from Hacker News

U.S. Political Party Preferences Shifted Greatly During 2021

by drocer88 on 1/18/22, 2:53 PM with 194 comments

• by ceejayoz on 1/18/22, 3:45 PM

  It's the usual pattern.

  One party blows everything up. The other gets elected to fix it. That turns out to take longer than 2-4 years, especially with opposition and a thin margin in House and Senate, so the party that broke things campaigns on how bad things are now (due to their own actions).

• by JohnJamesRambo on 1/18/22, 4:02 PM

  It makes me so angry that people don’t see how the current administration was given a hand grenade with the pin pulled by the previous one. Pumping the stock market at the cost of all else by unprecedented money printing, seeding incredible division into America, ignoring Covid and refusing to even wear a mask and then handing that mess off to the next guy. The American public blaming the next guy because he couldn’t put the grenade back together seems so short sighted and ignorant.

• by Damogran6 on 1/18/22, 3:50 PM

  Since I won't ever get to vote for a Pro-Choice Pro-2nd Amendment president, I guess I'll just stop watching the news, because I can not fathom how we can be skewing Republican after everything that's happened.

• by throw0101a on 1/18/22, 4:03 PM

  For a history of the process in the US I recommend Ezra Klein's 2020 book:

  * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_We%27re_Polarized

  While the public tended to have particular leanings, the Democrats and the GOP didn't really bother 'sorting' themselves until the Southern Strategy where the GOP went after the southern Dixiecrats:

  * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy

  * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixiecrat

  It's worth noting that there's decent evidence that one's political leanings may also influenced by brain structure:

  * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biology_and_political_orientat...

  * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/853648.The_Political_Bra...

  * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_Politics_(book)

• by assbuttbuttass on 1/18/22, 3:59 PM

  The real story here seems to be the increasing numbers of independents. We've just had a republican president fuck everything up, and now a democrat is making everything worse. No surprise people are tired of our 2 party system.

• by LostJourneyman on 1/18/22, 4:08 PM

  Telephone-based sampling is hardly random sampling, given that most people don't answer calls they don't recognize the caller ID for. Those who do might be pre-disposed to certain sets of political ideology. What we may be seeing is a shift of people who are willing to answer the telephone and take a survey, not a net shift in political opinion.

  A practical example, given in good faith: It may be that in their "random telephone sampling" they are only connecting with older people (who are usually more likely to answer calls from an unknown number), leading to unintentional selection bias. In this example, the confounding factor is age, and as such the gallop graphs could be simply showing that younger (ostensibly left-leaning) people are growing less willing to answer the phone (as opposed to the claim that Americans are moving right, idiologically)

• by rayiner on 1/18/22, 3:59 PM

  Relevant: https://theliberalpatriot.substack.com/p/the-democrats-comin...

  I'm quite shocked at how, after Biden decisively defeated his progressive opponents in the 2020 primary, Democrats have continued to allow themselves to be defined by their socially progressive left flank. Even my dad--a die-hard Carter fan who has voted straight-ticket blue since he became a naturalized citizen--is getting disillusioned.

  I think Democratic elites have this notion that people like my parents "really wanted Warren, but voted Biden because of electability." They don't like Warren and they don't like Harris. They don't think the U.S. is a "white supremacist" country, they don't care about "voting rights," they don't think Republicans are "insurrectionists," they don't really care about climate change, etc. They didn't like how Trump talks, or his stance on COVID, and they support more funding for healthcare and education.

• by seibelj on 1/18/22, 3:47 PM

  The inflation issue - “it’s the economy, stupid” - is causing food and housing to spike. Shelves are often empty where I live for random things. This week it was chicken, next week it’s cream cheese, and so on. Very abnormal for the US and the people in power are not focusing on this.

• by newbamboo on 1/18/22, 4:07 PM

  Just wait until everyone’s 401k loses all the gains made during the pandemic while inflation continues and job growth falters. Oh, and international turmoil and potential war following a series of diplomatic and military blunders that have weakened America’s stance abroad.

  How can people not understand the reaction of moderates and independents? Perhaps they are watching propaganda that masquerades as news. The next few years will be confusing times for many. The pendulum swings as they say.

• by mywittyname on 1/18/22, 4:01 PM

  >Independents Are Still the Largest Political Group in the U.S.

  Really? I find this kind of hard to believe. I call myself an "independent", but I vote 90% of the time for one party. I wish we had metadata on voting information so we could see how many people are straight-ticket voters, because I have to imagine that it's a lot.

  I think most of the election swings come from apathetic voters coming out.

• by uejfiweun on 1/18/22, 4:05 PM

  I voted for Biden in 2020, and I have been very disappointed with his presidency. He started out saying that he wanted to unite the country and turn down the temperature, and this was exactly what I voted for. In the first 6 months of his presidency I actually thought he was doing a decent job.

  However, he has really lost me in recent months. His administration spent so long trying to deny that inflation even existed, all while pushing for a gargantuan spending package. WTF? Then all this hyperbolic crap about Jan 6 started getting pushed, with the VP comparing it to 9/11 and Pearl Harbor. Extremely disrespectful, in my opinion. And finally, the nail in the coffin was this Voter ID nonsense. I absolutely support Voter ID, it seems like a common sense policy. And I don't support giving illegal immigrants the right to vote, like they did in NYC. But according to Biden, this makes me a racist who is on the side of Jefferson Davis. Are you freaking serious!? My response to Biden is - go fuck yourself, asshole.

  In summary, he has disappointed me in many ways. The left hasn't calmed down in the slightest, and cancel culture is at an all time high. Inflation is spiking and people like me may never get to own a house. Biden is too busy calling us racists to have any chance at uniting the country. And covid is at an all time high.

  Very disappointing, and I hope someone more moderate runs in 2024 for BOTH sides. Trump and Biden are clearly a bunch of old curmudgeons who can't unite shit. Let's get some moderates in there, like Manchin or Romney.

• by indymike on 1/18/22, 4:23 PM

  I'd just like a decent candidate, please. I'm not sure I've had a single election since I was old enough to vote where I wasn't choosing the lesser of two evils... or the less stupid of the two. I'd really like to be able to vote without holding my nose.

• by adlorger on 1/18/22, 3:50 PM

  I suspect, like all political shifts of independents, that this would have a strong moderating impact on the Republican Party.

  Swing independents tend to be more political practical and less ideological.

• by arrakis2021 on 1/18/22, 6:47 PM

  One of the parties has been branded as the “Lockdown party” during covid. So long as there is a collective with the view that closing people’s businesses at any given time, indefinitely, without recourse, is acceptable - we can expect an endless stream of voters rushing to the other side of the aisle. Speak to right wingers and you’ll find that many will tell you they weren’t convinced by some right wing youTuber. It’s often the policy or rhetoric of the left that drove them away. A specific example in 2021, lockdown policies of the left may have had a far more profound impact on pushing people away than any random guest on Joe Rogan.

• by jimbob45 on 1/18/22, 3:52 PM

  >These results are based on aggregated data from all U.S. Gallup telephone surveys in 2021, which included interviews with more than 12,000 randomly sampled U.S. adults.

  I hate to be so cynical but I have no faith in these phone surveys anymore. Most adults I know avoid surveyors on principle. Even further, most adults I know won’t answer any number that isn’t already in their address book. It seems like the only type of person that a survey like this might reach is the stereotypical technology-fearing conservative.

  That’s not to say that these results are inaccurate in any way. I just don’t believe the methodology backs up the results here.

• by savant_penguin on 1/18/22, 3:53 PM

  I'd guess this has something to do with the constant use of force.

  Don't want to take the vaccine? We'll find a way to make you

  Disagree with me politically on Twitter? We'll look for your employer and coerce him into firing you

  Stay two weeks at home, by the way stay in two more weeks and it's been two years. Some places even had curfews (but then if it's a BLM protest we'll ignore the existence of the virus)

  We follow the science! (Except if the scientist disagrees with you. Check the interview with Don lemon and Sanjay Gupta when he's about to make a point about Joe Rogan. Lemon cuts him off and wont let him finish)

• by tehjoker on 1/18/22, 4:03 PM

  Biden didn't do anything. No major bills passed, they didn't fight for abortion, and seems to be making the pandemic worse intentionally so voters switch from Coke to Pepsi since the only hope for change is to punish the dems. Too bad they're nearly the same as the republicans except in style and rhetoric.

  When the choices are plugged in from the top, democracy is a sham. We live in an authoritarian state. We need a new republic that would do away with all the mechanisms of minoritarian rule.

• by laurent92 on 1/18/22, 3:39 PM

  They have shifted greatly in France too (towards the right, very unusual for France). So is this really linked with Biden or linked with the social isolation?

• by datameta on 1/18/22, 3:52 PM

  It's shocking how unaffected the graph is by who "ran" the country 2016-2020 in comparison to the other change-overs in the 90s and 00s. Is social media reinforcing echo chambers which let one have no doubt in their views? Are our areas of discourse now more one-sided? Insular subreddits, feeds that are curated by a self reinforcing algorithms to not show you what you might disagree with...

  There is Hypernormalization [0] through popular/state media's simultaenous support of opposing views, i.e. disinformation through doubt and plausible deniability (perfected by world powers, particularly Soviet/Russian regimes in the modern era).

  [0] https://youtu.be/thLgkQBFTPw

• by hourislate on 1/18/22, 3:59 PM

  Does it really matter who you vote for? We live in a kakistocracy where corporations run the country. I think it's safe to say we are in the 4th Turning, it likely plays out by the end of this decade.