I don’t have any links and I can google later if I have time, but I’ve seen reports before that most self described independent voters almost exclusively vote either Republican or Democrat. In other words, they’re not being entirely honest with themselves.
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Non voters matter- not swing voters.
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Yeah I’ve long accepted that some people see the value in a political poker face. This is fine I think actually. Like it should be ok for people to maintain a professional identity and social identity separate from any political party when they are a Democrat in a Red State or a Republican in a Blue City. This ideally should be true even if they are identifiably gay, an immigrant, a certain race, a certain gender, or alternatively ambiguous on any contended fronts of self-concept and personal life.
Even more ideally it would be safe to be open about everything everywhere but we are objectively not living in that reality.
I don’t know if anybody should keep giving up ground there. It may be small but a signal is a signal and such people are at least brave enough to signal ambivalence or ask questions vs those who double down.
The fact that this kind of social coding isn’t followed up by similar voting patterns doesn’t surprise me and also makes me wonder if people assuming so is the effect of cutting off the sciences from the humanities so early in education and so pervasively. This is going to be especially heightened given the fact that both parties have an assortment of positions that are either incongruent with each other or are deeply unpopular with some fragment of their bases so identifying hard with a party can signal all kinds of crazy things depending on your social surroundings.
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No argument here. I hadn’t really thought about it until your comment got me wondering (so it’s all your fault, right? 
), but it seemed really high to me.
That would be fascinating. The flip side (how many people never used to watch/read the news but have increased their consumption in recent years) would also be interesting. Especially if we could correlate those answers with the respondents’ political views and voting history.
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I’ve stopped hiding it because I no longer give a shit if it angers or scares them. I was at dinner with out of town relatives who are old-school Dems and one centrist Dem. The discussion came around to Zohran Mamdani and the centrist started spewing nonsense about “socialism” and “who wants that?” and most of the table raised their hands and said “yes, please!” Or “sign me up!” He asked, “do you want New York City to become Venezuela?” I pointed out Mamdani is a Democratic Socialist, so in other words, like Sweden or Norway, where people are way more happy than Americans. I think he was shocked that there was so much vocal support around the table, and damn straight he needed that reality check.
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This is where years of anti-communist/socialist propaganda and the constant attack on critical thinking fields of study has gotten us… people not understanding what socialism IS in historically reality. It’s just a slur or something to be afraid of to most people, not a perfectly acceptable and even more democratic way to organize our shared political life. Drives me crazy, especially from people who really should know better. Educated people, people who care about democracy and about helping others…
Hm… critical thinking fields of study… I like that turn of phrase…
#copyrighted!
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So has she called Al Franken to finish out her senate term?
ETA: I realized after posting this it could be interpreted as Franken apologia. It’s not. It’s a criticism of Gillibrand’s hypocrisy.
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From that article:
Instead, research dating back to 2000 shows that the most effective way to get people to the polls—including chronic nonvoters—is with direct personal contact.
I think think is right. This is purely anecdotal, but I was talking to some friends of mine who live in various parts of NYC the other evening, and I asked them about Mamdani, and boy were they excited to talk about him. And every single one of them had a story about someone from Mamdani’s campaign knocking on their door and, in one case, talking to them for about an hour.
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I mean, isn’t a major problem that everyone keeps talking about the national loneliness epidemic… hell, the previous surgeon general made this a national awareness campaign. I think that Kat Abughazaleh (sp?) has the right of it, too, by doing things like using her fund raising to offer services to folks… I think that a politics of connection and humanity would go a long way to dealing with our political problems. Lots of people probably fell into things like Qanon and Trumpism because they FELT alone, and this gave them a kind of community to feel less alone… It’s less about “sempai noticed me” and more about, “sempai noticed us together at this rally”…
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Probably.
But not for me- I do not want strangers knocking at my door. At all.
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I have a doorbell camera that I can speak through using my phone. Best. Invention. Ever.
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Using Google search terms, it was the #1 searched topic on election day.
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It is so weird to worry about democratic socialists raising taxes when we have like literal stalin type totalitarianism burning through tax money like casino tzars in the GOP.
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So that means that however many people searched for it knew the answer when they voted, for the most part.
But none of that has anything to do with GOTV.
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A third union, the New York State Nurses Association, also endorsed Mamdani. It represents 30,000 members in the city.
“We are confident that whenever we’re in a fight, Zohran will be on our side standing up for hospitality workers,” Rich Maroko, the Hotel and Gaming Trades Council’s president, told The New York Times. “That’s why we are genuinely excited to endorse Zohran and ready to help him win in November.”
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