On the world-wide trend of anti-establishment voting.

[CharonY]

While a lot of the focus in recent discussions is understandably focused on the US elections, there is a world-wide ongoing anti-establishment voting going on in Western democracies. We have discussed various elements related to that, and argued about the role (or rather, the diminishing role) of the political center. I cam across a Vox article that contextualizes quite a few of our discussion points and I think it may be worth a read, as it provides more general perspective on the shifting political landscape. https://www.vox.com/politics/388284/trump-2024-win-global-anti-incumbent-system

It does not claim to provide answers, but I think it adds to the narrative that, well, something is going on that is not fully understood yet and that many traditional approaches to view and react to these things(including polling) may be off.

As background:

Quote

2024 was the first year in recorded history when incumbents have lost vote share in every single developed democracy that held a contest, with Vice President Kamala Harris actually performing better than all but one of her developed-world peers. Since 2020, incumbent parties in Western democracies have lost 40 out of 54 elections — meaning the odds of an incumbent defeat in the past few years have been just shy of 80 percent.

On the center:

Quote

But while the die-hards are often the majority of the far-right party’s supporters, they typically aren’t the majority of the electorate. To win, people like Trump need to win over other kinds of voters, ones who don’t share the hardcore base’s preoccupation with culture war.

Of course, we’re all familiar with the concept of “swing voters.” What makes them more interesting today is that they’re increasingly swinging in much wider arcs. Whereas swing voters in wealthy democracies once bounced back and forth between the center-right and center-left, they now are willing to consider options on the extreme left and extreme right (or, depending on the country, both). [...]

The rise of such voters itself raises two questions. First, why are swing voters more open to radicalism? And second, why did it accelerate so much in the past few years?

Quote

Moreover, it assumes a model of voting — where voters reflect and assess policy successes and failures rationally — that may not be accurate. Extensive evidence, compiled in books like Democracy for Realists, shows that voters often base their ballot decisions on identities, partisan loyalties, or plain old gut feeling. In the United States, this semi-rationality is especially acute for swing voters, who tend to pay less attention to politics than firm partisans and thus are generally less informed about the facts of what’s happening in any given election cycle — let alone what happened 10 or 20 years ago.

Quote

 

The political vibes have turned rancid — and we don’t fully understand why.

It’s a puzzle that’s especially important to solve given that, at this moment, humanity is living through the best period in its history.

The world is richer than it’s ever been. War deaths have risen during the unusually destructive Gaza and Ukraine wars, but they’re still well below what the world looked like prior to World War II. We’ve eradicated smallpox, a disease that killed as many as 500 million people throughout history. We’ve made extraordinary strides toward social equality and inclusion, with historical practices like slavery now formally abolished across the globe. Challenges like income inequality and climate change remain serious, but there has been some real progress in the right direction.

This bit I found striking. Personally, I feel that folks have lost a sense of perspective for some reasons (*cough* social media? *cough*) and are caught ins self-reinforcing narratives that can be pretty much evidence-less. Adding to that bad actors (though I am not even sure they are needed), it can result in a destructive process with no real way out. The traditional way to address these issues is to rely on facts and education. But again, I get the sense that this is not working for large swaths of the population anymore. And here I think the trend is moving into the wrong direction, especially with a view on college-aged kids.

[Peterkin]

2 hours ago, CharonY said:

It’s a puzzle that’s especially important to solve given that, at this moment, humanity is living through the best period in its history.

There is the fatal error. From way out in space, using statistics and recent trends as a measure, this may look like the best period of recorded human history. That's not how the people on Earth experience it. Globally, this is probably the most anxious and uncertain period - even including the world wars. There is no such thing as 'local' anymore; not in received information, or economy, or social stability, or personal security. We're under constant threat by climate change, robotics, large-scale human migration due to the small, incomprehensible wars that have replaced the ones in which people could see the conflict between good and evil. Over a mere fifty years - two generations - western nations have undergone major shifts in world-view and belief-systems, culture and lifestyle, work, mores and family dynamics.

Are any of these voters turning hard left? I don't see it. When people are prosperous, secure and optimistic about the future, their thinking expands. They can afford to feel tolerant and accepting; they want to spread the sunlight. (Not everyone, of course; there are always some busily stirring the embers of ancient enmities and nurturing new ones.)

When people are insecure and afraid of the future, they close in around their most valued interests and familiar ideas. They look for a father figure to take charge and fix everything in a way that will benefit them - regardless of the cost to outsiders.

2 hours ago, CharonY said:

Personally, I feel that folks have lost a sense of perspective for some reasons (*cough* social media? *cough*) and are caught ins self-reinforcing narratives that can be pretty much evidence-less.

Folk, en masse, have never had perspective and have always been susceptible to unfounded claims and implausible narratives emanating from a position of authority. Look back at what-all people have believed - absolutely, fervently, to the point of killing and dying for - throughout the history of civilization. It's simply that the narrative changes tone and purpose according to who is in charge and who aspires to be in charge. 

Edited November 27 by Peterkin

[CharonY]

30 minutes ago, Peterkin said:

There is the fatal error. From way out in space, using statistics and recent trends as a measure, this may look like the best period of recorded human history. That's not how the people on Earth experience it. Globally, this is probably the most anxious and uncertain period - even including the world wars. There is no such thing as 'local' anymore; not in received information, or economy, or social stability, or personal security. We're under constant threat by climate change, robotics, large-scale human migration due to the small, incomprehensible wars that have replaced the ones in which people could see the conflict between good and evil. Over a mere fifty years - two generations - western nations have undergone major shifts in world-view and belief-systems, culture and lifestyle, work, mores and family dynamics.

But that is the same thing that I have mentioned- it is perception vs reality. The anxiety and uncertainty we have- well they were there all along, but they were not perceived as such. In order to cut through that, statistics are important to quantify the change. Yet, it does not reach folks. Locally many things have improved massively, if we take things that can be measured. Such as food availability, life expectancy, heck, even things like entertainment.

Yet none of this positive changes are felt. On the non-tangible side, you are correct though. Social changes are faster than they were and I do think that this adds to anxiety. And this is what a big issue is. Intangible are not rooted in simple measurable elements. And the latter are, as you mentioned, rapidly dismissed (as they are measured, but not felt). That suggest that we increasingly rely on our gut feeling and anxiety and all the other negative aspects and increasingly ignore the tangible facts.

[Peterkin]

1 hour ago, CharonY said:

The anxiety and uncertainty we have- well they were there all along, but they were not perceived as such.

Not these threats, on this magnitude, everywhere, all the time, with no solutions in sight. Governments on the 20th century democratic model are unable to take decisive action. That's not a perception; that is a well documented reality. There have been international summits on climate change since the 1970's - and yet, the problem keeps growing; the causes of the problem keep escalating. Those slow, feeble efforts at reversing the damage are opposed on the grounds of "the economy! the economy!" and almost immediately undone by a change of administration. You know Carter had solar panels installed on the White House, right? Guess what Reagan did!     

 

1 hour ago, CharonY said:

In order to cut through that, statistics are important to quantify the change. Yet, it does not reach folks.

They never did reach the masses. Nobody applied statistics to the Inquisition.  You can compile all the stats you want on the correlation between gun deaths and the ease of owning firearms, but it makes not a dent on US legislation: it's a very lucrative business. You can demonstrate all the social benefits of UBI, but capitalists find it repugnant. These decisions are not based on factual knowledge, but self-interest and sentiment.

I'm very well aware that mass communication media have increasingly failed to convey useful information to the masses they serve. But, at this juncture, reinstating responsible journalism would make no difference. And the farther right a society shifts, the harder that is even to contemplate.

When you consider improvements, you're looking at a big - but not global - picture. They don't benefit everyone equally, not even in the most advanced and prosperous nations. And they are always perceived negatively by a substantial part of the population.

1 hour ago, CharonY said:

food availability, life expectancy, heck, even things like entertainment.

None of those things are guaranteed. Meanwhile, income disparity grows, the power and value of labour is eroded, traditional social and familial roles are upset, automation makes people redundant; millennials have a very dim outlook. The recent past and present may look fine; the future is flapping in the wind. It's not any particular threat; it's a convergence of  a dozen looming threats, at least three of them existential. The Doomsday clock, set by people with access to all the accurate information in the world, is 90 seconds from midnight. A clear picture would only freak people out more than they already are.

Edited November 27 by Peterkin

[TheVat]

There is an irony that so many are going with their gut in an age when technology can serve up such an abundance of facts.  When facts were scarcer and harder to find, people valued them more.  Information gatekeepers could be seen as having special expertise, when they had a roomful of teletypes and you just had a telephone.  They were the ones seen as having some expertise in extracting what was significant from the world's data flows and shaping it into some curated and understandable set of facts. 

That Jeffersonian view of the press is waning now.  The information firehose in your pocket, with so many data streams competing to grab you with stimulation and appeals to emotion and desire, drowns out professional journalism and disciplined learning.  I don't know if rescue can happen at the university level - if it happens, it might have to start in primary school grades.  I wonder if the politics to really pay attention to might be who is running for school board, city council, and other local/state offices that strongly impact public schools.

[LaurieAG]

7 hours ago, CharonY said:

While a lot of the focus in recent discussions is understandably focused on the US elections, there is a world-wide ongoing anti-establishment voting going on in Western democracies...

The traditional way to address these issues is to rely on facts and education. But again, I get the sense that this is not working for large swaths of the population anymore. And here I think the trend is moving into the wrong direction, especially with a view on college-aged kids.

Some people tend to discount the appeal of candidates who are not beholden to the vested interests of the mainstream political parties (who have both bases covered with only establishment candidates). Many people around the world (and the 8 million who didn't bother to vote for Kamala) wonder why the so called left wing US mainstream party supports a right wing regime that has no qualms with killing women and children en masse?

Also, while people with aeronautical engineering qualifications and their friends might think the economy is great others, who's family future would be assured with a basic factory job and the ability to get to the first rung of the ladder, might have different opinions.

There have been far too many right wing reforms pushed through around the world by nominal left wing political parties and people are getting fed up with it.

[iNow]

1 hour ago, TheVat said:

going with their gut in an age when technology can serve up such an abundance of facts.

Perhaps paradoxically, that same technology where we find those facts is now serving us up content that is barely even fact-proximal. Hallucinations from transformers and nefarious droppings from troll farmers. 

20 minutes ago, LaurieAG said:

while people with aeronautical engineering qualifications and their friends might think the economy is great others, who's family future would be assured with a basic factory job and the ability to get to the first rung of the ladder, might have different opinions.

The funny part is those with different opinions… they genuinely feel someone with only their own self interests and avarice for power at heart, the crook the coward the corrupt and bankrupt soul… is their best candidate to make their wants and desires a reality. 

I’ve got a bridge I want to sell them. 

[Peterkin]

1 hour ago, iNow said:

I’ve got a bridge I want to sell them. 

They'll buy shares in it if you promise to make their wife compliant and your next-door neighbour white.

Edited November 28 by Peterkin

[iNow]

They’d buy it if I made it a cryptocurrency and called it bridgeCOIN, frfr 

[dimreepr]

18 hours ago, CharonY said:

This bit I found striking. Personally, I feel that folks have lost a sense of perspective for some reasons (*cough* social media? *cough*) and are caught ins self-reinforcing narratives that can be pretty much evidence-less. Adding to that bad actors (though I am not even sure they are needed), it can result in a destructive process with no real way out. The traditional way to address these issues is to rely on facts and education. But again, I get the sense that this is not working for large swaths of the population anymore. And here I think the trend is moving into the wrong direction, especially with a view on college-aged kids.

The pendulum will always swing to it's natural end, before the revolution begins again.

If anything, I think the AI-fication of our society would speed up the change of direction; again I'm reminded of Assimov's 'Hari Seldon's' psychohistory and it's inherent faults. 

 

Quote

an algorithmic science that allows him to predict the future in probabilistic terms. On the basis of his psychohistory he is able to predict the eventual fall of the Galactic Empire and to develop a means to shorten the millennia of chaos to follow.

 

[CharonY]

I'll add some more responses once I get a few free minutes, but I found this article regarding an extremist candidate suddenly surging in the polls through social media quite relevant to the discussion:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/27/romanian-regulator-tiktok-suspended-cyber-interference-election-georgescu

[LaurieAG]

On 11/28/2024 at 12:19 PM, iNow said:

I’ve got a bridge I want to sell them. 

The people who bought what the media was selling have already bought it.

Edited Friday at 03:17 AM by LaurieAG

[dimreepr]

11 hours ago, LaurieAG said:

The people who bought what the media was selling have already bought it.

Did you?

[LaurieAG]

12 hours ago, dimreepr said:

Did you?

LOL, I didn't swallow the BS the mass media have been broadcasting.

[dimreepr]

10 hours ago, LaurieAG said:

LOL, I didn't swallow the BS the mass media have been broadcasting.

Why?

Let me guess, bc you read the daily mail and they told you not to...

[LaurieAG]

On 11/30/2024 at 11:25 PM, dimreepr said:

Why?

Let me guess, bc you read the daily mail and they told you not to...

LOL, I live at Rupert Murdoch's ground zero. Queensland Newspapers (QNP) was the last Murdoch family media asset that was sold to NEWS CORP. We've been aware of him and all of his buddies for ages and BTW, in Australia he keeps the left wingers in political power.

[dimreepr]

10 hours ago, LaurieAG said:

LOL, I live at Rupert Murdoch's ground zero. Queensland Newspapers (QNP) was the last Murdoch family media asset that was sold to NEWS CORP. We've been aware of him and all of his buddies for ages and BTW, in Australia he keeps the left wingers in political power.

He didn't invent it, 'they've' been doing that since 'whatshisname' invented the printing press... 😉

[CharonY]

On 11/27/2024 at 6:35 PM, TheVat said:

I don't know if rescue can happen at the university level - if it happens, it might have to start in primary school grades.  I wonder if the politics to really pay attention to might be who is running for school board, city council, and other local/state offices that strongly impact public schools.

I am fairly confident that at the University level it is too late. First, college kids are only one small-ish segment of the segment. But even worse, one has to work against all the bullshit that is in their heads and their distrust is also increasingly directed against any form of expertise. Weird assumption regarding topics such as vaccinations and evolution have become increasingly prevalent (anti-evolution sentiments were higher 20 years ago, but dropped only to increase in recent times again).

In some counties media literacy is being introduced into school curricula. The issue is that they somewhat still assume that there is a "normal" media landscape running parallel to the internet. However, traditional media are being dismantled and independent news are becoming a rarity.

On 11/28/2024 at 7:03 AM, dimreepr said:

The pendulum will always swing to it's natural end, before the revolution begins again.

Well or there is no pendulum anymore.

 

On 11/27/2024 at 3:44 PM, Peterkin said:

Governments on the 20th century democratic model are unable to take decisive action. That's not a perception; that is a well documented reality. There have been international summits on climate change since the 1970's - and yet, the problem keeps growing;

Well, that is symptomatic of the overall problem. Folks want to have competing things. They want the threat of climate change to go away. Simultaneously, they want to carry the burden of the cost for that. Similarly during the pandemic. Folks wanted restrictions and deaths go away. But things like masks were too much of a burden. That opens up the road for populism where you promise solutions but have no realistic paths to that.

An ethical government should be transparent, but a transparent government would exhibit flaws that will be punished by the electorate. Rather hide and deflect and to stay in power. The system disincentivizes real solutions as techbro/populist approaches to solutions which promise convenient (if unrealistic) solutions are simply more attractive. Then add a media landscape that elevate those voices over critical (if depressing) ones and you have good mixture where you cannot get good solutions, and those who try will get blamed.

Don't get me wrong, there are real issues that needs to be addressed, but there is a general and understandable unwillingness to make sacrifices. Instead, it is politically prudent to find someone to blame. And this approach has been supercharged in the last decade or so.

Thinking a bit more about the techbro aspect- I feel increasingly folks have been promised and believe in simple, disruptive solutions. "Things are not working out, so we'll just break things but magically all will be better, just trust us." As we have seen, the magic promises that were made by the tech industry actually never panned out and virtually all promises of being ethical, transparent or being not-for-profit ultimately fell along the wayside. Rather than elevating the common folk, they became the product.

[Peterkin]

1 hour ago, CharonY said:

Well, that is symptomatic of the overall problem.

Among many other symptoms. Because modern democratic governments cannot make long-term decisions, they cannot take decisive large-scale action, cannot tackle large problems, and cannot enforce their own legislation.  Which means that the large problems keep getting larger, and the people are vaguely, dimly aware of this - or some aspect of it. But nobody in charge, or running for office has the the courage to tell them: It's going to keep getting worse, unless we understand the causes, figure out the priorities and make the necessary sacrifices. All of us, not just the scapegoated underclass. 

So the people grow more and more anxious, until somebody comes along and simplifies it for them: They are the problem, and I have the solution: punish them!!

[CharonY]

1 hour ago, Peterkin said:

Among many other symptoms. Because modern democratic governments cannot make long-term decisions, they cannot take decisive large-scale action, cannot tackle large problems, and cannot enforce their own legislation.  Which means that the large problems keep getting larger, and the people are vaguely, dimly aware of this - or some aspect of it. But nobody in charge, or running for office has the the courage to tell them: It's going to keep getting worse, unless we understand the causes, figure out the priorities and make the necessary sacrifices. All of us, not just the scapegoated underclass. 

So the people grow more and more anxious, until somebody comes along and simplifies it for them: They are the problem, and I have the solution: punish them!!

That, however, has been always an issue with democracies. Some are seeing a repetition of the crumbling of young democracies in the 1930s. However, the argument there was that many countries lacked experience and/or safeguards to protect against anti-democratic actions. Now, it seems to me that the gains were effectively wiped away, and I don't see a real consensus on how it happened.

[Peterkin]

48 minutes ago, CharonY said:

Now, it seems to me that the gains were effectively wiped away, and I don't see a real consensus on how it happened.

Global capitalism.

[iNow]

That’s rather too simple and reductionist to be of much use as an answer IMO

[CharonY]

Especially as global capitalism has been around and while I don't have data at hand, in my memory unhinged conspiracy theorists didn't have such an easy time grabbing power (like in Romania, and arguably USA right now).

At least superficially, that element looks more akin to what happened before global capitalism on that scale was a thing.

Also interesting with respect to media literacy:

Quote

We tested a hypothesis that misinformation exploits outrage to spread online, examining generalizability across multiple platforms, time periods, and classifications of misinformation. Outrage is highly engaging and need not be accurate to achieve its communicative goals, making it an attractive signal to embed in misinformation. In eight studies that used US data from Facebook (1,063,298 links) and Twitter (44,529 tweets, 24,007 users) and two behavioral experiments (1475 participants), we show that (i) misinformation sources evoke more outrage than do trustworthy sources; (ii) outrage facilitates the sharing of misinformation at least as strongly as sharing of trustworthy news; and (iii) users are more willing to share outrage-evoking misinformation without reading it first. Consequently, outrage-evoking misinformation may be difficult to mitigate with interventions that assume users want to share accurate information.

https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adl2829

[dimreepr]

15 hours ago, CharonY said:

Well or there is no pendulum anymore.

By what mechanism could it be stopped?

In a "BNW" it was genetic engineering that provided the worker's and AI is a long way from that level.

I think the world wide trend that's most responsible for the current swing, is the average age (of everyone) of the competent decision maker's has increased in relation to the reproduction rates. Which has happened in a very few decades.

I think the pendulum will return, when the children can't bear the weight of unproductive pensioner's. 

[iNow]

4 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

AI is a long way from that level

Don’t be so sure. Most people are working from a 2 year old perception of models that get logarithmically better by the hour, and now models can even fix edit and improve their own code. 

10 hours ago, CharonY said:

interesting with respect to media literacy:

We’re basically monkeys with iPhones, mostly hairless apes getting fooled by mental heuristics that were previously useful in the savannas but which clearly aren’t well adapted nor suited for handling modern technology and info-cultural ecosystems.