They didn’t.
Those polls are of all Americans, not just Democrats and Republicans. A large proportion of Americans are excluded from the electoral system.
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Remember the joke about how Obama was the best Republican president the US has had in decades? Near as I can tell, there is no left wing at the national level. Even Bernie would be a moderate saying the bleeding obvious in most Western democracies.
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In addition to @Wanderfound’s point about disenfranchisement, don’t underestimate the media’s ability to persuade people to vote against their own interests:
I bet you’d be hard pushed to find a single lib dem farmer in the UK but given that the EU Common Agricultural Policy accounts for 55% of average farm income and a no deal brexit will mean a 60% tariff on all meat exports to the EU, the lib dems were the only party in the last election that would have even come close to protecting their interests.
Instead, the Daily Mail et al use rural voters’ innate fear of the unknown (how many sheep farmers in Norfolk have even met a Muslim or a black person, let alone built up some kind of empathy through friendship?) to push through the deregulate-and-privatise agenda of a handful of billionaire media barons.
In the American example, you have a focussed right-wing media that taps into resentment of decades of capital flight and brain drain to the coasts and tells you that Obama and Clinton represent “cosmopolitan liberal elites” who don’t understand you. You look at the money that goes into stations like NBC and CNN, their focus on business news, their accents and their clothes, and you decide that you have nothing in common with them. Then you get a Fox or a Limbaugh or a Jones, who target their “news” at you directly, and you start to feel that these people are on your side.
It doesn’t matter that a functional minimum wage would help you directly, or that socialised healthcare would mean you could avoid bankruptcy in the event you get sick; how could you possibly vote for “crooks” like Obama or Clinton when all of the media you identify with is telling you that only the GOP is really looking out for you? That only Trump will bring back jobs for Real Americans Like You?
To be fair to them, it’s not like the DNC really represents their interests either…
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Um…I can’t answer that question not having surveyed the area (!) but the reason that the MP for South Norfolk gets elected is that he is very good at his job - and has consistently voted against wars in the Middle East, consistently demanded that Civil Servants should be selected for ability rather than telling ministers what they want to hear, and consistently criticised giving large contracts to outsourcing companies which then fail. (and yet, oddly, is a Conservative). He is also very supportive of the pig farming industry, and I believe it is that that drives his opposition to the EU, since pig welfare standards are much lower in France and many other EU countries, putting pressure on prices.
TL;DR: it isn’t a one issue matter.
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The Norfolk example was sarky, I’ll admit, but the last time I was in East Anglia (for just over a week) I saw exactly one black person. No mosques. No hills, interesting scenery or food other than greasy British fare of the worst kind either, but that’s really a separate issue.
You’re right that it’s not a single-issue matter but it’s definitely interesting that the areas with the lowest rates of integration also have the highest rates of Conservative, pro-brexit voters. Also, I would assume, higher numbers of people who think the trash they read in The Mail even comes close to resembling anything like the truth.
How does one explain pro-brexit farmers without referencing the right-wing gutter press and good, old-fashioned little-Englander racism?
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And yeh, in case it’s not already obvious; I’m a Londoner.
It started as a joke immediately after the referendum but the longer this debacle goes on, the more I think we should move Westminster to Cornwall, devolve London (and whatever other pro-remain, urban population centres with functioning economies that want to join us) from the rest of the UK and leave the fuckers to rot.
Passport checkpoints on the M25, free sanctuary offered to EU citizens living in the rest of blighty, and instant expulsion for anyone within the boundaries of Greater London who starts a sentence with “I’m not racist but…”
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The assumption that (a) the government will continue to give them subsidies and (b) the perception that the EU dumps cheap food on us. The fact that they don’t realise the likes of Liam Fox plan to make loads of “consultancy” money getting US junk food into the UK probably has more to do with DEFRA and the NFU than the tabloids. I live on the edge of a farming area, I know a few farmers. They aren’t nearly as stereotypical as you think. The truth is that in some circumstances leaving the EU could be good for farmers. Currently we can’t feed ourselves. When the UK credit rating becomes BBB-, we will need to do so.
Farmers around here employ Italian, Polish, Romanian, Portuguese, Lithuanian, Estonian and any other labour they can get because, it’s true, the unemployed locals are almost all unfit for farming work. They are not anti-foreigner. But they have been treated badly by successive Westminster governments and have been told it’s because of the EU. Do you really expect them to understand how the Directives have been implemented in national legislation? I doubt many people in DEFRA know that.
(I too am a Londoner but I left over 30 years ago. I now note just how insular many Londoners are in their prejudices and lack of understanding of the rest of the country - and I would say that is a contributory factor in the referendum result. I notice how many Londoners come here now and immediately start trying to take over councils, ban pig or chicken farming near villages because of the smell, etc. etc. They do not do a good job of promoting multiculturalism.)
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No. Only on BoingBoing.
That’s interesting, because I didn’t hear it on BB.
Agreed, but…
By whom, exactly? If someone who votes to no longer receive more than 50% of their income is then confused by the fact that they will go out of business because they explicitly voted for it, and that was always going to be a logical consequence of their actions, I have to ask why they voted that way in the first place. If the answer to that question is overwhelmingly “because the right-wing media they defaulted to manipulated the facts and they didn’t bother to think it through”, colour me distinctly unsympathetic. I don’t think there’s an excuse for that sort of willful ignorance in this day and age.
As you say, they’re (generally) not anti-foreigner on a personal basis. They do seem, however, to have lapped up a lot of xenophobia and once again, I have to wonder where from.
If the foreigners who work on their farms are “generally an OK bunch” but they still vote Tory/Brexit, that’s a lot of cognitive dissonance to deal with. If the main source of their income is the EU and they still vote Brexit, I’ve got to say that I’m going to point my finger firmly at the press.
@ChickieD: please feel free to split this discussion off; I think we are thoroughly off-topic now.
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Also: both parties have been running basically on scare tactics about the other party, rather than an actual platform. As in, vote for us or THEY will take away your rights. Vote for us or THEY will take away your money.
“Vote for me because I’m not Bush” didn’t work in 2004. “Vote for me because I’m not Trump” didn’t work in 2016. But they’re going to do it again and again and again.
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You have it backward, sort of. If you work a corporate job, you constantly hear the dumbest shit from educated suburbanites who should know better but are invested in the rat race. Outside the corporate world, you only hear that shit from blatant assholes too incompetent and outre for the corporate world.
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This.
There’s also that gap, which has been growing from the 1980s, between education and training. There is so much emphasis on training – be an engineer, be an accountant, be a doctor – that being educated takes a back seat. People may have the critical thinking skills to figure out something is wrong with the accounts, but not enough to put together all of the crap coming out of the White House and realise “oh, that’s crap”.
I work with a guy who keeps telling me you can’t tell what Trump’s about from what he says, but from what he does. I asked how that can be an accurate take when he’s a documented liar who has passed no major legislation. Then it’s, “oh, we shouldn’t talk about politics at work”. Yeah, because there’s no answer for that.
But “Trump is a successful businessman who will help the economy and therefore is beneficial to all of North America” is such a heavily invested-in idea, they can’t consider that maybe those premises and that logic may not be realistic.
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A friend of mine works at a theater design company in Manhattan. The gayest sort of corporate work environment ever. And yet a great deal of his workmates are vocal Trump supporters because “he’s helping Wall Street thrive!” Apparently for many educated suburbanites and 'urbanites, the strength of your 401k is more important than your personal freedoms.
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Exactly.
It was the same refrain with Rob Ford: “At least he’s going to drop the congestion charge and not raise taxes! At least he’s not going to spend money!”
And then I’d ask where the money for the subway extension he promised us was going to come from, one of the most expensive things a city can build.
All these promises, and people are remarkably bad at adding them all up to see what the real message is. I wonder if New York theatre is feeling a hit with tourism down since Trump took office.
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If you read the second half of my post you will see that I address that issue.
Exactly. 100% concur. Example: Ben Carson. Neurosurgeon who claims not to believe in evolution.
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Nah. Stateside tourism isn’t down all that much, and it’s still impossible to get Hamilton tickets 
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I’ve posted this a few times elsewhere, but the bit of this between 5:30 and 9:30 directly addresses that point. It begins discussing abortion, but expands from there.
Perhaps I should have continued that at the precarious bottom we get as much training and education as we can afford; books are somewhat cheap or free, but we also get exposure to real life outside the corporate fake society.
Again, turnout of the majority is hurt by lame policies by the Dems and suppression by the Reps. The people who take Trump as read in the media are the ones too stunted by comfortable distractions.
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I wonder if he has other reasons…
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