large Democratic shift among degreed whites. In fact, it turned out that pre-election polls had badly overestimated Clinton’s performance with white voters across the board. Non-degreed whites shifted to Trump (bigly), while whites with college degrees ended up pretty close to where they were in 2008—Trump had a 15 point advantage with degreed white men while Clinton had a 6 point advantage with degreed white women, margins very similar to the McCain/Obama race (though better for Democrats than the Romney/Obama race). Further, there doesn’t appear to have been a non-white shift to overcome Trump’s gains with non-degreed whites. While non-whites seem, in line with expectations, to have been a greater share of the electorate this time around, the exit polls suggest that their preference for Clinton (by 53 points) didn’t match their previous preference for Obama (by just over 60 points).

Thus, it appears, Trump’s success with less-educated whites (and the absence any major offsetting movement from other groups) was the demographic key, particularly helping him in Rust Belt states and rural areas.

For those who are disappointed by this result, it might be tempting to start considering libertarian epistocracy proposals. Epistocracy means, literally, having the knowledgeable (epist) run things (ocracy). The basic idea is that, one way or another, the votes of those who know the most ought to count the most.

The clearest recent statements on epistocracy have come from philosopher Jason Brennan (with related suggestions from economist Bryan Caplan, e.g., here and in his earlier book, discussed critically here). In a recent essay, Brennan explains: “Epistocracy comes in many forms. An epistocracy might give everyone one vote, then grant extra votes to citizens who pass a test of basic political knowledge (such as the citizenship exam). Or it might grant the right to vote only to citizens who pass such a test. Or it might instead hold an ‘enfranchisement lottery’: Immediately before an election, choose 10,000 citizens at random, and then those citizens, and only those, are permitted to vote, but only if they first complete a competence-building exercise. Or, an epistocracy might govern through what I call a ‘simulated oracle’ [i.e., a complex statistical procedure that would attempt to translate low-knowledge voting into high-knowledge preferences].”

How might such proposals have affected the 2016 presidential election?

Clinton/Trump under some epistocratic alternatives

Below I provide estimates of the popular vote margin and demographic representation of the electorate under a few epistocratic scenarios—scenarios where voting power is adjusted in various ways using a political-knowledge test. I don’t know of any publicly available data that shows political knowledge in relation to 2016 voting, so I used the 2012 American National Election Studies (ANES) to gauge political knowledge, and then used that information to adjust the 2016 exit poll results. The 2012 ANES included 11 political knowledge items of the sort Brennan and Caplan discuss, including things such as knowing basic economic facts, knowing the party controlling the House and Senate, and recognizing major political figures. I used the results to create demographic-and-party-specific estimates of voters’ political-knowledge test performance (e.g., I looked at how white women with degrees who identify as Democrats perform, how white women with degrees who identify as Republicans perform, how white men without degrees who identify as Democrats perform, and so on).

The epistocratic scenarios that I modeled involve either penalizing especially low-knowledge voters (i.e., those who got fewer than 5 items correct on the 11-item test) or rewarding especially high-knowledge voters (i.e., those who got 9 or more correct). I also tried a graduated scenario in which those with fewer than 5 correct responses got 1 vote, those with 5 or 6 correct responses got 2 votes, those with 7 or 8 got 3 votes, and those with 9 or more got 4 votes.

The chart below shows the results. The first outcome is simply the 2016 exit polls without any adjustment. While exit polls often get a bad rap, and probably do badly miss some specific groups either in terms of turnout or voting preferences, this year they ended up giving a fairly accurate read of the actual popular vote margin as a whole, showing Clinton with a small advantage over Trump. In fact, the best information on actual votes at the time I’m writing this is that Clinton has 47.7% of the popular vote compared with Trump’s 47.1%—a 0.6 point advantage for Clinton—which is almost exactly what the exit polls showed. The actual vote totals will likely further shift in Clinton’s direction as some still-uncounted votes become counted (including, e.g., some West Coast absentee ballots), but won’t shift by all that much at this point.

Next on the chart are the various epistocratic scenarios. What if we give especially low-knowledge voters only half a vote, or only a third, or bar them completely? What if we use a graduated more-votes-for-more-knowledge system? What if we give especially high-knowledge voters an extra vote, or two, or take epistocracy literally and allow only these high-knowledge folks to vote?

Do any of these proposals improve Clinton’s popular vote margin over Trump? No. In fact, each one would have given Trump a popular vote lead, anywhere from 0.5 points (giving high-knowledge folks a single extra vote) to 4.3 points (letting only high-knowledge folks vote). In an epistocracy of the sort Brennan and others imagine, Trump’s victory over Clinton would have been even more securely won.



Well that’s (actually not) surprising

I know that many of my high-education compadres will think these results are madness. Surely, many believe, the smartest people are mostly Democrats. But it’s really complicated.

The Democratic coalition actually combines many who have the highest average political knowledge (e.g., Ivy Leaguers and folks with postgraduate degrees) with many who have the lowest average political knowledge (e.g., non-whites without college degrees). And, moreover, the most solid Democratic support often comes from the low-performing part of the coalition—so, for example, the exit polls show Clinton winning voters (of all races) with postgraduate degrees by 21 points, but this is dwarfed by her 55 point win with non-degreed non-whites. The reality is that anything that lowers the voting impact of less-educated non-whites is particularly detrimental to Democratic margins—including various well-known current Republican efforts (voter ID requirements, voter purges, felon bans, reducing the number of polling locations in minority neighborhoods, gerrymandering to further concentrate minority votes, and so on) and also including many libertarian epistocracy proposals.

Also, the role of political knowledge can vary from group to group. So, for example, within college-educated whites, higher political knowledge is associated with less Republican support. But within non-college whites, higher political knowledge predicts more Republican support. Among non-whites, voters with high political knowledge support Democrats by lower margins than voters with low political knowledge. Again, it’s really complicated.

Further, political knowledge—as measured by the standard kinds of questions—relates strongly to education, but is also substantially higher among older folks, whites, and men. So, for example, while the exit polls show somewhat more white women than white men turning out to vote (the top outcome on the chart), a scenario in which only high-knowledge folks vote (the bottom outcome on the chart) would be one in which men constitute almost 6 in 10 white voters. Given that white men were well more likely to vote for Trump than white women, this kind of epistocratic gender skew would be a real contributor to increasing Trump’s popular vote margin. (As a reminder, the exit polls had Trump winning degreed white men—the key beneficiaries of epistocracy—by 15 points, 54 to 39.)

The reality of epistocracy

No, epistocracy would not have prevented Trump from defeating Clinton. In fact, primarily by making the vote whiter and more male, it would have given him the popular vote to go with his Electoral College victory. (Having said that, it’s certainly possible that some epistocratic proposals could have prevented Trump’s Republican nomination in the first place. I’ll leave that analysis to others.)

Keep in mind that we already live in a kind of epistocracy. First, political knowledge is strongly associated with the propensity to vote. So, in the 2012 ANES sample, only 59% reported voting among those getting fewer than 5 of the 11 political knowledge questions correct, rising to 76% of those answering 5 or 6 correctly, 88% of those answering 7 or 8 correctly, and 93% of those answering 9 or more correctly. In addition, our governmental decision-makers (including elected representatives, cabinet members, high-level bureaucrats, judges, and so on) have, on average, very high levels of political knowledge. And they have rather oversized numbers from demographics associated with high-knowledge voters—college-educated, older, white, and male.

These sorts of patterns already result in a number of policy realities that are more libertarian-leaning than the general public would prefer (including lower taxes on the wealthy and stingier spending, but also fewer restrictions on abortion, more immigration, and more vigilance against group-based discrimination). But I understand why solid libertarians don’t think this goes far enough and would prefer some form of intervention to further increase the influence of libertarian demographics. Just as I understand why solid liberals who understand the effects of epistocracy proposals will oppose them. Most people have results-oriented political minds, after all.

"Thinking voters" can be educated about policy and still not share the "right" opinions on what goals we should pursue. That is, unless you want to define "thinking" as "has the right opinions", but that's an entirely different can of worms.

[Alyrium Denryle]

If you can't be a thinking voter, you don't deserve to be a voter at all.

You are bordering dangerously on calling to disenfranchise people you dislike. Or people whose opinions you dislike.

No. He is not. Jesus fucking christ, just pull a single sentence out of all surrounding context and build a strawman out of it.

He is talking about the fundamental moral duty that goes along with the sovereign franchise--the duty to consider consequences and vote responsibly. What, are you going to claim that no such responsibility exists? He is not saying they [people who don't think before voting] should not be allowed to vote. He is saying they do not deserve to vote, in the same way that Mike Pence deserves to be eaten by bears, but no one is going to smear honey and fish guts on him and tie him to a tree on kodiak island.

Every last person who has thus far responded to Simon's post has made this error, and it is fucking shameful.

[Wild Zontargs]

He is not saying they [people who don't think before voting] should not be allowed to vote. He is saying they do not deserve to vote, in the same way that Mike Pence deserves to be eaten by bears, but no one is going to smear honey and fish guts on him and tie him to a tree on kodiak island.

Every last person who has thus far responded to Simon's post has made this error, and it is fucking shameful.

OK, let's explicitly include the preceding line:

Citizens in a democracy have a responsibility to know who and what they support, and to comprehend the realistic consequences of policies proposed by the people running for office. If you can't be a thinking voter, you don't deserve to be a voter at all.

If we have a category of people who don't think about what their vote means, and we say "that's bad, but we don't need to do anything about it", then it's a pointless categorization.

If we do want to do something, then the two options would seem to be "stop them from voting" (with the objections cited above) or "make them no longer fit that category", presumably by educating them. We then hit the problems of "what if they don't want to learn" and "who determines what they should learn", followed by "and what if they refuse to apply what they learn when voting?"

Also consider that voters may, after considering all the implications and deciding that they are acceptable, vote for policies that you do not agree with. From the article I posted upthread:

[T]he role of political knowledge can vary from group to group. So, for example, within college-educated whites, higher political knowledge is associated with less Republican support. But within non-college whites, higher political knowledge predicts more Republican support. Among non-whites, voters with high political knowledge support Democrats by lower margins than voters with low political knowledge.

If you teach a voter to consider the views of the candidates and their policy implications, and to vote accordingly, and that voter is a conservative Catholic who says "Pence shares my policy goals and morals, and I desire the likely outcomes of electing him, therefore I should vote Trump-Pence", does that voter now "deserve" to vote?

[K. A. Pital]

I simply don't see it as a pure statement of disgust, like "Trump deserves to die in a bonfire". Maybe I'm wrong, and Simon can correct me anytime he likes.

[Simon_Jester]

I simply don't see it as a pure statement of disgust, like "Trump deserves to die in a bonfire". Maybe I'm wrong, and Simon can correct me anytime he likes.

This is literally the first time I have visited this thread since my last post, and I'm correcting you.

One doesn't deserve to be loaned money by a friend if you're going to squander it. One doesn't deserve trust if you betray people. One doesn't deserve love that you don't return.

And one doesn't deserve a vote, if one doesn't think about the implications of the vote.

One may GET these things. No law can realistically prevent one from getting them, and arguably no law should prevent it. But one doesn't deserve them.

Citizens in a democracy have a responsibility to know who and what they support, and to comprehend the realistic consequences of policies proposed by the people running for office. If you can't be a thinking voter, you don't deserve to be a voter at all.

There's a slight catch here. Using available data about political knowledge and voting trends, someone already tried modelling what would have happened if we weighted the election results towards "thinking voters". It would have given Trump the popular vote as well as the electoral vote.

To paraphrase Qui-Gon Jinn...

"The ability to obtain a college degree does not make you a thinking voter!"

This is not about education, although education can theoretically help. This is about thinking, something any responsible adult should be able to do on a basic level.

People who voted for Trump because he asserts that he will "make America great" by driving out foreigners should have thought carefully about whether America has been lessened by allowing foreigners in.

People who voted for Trump because he is a successful businessman should have thought about whether he really is a successful businessman, or whether his tendency to run corporations into bankruptcy undermines his claims to be successful. There's a difference between being rich and being a good businessman.

People who voted for Trump, and are not themselves racists, should have thought carefully about why virtually all the active racist groups were enthusiastically supporting Trump. Maybe that wasn't a coincidence.

...

None of this really requires you to have a college degree. It requires the same level of common sense and prudence that any functional adult in our society should have.

You may need to have paid attention in history class to know whether immigration has historically strengthened or weakened America. But you don't need to in order to ask the question.

You don't need a college degree to know that the guy who's rich but has bankrupted multiple companies might not be the best choice to trust with something really big- because he personally may come up smelling like a rose, but his organization could crash and burn. You don't need a degree in business management to know that bankruptcy is bad, and bankrupting a company is a sign of poor management or extremely selfish actions.

Likewise, I don't care if you're a high school dropout, you should understand that people who have the strong support of shady friends are not necessarily on the up-and-up themselves.

...

Conversely, there are plenty of Republican candidates a thinking voter might reasonably support, because they disagree with me about policy. If the Republicans had run Bush or Kasich or Rubio or, hell, Ted Cruz, I wouldn't be so convinced that the election result was because of a failure to think.

But the decision of Republican primary voters that Trump was the best man to represent their party, and the decision of a highly significant minority (a winning minority, even) of American voters in general that Trump would make a better president than Clinton... Those represent failure to think. Not a failure to obtain education(which might or might not have helped), or a failure to obtain facts (which might have helped), but a failure to think about the implications of known facts.

As an example, the article Zontargs cites points out that because minority voters (who tend to have lower educational attainment) voted so overwhelmingly for Clinton,

Trump being president is not going to be good for black voters or Latino voters, and they know it. They thought. Trump being president probably isn't going to be good for white voters either, but a lot of white voters didn't think, and made the dumbass choice. That includes whites with graduate degrees. Having a graduate degree is not inoculation against being a dumbass.

Those same voters could have voted for Romney in 2012, and I would not be so inclined to call that a dumbass choice. Voting for Kasich or Bush or Rubio or, hell, Cruz... also not a dumbass choice. I might call it wrong, but I wouldn't call it dumbass, and if I did call it dumbass I would be wrong to do so.

Now, voting for Trump, that was a dumbass choice.

Dumbasses get to vote. That is the law and I am not opposing the law on this matter. But I don't believe that in a moral sense, dumbasses deserve their vote. Just that they get it.

[Patroklos]

You can be as verbose as you wan't, you are still just calling people who disagree with you idiots. They thought about it Simon, just as much as you, and came to different conclusions. If you can't accept that, then Democracy isn't the system for you.

[Simon_Jester]

Democracy is the system for me because the electorate as a whole makes dumbass choices less often than a dictatorship or oligarchy does.

This does not mean I am obliged to call a dumbass choice, not-a-dumbass-choice.

At least not on SDN.

...

Good people can make dumbass choices. Educated people can make dumbass choices. Smart people can make dumbass choices. I can make dumbass choices. Everyone takes their turn being a dumbass.

If we refuse to learn from our shared dumbassery, if we try to pretend mistakes were not-mistakes, then we doom ourselves to an endless dumbass parade for all eternity.

I'd like to think America is capable of being better than that.

But the first step (as the Germans have demonstrated) is to be able to say things like "Gee, listening to that guy was a dumbass thing to do."

[Wild Zontargs]

To paraphrase Qui-Gon Jinn...

"The ability to obtain a college degree does not make you a thinking voter!"

This is not about education, although education can theoretically help. This is about thinking, something any responsible adult should be able to do on a basic level.

Simon, you might want to re-read that article. The voters weren't categorized by education, but by level of understanding of the American political system, basic economics, current events, etc:

I don’t know of any publicly available data that shows political knowledge in relation to 2016 voting, so I used the 2012 American National Election Studies (ANES) to gauge political knowledge, and then used that information to adjust the 2016 exit poll results. The 2012 ANES included 11 political knowledge items of the sort Brennan and Caplan discuss, including things such as knowing basic economic facts, knowing the party controlling the House and Senate, and recognizing major political figures.

Many people who understand how US politics works voted for Trump. If you magically weighted the vote towards people who understand US politics, Trump would have won the popular vote, because more politically-ignorant people voted Clinton than Trump:

I know that many of my high-education compadres will think these results are madness. Surely, many believe, the smartest people are mostly Democrats. But it’s really complicated.

The Democratic coalition actually combines many who have the highest average political knowledge (e.g., Ivy Leaguers and folks with postgraduate degrees) with many who have the lowest average political knowledge (e.g., non-whites without college degrees). And, moreover, the most solid Democratic support often comes from the low-performing part of the coalition—so, for example, the exit polls show Clinton winning voters (of all races) with postgraduate degrees by 21 points, but this is dwarfed by her 55 point win with non-degreed non-whites. The reality is that anything that lowers the voting impact of less-educated non-whites is particularly detrimental to Democratic margins—including various well-known current Republican efforts (voter ID requirements, voter purges, felon bans, reducing the number of polling locations in minority neighborhoods, gerrymandering to further concentrate minority votes, and so on) and also including many libertarian epistocracy proposals.

Also, the role of political knowledge can vary from group to group. So, for example, within college-educated whites, higher political knowledge is associated with less Republican support. But within non-college whites, higher political knowledge predicts more Republican support. Among non-whites, voters with high political knowledge support Democrats by lower margins than voters with low political knowledge. Again, it’s really complicated.

Further, political knowledge—as measured by the standard kinds of questions—relates strongly to education, but is also substantially higher among older folks, whites, and men. So, for example, while the exit polls show somewhat more white women than white men turning out to vote (the top outcome on the chart), a scenario in which only high-knowledge folks vote (the bottom outcome on the chart) would be one in which men constitute almost 6 in 10 white voters. Given that white men were well more likely to vote for Trump than white women, this kind of epistocratic gender skew would be a real contributor to increasing Trump’s popular vote margin. (As a reminder, the exit polls had Trump winning degreed white men—the key beneficiaries of epistocracy—by 15 points, 54 to 39.)

People who voted for Trump, and are not themselves racists, should have thought carefully about why virtually all the active racist groups were enthusiastically supporting Trump. Maybe that wasn't a coincidence.

The segment of the population who voted for Trump and who have other priorities that they weight more heavily than "don't let people call you racist" probably didn't give a rat's ass which candidate some collection of racist fuckwits supported. The Communist party supported voting for Clinton over Trump. Does that make Clinton voters communist sympathizers? Of course not. Clinton voters don't automatically have commie-cooties. Trump voters don't automatically have racist-cooties either.

[Dragon Angel]

Trump wants to abolish ALL Federal student loans, and effectively turn them into private loans. Including existing ones.

Student loan debt is currently $1.2 trillion and grows over $2,500 per second; in Trump parlance: that’s yuge. Many new graduates feel burdened with debt, which averages around $30,000.

Trump said throughout his campaign that he wants to do away with the Federal Student Loan program, arguing the government shouldn’t make a $41.3 billion profit from struggling students. He supports moving the federal loan system to private banks, making the student loan system a “marketplace and market driven.”

This means that loan worthiness might start to rely on factors outside of family credit history, like evaluating a college’s “student success” rate after graduation (e.g. landing a job) and the marketability of a student’s chosen major. In this model, loan eligibility will favor the engineer over the artist.

Income-based repayments will stay comparable to the Obama Administration. Borrowers will pay 12.5% of their income (versus the existing 10%) every month. Trump is against loan forgiveness, and it is uncertain if the current programs – including the 10-year amnesty for public sector workers – will stay intact during the next administration.

This is incredibly bad. Not only for future university students, but also for existing debtors like myself if retroactive policies against income-based payments and forgiveness are enacted. I haven't been able to repay my loans and I have a few private student loans too, and if this happens I won't have any real opportunity to pay any loans.....

[The Romulan Republic]

Just one more way to fuck everyone who isn't rich. How many children will be denied education, careers, and a lifetime of opportunities, or else force into crushing debt, by this decision?

Edit: Also, aren't retroactive laws generally, um, illegal?

[Dragon Angel]

The segment of the population who voted for Trump and who have other priorities that they weight more heavily than "don't let people call you racist" probably didn't give a rat's ass which candidate some collection of racist fuckwits supported. The Communist party supported voting for Clinton over Trump. Does that make Clinton voters communist sympathizers? Of course not. Clinton voters don't automatically have commie-cooties. Trump voters don't automatically have racist-cooties either.

> comparing racism to communism

You know, you could've made this analogy better by referencing Clinton's warmongering foreign policy, but now I wonder if you're more in support of that aspect or not.

[Alyrium Denryle]

To paraphrase Qui-Gon Jinn...

"The ability to obtain a college degree does not make you a thinking voter!"

This is not about education, although education can theoretically help. This is about thinking, something any responsible adult should be able to do on a basic level.

Simon, you might want to re-read that article. The voters weren't categorized by education, but by level of understanding of the American political system, basic economics, current events, etc:

I don’t know of any publicly available data that shows political knowledge in relation to 2016 voting, so I used the 2012 American National Election Studies (ANES) to gauge political knowledge, and then used that information to adjust the 2016 exit poll results. The 2012 ANES included 11 political knowledge items of the sort Brennan and Caplan discuss, including things such as knowing basic economic facts, knowing the party controlling the House and Senate, and recognizing major political figures.

Many people who understand how US politics works voted for Trump. If you magically weighted the vote towards people who understand US politics, Trump would have won the popular vote, because more politically-ignorant people voted Clinton than Trump:

I know that many of my high-education compadres will think these results are madness. Surely, many believe, the smartest people are mostly Democrats. But it’s really complicated.

The Democratic coalition actually combines many who have the highest average political knowledge (e.g., Ivy Leaguers and folks with postgraduate degrees) with many who have the lowest average political knowledge (e.g., non-whites without college degrees). And, moreover, the most solid Democratic support often comes from the low-performing part of the coalition—so, for example, the exit polls show Clinton winning voters (of all races) with postgraduate degrees by 21 points, but this is dwarfed by her 55 point win with non-degreed non-whites. The reality is that anything that lowers the voting impact of less-educated non-whites is particularly detrimental to Democratic margins—including various well-known current Republican efforts (voter ID requirements, voter purges, felon bans, reducing the number of polling locations in minority neighborhoods, gerrymandering to further concentrate minority votes, and so on) and also including many libertarian epistocracy proposals.

Also, the role of political knowledge can vary from group to group. So, for example, within college-educated whites, higher political knowledge is associated with less Republican support. But within non-college whites, higher political knowledge predicts more Republican support. Among non-whites, voters with high political knowledge support Democrats by lower margins than voters with low political knowledge. Again, it’s really complicated.

Further, political knowledge—as measured by the standard kinds of questions—relates strongly to education, but is also substantially higher among older folks, whites, and men. So, for example, while the exit polls show somewhat more white women than white men turning out to vote (the top outcome on the chart), a scenario in which only high-knowledge folks vote (the bottom outcome on the chart) would be one in which men constitute almost 6 in 10 white voters. Given that white men were well more likely to vote for Trump than white women, this kind of epistocratic gender skew would be a real contributor to increasing Trump’s popular vote margin. (As a reminder, the exit polls had Trump winning degreed white men—the key beneficiaries of epistocracy—by 15 points, 54 to 39.)

People who voted for Trump, and are not themselves racists, should have thought carefully about why virtually all the active racist groups were enthusiastically supporting Trump. Maybe that wasn't a coincidence.

The segment of the population who voted for Trump and who have other priorities that they weight more heavily than "don't let people call you racist" probably didn't give a rat's ass which candidate some collection of racist fuckwits supported. The Communist party supported voting for Clinton over Trump. Does that make Clinton voters communist sympathizers? Of course not. Clinton voters don't automatically have commie-cooties. Trump voters don't automatically have racist-cooties either.

This entire post is one big strawman. Given you have already been called on it, and decided to strawman Simon's correction as well, further violations will result in your posts being flushed.

[Wild Zontargs]

This entire post is one big strawman. Given you have already been called on it, and decided to strawman Simon's correction as well, further violations will result in your posts being flushed.

How is responding to points Simon explicitly raised in his reply to me strawmanning? I don't see Simon telling me that I'm willfully misinterpreting his posts.

[Soontir C'boath]

Given that we have a system that should "vote for the lesser of two evils", the type of literacy test Simon seem to want to propose will not work and may well be in the hands of state legislatures in which most are Republican controlled including New York. It boils down to testing what information a voter receives of said candidates and the voter may well still find the better candidate as the worse of the lot depending on what is important to them. I know Trump supporters who waived off Trump's bankruptcies as part of the road to being a good businessman. I know people who, despite being cleared by the Republican investigative committees, still think Hillary is guilty of Benghazi, but it was Obama that denied people from prosecuting her. We had Comey who openly said he could have very well have brought her on charges, but decided not to for crying out loud which doesn't help that at all. How would her negatives be weighed compared to Trump's litigations and accusations against him with this test?

How will anyone be able to disenfranchise a group of people in a manner that would not cause an uproar especially when our media do not have fact checking departments and are run by a few corporations?

It all just goes down to hell.

[Flagg]

If you can't be a thinking voter, you don't deserve to be a voter at all.

You are bordering dangerously on calling to disenfranchise people you dislike. Or people whose opinions you dislike.

No. He is not. Jesus fucking christ, just pull a single sentence out of all surrounding context and build a strawman out of it.

He is talking about the fundamental moral duty that goes along with the sovereign franchise--the duty to consider consequences and vote responsibly. What, are you going to claim that no such responsibility exists? He is not saying they [people who don't think before voting] should not be allowed to vote. He is saying they do not deserve to vote, in the same way that Mike Pence deserves to be eaten by bears, but no one is going to smear honey and fish guts on him and tie him to a tree on kodiak island.

Every last person who has thus far responded to Simon's post has made this error, and it is fucking shameful.

Sorry, no. There is no "deserves to vote, but there's no way to differentiate the two fairly" followup, just "deserves to vote". You can try to will it the other way, but he said what he said and we responded to it. I don't think Simon agrees with poll testing, but again, we responded to what was quoted. You can play Mr Morals and wag your finger at us all you want, but you're incorrect.

[Simon_Jester]

Soontir, Zontarg, Flagg, may I ask a simple, direct question of you two three?

Here is the question:

Do you comprehend the difference between me saying "Bob does not deserve X," and me saying "there should be a law against Bob getting X?"

Please note that the plausible answers to this question include the word "yes," the word "no," and the phrase "I'm not sure, could you expand on the difference a little?"

Given that we have a system that should "vote for the lesser of two evils", the type of literacy test Simon seem to want to propose

Did I not just get done explaining this?

[Adds Soontir to list of people he's asking a question of]

[The Romulan Republic]

So, anyone hear how Trump got triggered by Pence getting booed/criticized at a showing of Hamilton?

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/19/us/mi ... .html?_r=0

“Hamilton,” the hit Broadway musical about colonial rebels shaping the future of an unformed country, took an even more political turn at the end of its performance on Friday night.

With Vice President-elect Mike Pence attending the show, the cast used the opportunity to make a statement emphasizing the need for the new administration of President-elect Donald J. Trump, a Republican, to work on behalf of all Americans.

It was a deeply felt and altogether rare appeal from the stage of a Broadway show — and it drew a surprisingly sharp rebuke from Mr. Trump on Saturday morning. The president-elect wrote in a post on Twitter that the “Hamilton” cast had “harassed” Mr. Pence by making the statement and had been “very rude.”

“Apologize!” Mr. Trump wrote at the end of one of two posts on the matter.

As the play ended, the actor who played Vice President Aaron Burr, Brandon Victor Dixon, acknowledged that Mr. Pence was in the audience, thanked him for attending and added, “We hope you will hear us out.”

Photo

Brandon Victor Dixon in July. At the end of the show on Friday, he told Mr. Pence, “We truly hope that this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and to work on behalf all of us.” Credit Brad Barket/Invision, via Associated Press
“We, sir — we — are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents, or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights,” he said. “We truly hope that this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and to work on behalf of all of us.”


The audience broke out in enthusiastic applause and cheers.

Mr. Pence was leaving as Mr. Dixon began to read the statement from the stage. A show spokesman said that Mr. Pence stood in the hallway outside the entrance to the auditorium and heard the full remarks.

Mr. Pence made no comment and was photographed smiling as he left the theater. But Mr. Trump, amid meetings on Saturday with possible candidates for White House and cabinet positions, inserted himself into the story with two Twitter posts before 9 a.m.



Mr. Dixon, who read the statement after playing the nation’s third vice president in the show, quickly replied with a post of his own: “@realDonaldTrump conversation is not harassment sir. And I appreciate @mike_pence for stopping to listen.”

Mr. Pence had been seated in the center orchestra section, prominently visible to audience members. He appeared engaged throughout the show and applauded after most of its numbers, audience members near him said.

Photo

A protester’s sign referred to a line from “Hamilton” while others shouted slogans at Mr. Pence as he left the theater. Credit Andres Kudacki/Associated Press
When Mr. Pence entered the Richard Rodgers Theater in Manhattan, he was greeted with a mix of clapping and booing, according to theatergoers who posted on Twitter.



The audience gave a standing ovation during the play at the line, “Immigrants, we get the job done,” one theatergoer, Christy Colburn, wrote on Twitter.

She added: “Crowd went NUTS at King George’s lines ‘when people say they hate you’ & ‘do you know how hard it is to lead?’ He had to stop the song.”

The statement that Mr. Dixon read was written by the show’s creator, Lin-Manuel Miranda; its director, Thomas Kail; and the lead producer, Jeffrey Seller, with input from cast members, Mr. Seller said.

“We had to ask ourselves, how do we cope with this?” Mr. Seller said. “Our cast could barely go on stage the day after the election. The election was painful and crushing to all of us here. We all struggled with what was the appropriate and respectful and proper response. We are honored that Mr. Pence attended the show, and we had to use this opportunity to express our feelings.”

Only quoting an excerpt, because long.

And yes, he actually had the audacity to say that theatre should be a safe space. Donald fucking Trump.

[Simon_Jester]

The segment of the population who voted for Trump and who have other priorities that they weight more heavily than "don't let people call you racist" probably didn't give a rat's ass which candidate some collection of racist fuckwits supported. The Communist party supported voting for Clinton over Trump. Does that make Clinton voters communist sympathizers? Of course not. Clinton voters don't automatically have commie-cooties. Trump voters don't automatically have racist-cooties either.

Now see THIS is an argument worth responding to.

Here's the catch.

Communists didn't stage rallies for Clinton. Communists grudgingly said "you should probably vote against Trump." They did not specifically endorse Clinton.

By contrast, David Duke and the KKK kept up a steady barrage of praise for Trump. They still are.

See, pay attention to what I actually said, not to what Strawman Jester said. I said "the active racist groups were enthusiastically supporting Trump" Note that word 'enthusiastically.' Their support was not grudging. They were not going "well, we wish someone else had won, or that we could run our own candidate, but it's a two-party system and we recognize that so we have to stand by the Republicans because they're most likely to protect the white race."

No, groups like the KKK wanted Trump to win, specifically. Not just "wanted Clinton to lose," wanted Trump to win.

That's the part that should have caused a thinking person to stop and reconsider, especially when combined with other well known facts about the situation.

[Flagg]

Soontir, Zontarg, Flagg, may I ask a simple, direct question of you two three?

Here is the question:

Do you comprehend the difference between me saying "Bob does not deserve X," and me saying "there should be a law against Bob getting X?"

Please note that the plausible answers to this question include the word "yes," the word "no," and the phrase "I'm not sure, could you expand on the difference a little?"

Of course I do, which is why I stated in the post above that I don't believe you were advocating poll testing. But I was responding more broadly (given the anecdote I posted in my reply) to the quote Stas (K. A. Pital) posted along with his commentary on the quote. My response was that the feeling that people should have to prove they are thoughtful of the issues at hand and the candidates positions on said issues is very tempting but essentially a trap that would bring back the specter of Jim Crow era poll tests.

I simply took issue with AD essentially wagging his finger in the faces of everyone who responded because some of us were talking about the broader issue, not accusing you of wanting to control who does and doesn't vote because you never specifically said you did, but the quote that was posted and replied to was, IMO, bordering on it.

[Thanas]

Well at least John McCain remains somewhat sane. linky

[Wild Zontargs]

Do you comprehend the difference between me saying "Bob does not deserve X," and me saying "there should be a law against Bob getting X?"

Please clarify if I'm wrong, but I'm understanding you as "I really wish I lived in the world where Bob would choose of his own free will not to do X unless and until he meets criteria Y, but nobody should act to stop him from doing X because that would be wrong."

Re. the article I was repeatedly quoting, I was not trying to hammer on "this is what would happen if somebody stopped the Bobs", but rather to point out that "this time around, the Bobs seem to have been more influential in Team Blue's favor, so Team Blue complaining about Bob letting Team Red win confuses me".

I also don't understand what repeatedly saying "I really wish Bob would stop that" accomplishes that going up to Bob and saying "hey Bob, can I talk to you about X?" wouldn't. Crying into the ether about Bob, then getting defensive when someone asks what you would have Bob do instead seems unhelpful.

-----

Now see THIS is an argument worth responding to.

Here's the catch.

Communists didn't stage rallies for Clinton. Communists grudgingly said "you should probably vote against Trump." They did not specifically endorse Clinton.

By contrast, David Duke and the KKK kept up a steady barrage of praise for Trump. They still are.

See, pay attention to what I actually said, not to what Strawman Jester said. I said "the active racist groups were enthusiastically supporting Trump" Note that word 'enthusiastically.' Their support was not grudging. They were not going "well, we wish someone else had won, or that we could run our own candidate, but it's a two-party system and we recognize that so we have to stand by the Republicans because they're most likely to protect the white race."

No, groups like the KKK wanted Trump to win, specifically. Not just "wanted Clinton to lose," wanted Trump to win.

That's the part that should have caused a thinking person to stop and reconsider, especially when combined with other well known facts about the situation.

Yes, I get that, and I wasn't trying to conflate the level of support from the two groups, just the fact that both groups had support from unpopular sources.

Now, unpopular groups can support otherwise good policies for their own twisted reason. I'm not going to attempt to ascribe motives to the KKK, so let's imagine a group called the WTF. These WTF crazies don't like Mexicans for their own screwed-up reasons. Trump says he's going to deport all the people who are in the country illegally. There are a lot of Mexicans who are in the country illegally, so that makes the WTFers happy. Then Trump's going to build a wall to prevent any more illegal immigration from Mexico. Now the WTFers need clean underwear, they're so happy.

We can already agree that these WTF people are not someone we'd want to hang out with. We can, however, have a valid reason for supporting the exact same policy. If we take a hard line on illegal immigration but have no problem with legal immigration, we might wish to deport illegal immigrants and prevent them from returning. In that case, it might make sense to vote for Trump.

Supporting Trump's wall doesn't make us WTF assholes, and the WTF assholes don't irredeemably contaminate Trump's wall idea, or his entire campaign by association. It really sucks that they keep getting in the news whenever the wall is discussed, but in the end, they're 3000-6000 lunatics in a country of 300 million people. There are currently more SDnet accounts than WTFers, and that probably holds true even if we purge the zero-posters.

To quote Scott Alexander from Crying Wolf:

Caring about who the KKK or the alt-right supports is a lot like caring about who Satanists support. It’s not something you would do if you wanted to understand real political forces. It’s only something you would do if you want to connect an opposing candidate to the most outrageous caricature of evil you can find on short notice.

The KKK may love Trump, but Trump has repeatedly "renounced" their endorsement. Trump does not appear to love the KKK back. The KKK's support for Trump is their own business, not Trump's, and not every other Trump voter's by osmosis.

[Lost Soal]

Well at least John McCain remains somewhat sane. linky

That all sounds great and reassuring, except in the same breath he talks about there being a specific law banning the those acts he also mentions the Geneva Convention, which the US still completely ignores regarding the last round of torturing. Then there is the question of who is responsible for bringing the prosecutions to trial? If its AG Sessions and that new law doesn't state that they MUST be prosecuted, then they could just refuse to bring charges.

[Soontir C'boath]

Yes, I read that you don't believe they deserve to vote and I logically takes to its conclusion. Otherwise, frankly you're just preaching to the choir which is boring. I mean yes, I agree people who voted for Al Gore instead of Bush because he is more handsomer or for a modern take, voting for Hillary just because she is a woman, do not deserve their vote, but at the end of the day, it's nothing to pull your hair out about as you seem to be doing.

[Simon_Jester]

Of course I do, which is why I stated in the post above that I don't believe you were advocating poll testing.

You're right and I apologize for the confusion.

I simply took issue with AD essentially wagging his finger in the faces of everyone who responded because some of us were talking about the broader issue, not accusing you of wanting to control who does and doesn't vote because you never specifically said you did, but the quote that was posted and replied to was, IMO, bordering on it.

Of the three people who brought it up, I think they all took time to make accusations against me.

Also, is there any way, in your opinion, to talk in a serious and fairly stern way about the responsibilities of a citizen in a democracy? Electorates voting in rotten demagogues is a very well known problem that's been an issue with democracy for thousands of years, and as far as I know there is literally no way to stop it from happening except for the electorate to be alert and pay attention to the basic character and qualifications of the people they vote for.

I refuse to be moderate in my criticism of voters who make a mistake so common and basic that even Plato (that bastard) thought it was a problem with democracy. A 2500-year-old mistake is one we should be smarter than to commit all over again. If I think voting for a person was a profoundly dumbass decision, then on a forum founded with the principle of not having to pretend dumbassery is normal and acceptable, I am darn well going to call that decision 'dumbass.'

And when people try to use that as a launchpad for "Simon hates democracy! Do you want a poll tax or an entrance exam for voting, Simon?" it strikes me as extremely dishonest. It's the kind of mindset that ultimately enables the failure of democracy. Because it's promoting blind worship of election results, rather than serious discussion of those results, understanding of how they can lead to bad outcomes, and striving to prevent those bad outcomes.

If I wanted democracy to crash and burn, you can bet that I would spend lots of time criticizing anyone who thought voters were under any kind of due-diligence requirements. I don't... so I don't.

Do you comprehend the difference between me saying "Bob does not deserve X," and me saying "there should be a law against Bob getting X?"

Please clarify if I'm wrong, but I'm understanding you as "I really wish I lived in the world where Bob would choose of his own free will not to do X unless and until he meets criteria Y, but nobody should act to stop him from doing X because that would be wrong."

You did not act as though that was your understanding. Furthermore, even after I explained that you had misunderstood the nature of X, you continued to act as though I'd been saying "people of low educational attainment should be denied the vote or have their votes discounted," rather than saying "people who do not think about their votes do not deserve to have the vote." There is a significant difference between:

1) Thinking sanely about your vote,
2) Having degrees from institutions of higher learning, and
3) Being able to correctly answer a quiz about American civics.

These are not the same thing. A civics quiz may or may not model whether a citizen has in fact done (1) correctly. Tracking voters by whether they have (2) or (3) does not automatically test whether they have (1).

Re. the article I was repeatedly quoting, I was not trying to hammer on "this is what would happen if somebody stopped the Bobs", but rather to point out that "this time around, the Bobs seem to have been more influential in Team Blue's favor, so Team Blue complaining about Bob letting Team Red win confuses me".

I have already explained this in my original reply to the post in which you posted your article. And at length, in my post after that.

I also don't understand what repeatedly saying "I really wish Bob would stop that" accomplishes that going up to Bob and saying "hey Bob, can I talk to you about X?" wouldn't. Crying into the ether about Bob, then getting defensive when someone asks what you would have Bob do instead seems unhelpful.

In the context of this thread, I am talking about the precise nature of what I believe to be a profound mistake. I am not, at this time, engaged in attempts to persuade those who made the mistake that it was a mistake.

I am being very, very blunt, something I feel entitled to do here on account of the forum rules explicitly saying people can do that.




-----

Now see THIS is an argument worth responding to.

Here's the catch.

Communists didn't stage rallies for Clinton. Communists grudgingly said "you should probably vote against Trump." They did not specifically endorse Clinton.

By contrast, David Duke and the KKK kept up a steady barrage of praise for Trump. They still are.

See, pay attention to what I actually said, not to what Strawman Jester said. I said "the active racist groups were enthusiastically supporting Trump" Note that word 'enthusiastically.' Their support was not grudging. They were not going "well, we wish someone else had won, or that we could run our own candidate, but it's a two-party system and we recognize that so we have to stand by the Republicans because they're most likely to protect the white race."

No, groups like the KKK wanted Trump to win, specifically. Not just "wanted Clinton to lose," wanted Trump to win.

That's the part that should have caused a thinking person to stop and reconsider, especially when combined with other well known facts about the situation.

Yes, I get that, and I wasn't trying to conflate the level of support from the two groups, just the fact that both groups had support from unpopular sources.

Now, unpopular groups can support otherwise good policies for their own twisted reason. I'm not going to attempt to ascribe motives to the KKK, so let's imagine a group called the WTF. These WTF crazies don't like Mexicans for their own screwed-up reasons. Trump says he's going to deport all the people who are in the country illegally. There are a lot of Mexicans who are in the country illegally, so that makes the WTFers happy. Then Trump's going to build a wall to prevent any more illegal immigration from Mexico. Now the WTFers need clean underwear, they're so happy.

We can already agree that these WTF people are not someone we'd want to hang out with. We can, however, have a valid reason for supporting the exact same policy. If we take a hard line on illegal immigration but have no problem with legal immigration, we might wish to deport illegal immigrants and prevent them from returning. In that case, it might make sense to vote for Trump.

Supporting Trump's wall doesn't make us WTF assholes, and the WTF assholes don't irredeemably contaminate Trump's wall idea, or his entire campaign by association. It really sucks that they keep getting in the news whenever the wall is discussed, but in the end, they're 3000-6000 lunatics in a country of 300 million people. There are currently more SDnet accounts than WTFers, and that probably holds true even if we purge the zero-posters.

To quote Scott Alexander from Crying Wolf:

Caring about who the KKK or the alt-right supports is a lot like caring about who Satanists support. It’s not something you would do if you wanted to understand real political forces. It’s only something you would do if you want to connect an opposing candidate to the most outrageous caricature of evil you can find on short notice.

The KKK may love Trump, but Trump has repeatedly "renounced" their endorsement. Trump does not appear to love the KKK back. The KKK's support for Trump is their own business, not Trump's, and not every other Trump voter's by osmosis.[/quote]

Yes, I read that you don't believe they deserve to vote and I logically takes to its conclusion. Otherwise, frankly you're just preaching to the choir which is boring...

So you decided to read a controversial opinion into what I said... purely because otherwise it would be dull?

More seriously, my statement fit into a larger context, which is that democratic nations do not learn from making severe mistakes until they admit to the mistake. If the people who enabled the mistake are unwilling to recognize that it was a mistake, that their bad choices created a disaster for their nation, then nothing is learned and the mistake will be repeated.