this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2024
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https://www.cnn.com/election/2020/results/president
The difference in the 2020 election was about 7 million votes. Even with the electoral college, another 40 million votes not impacting the 2024 election would be statistically improbable. Biden would win in an unprecedented landslide.
We know what states have been swing states before. We don't know which states will be swing states in 2024 with 100% accuracy. If enough people didn't vote, any state would become a swing state. If everyone who has said "your vote for president won't matter" or equivalent voted we would see radically different results in US elections.
If all those votes were in already blue states it wouldn't have changed anything.
But I'm making the mistake of assuming voters are acting rationally and understand the rules of the game, which they don't. They're not going to, like I did, not vote for the presidential candidate because I keep an eye on the polls and know that it's going 2:1 to someone but continue to vote down ballot. They're just not voting because reasons.
We'd all be well-served to stop thinking of voters as rational people.
That's ridiculously unlikely. Also, what's a blue state now may be a swing state on election day.
Polls gauge approval, which is only an approximation for who people are going to vote for. The polls aren't supposed to be a guide for who to vote for. Vote for democracy and against fascism.
It's better to think of people as self-interested. Being self-interested does not imply a person will necessarily act or even know how to act in their own self-interest. If life was a game of perfect of information the vast majority of people would make decisions that were actually in their own self-interest. As opposed to real life where global temperatures and fascism are on the rise. It's not for a lack of rationality that people are sleep walking into fascism. It's a lack of knowledge and critical thinking skills. edit: typo
There was no universe where Clinton was losing MD in 2016. It went 2:1 for her. My not voting for her had zero effect.
And it is a lack of rationality. Otherwise Trump couldn't get elected dogcatcher.
It's the universe where enough people didn't vote. If everyone who says stuff like this voted, we wouldn't have had Donald Trump as president the first time.
People are incredibly rational. We can put people on the moon and send rovers to Mars. We are working on fusion reactors and quantum computers. Humanity is really good at rationality. People are really uniformed and lack critical thinking skills. Those things have to be learned.
MAGA supporters think they are acting in their own self-interest. They lack true information and the critical thinking skills to challenge the false information that they've been given. Given that they have been misled they then act in a rational way to their own destruction. Trump's supporters think he's going to make America great again. So they vote for him. They don't check their zip code. They don't check the polls. They are convinced that a second Trump presidency is in their own self-interest. So they do the rational thing of showing up and voting for him.