A similar thing happened with Brexit, and the last UK General Election. Right-leaning voters just can't be bothered to identify themselves and get involved in debates about it. They just vote.
The similar thing is happening all over europe right know. Right-leaning voters don't want to identify themselves because the negative social implications can be quite significant.
Also the west seem to have lost its debate culture. These days most debates of conservatives and progressives in shouting 'commie' and 'racist' at each other.
In a good debate you wanna help your opponent to give the best possible argument for his position and then try to disprove it. Everything else is lazy and not beneficial for anyone.
Debate competitions have devolved into some sort of speed-talking, where the number of arguments that the opponent needs to address is more important than the substance of the points themselves.
There's a RadioLab episode about that at http://www.radiolab.org/story/debatable/
An example they use is that if a debater A has six points in his speech that need to be addressed, and the opponent B only addresses four, A wins by default, since there were two points that were unaddressed.
It reminds me a lot about this election, where there's so much polluting the discourse that there's no time to address the substance (and it plays better to the audience, as Moonves stated).
A key problem is that the internet, which should be the best debating forum ever created, is actually a waste of time because of downvotes.
I hate downvote buttons. Programmers seem to put them there only because we demand symmetry. If there's a plus there must also be a minus. I rarely, if ever, see negative votes used to suppress actual spam or obvious trolling ... the only place I've ever seen that actually happen is on Slashdot where the system actually does suppress auto-generated garbage, page-widening posts, etc. Everywhere else people use +/- buttons to indicate disagreement.
Unfortunately, the further left you go, the more you become convinced that people who disagree with you are dumb and easily manipulated. Thus suppressing opinions you disagree with becomes more and more acceptable. Thus downvoting any right-wing thinking into invisibility becomes not just acceptable but important. This trend of course culminates in far-left communist countries where political censorship is an official state policy.
So people with those opinions then rapidly learn that they aren't welcome, that people aren't interested in real debate ... and leave. Forums that could have been debating centers for mutual understanding turn into echo chambers.
The solution is to eliminate downvoting and do what Slashdot does: require you to pick a reason when upvoting, use randomly chosen moderators, and meta-moderate the moderators.
At least in the US, it's been gone since the Nixon era. I was too young to vote in Carter v. Reagan, but the hyperbole around his candidacy was amazing. I remember my parents being freaked out when McGovern lost in 1972; it was the end of the world...
The thing about the UK situation that most worries me is the smug left trying to grasp at any way they can to overturn the referendum result or undermine subsequent action. There seems to be the idea that of we just keep ignoring and denigrating hard enough then the morons will be safely put back in their box and we can go on as before.
It never occurs to them that that would just make everything even worse in the long run, that now is the time to understand and compromise. They still seek absolute victory.
The article could just as well have been written about the UK.
The thing is that the only alternative to putting the morons back in their box appears to be letting the morons run the country. Sometimes public opinion really is just wrong, and there is no easy way forward when that happens.
Anyone that disagrees with my take on this issue is a moron.
I disagree fundamentally - if you stop regarding the 'other side' as 'other', as stupid, as meritless, and start to consider their opinions when making policy, well we might make progress.
>Anyone that disagrees with my take on this issue is a moron.
It's wrong to think that everyone who disagrees with you on anything is a moron. It's also wrong to deny the existence of morons who occasionally do moronic things.
I mean, we are talking about a group of people who held a referendum, knowing that the vote would be close, and then didn't even have a plan for what to do afterwards. The country is in chaos and the leaders of the Brexit brigade have all sodded off, having absolutely no idea what to do next.
We did consider the opinions of Brexit supporters. Their concerns were taken seriously. The Conservative government went overboard in its attempts to reduce migration and negotiate a more favorable deal with Europe. They really couldn't have done any more without doing something outright ridiculous. But that wasn't enough. So the public insisted that they do something ridiculous.
A last minute, failed attempt to do something a few months before a referendum that they comfortably and smugly assumed they would win easily. No plan was made because the people in a position to make one didn't want to and assumed victory.
All this after AFAICT two decades of ignoring or belittling people for their deeply held views.
That doesn't really cut it and so we get the result we got.
Personally I neither think the country is in chaos nor do I believe that a vote for Brexit is a mark of idiocy. And even if I did I would try to recognise that I share a country with such folk and have a duty to take their views into account. The catastophising and continued moralistic judgements are another symptom of this poisonous thought pattern.
Brexit was the breakpoint, but the preceding decades of smug politics are what got us there.
>No plan was made because the people in a position to make one didn't want to and assumed victory.
No plan was made by long-term Brexit supporters either. Where is Nigel Farage's plan? What useful suggestions has Boris Johnson made?
>And even if I did I would try to recognise that I share a country with such folk and have a duty to take their views into account.
We did take their views into account, as I said. The Conservative government bent over backwards to accommodate them.
The strategy you're proposing (engagement) was tried and has failed. It only had the effect of making Brexit seem more reasonable than it really was. Now we are in a position where the electorate have done something insane, and yet are in a position to demand that we take their insane views seriously.
But what if a large number of people actually have done something insane? You seem to refuse to accept this as a possibility.
To my mind, the view that migration should be severely restricted never was dismissed. The present Conservative government agreed, and imposed all kinds of overly draconian restrictions. (I ended up paying several thousand pounds to get my Canadian husband a visa to live here.)
Now the idea that immigration should be even further restricted is mainstream, even though it is mad.
I'm interested in any plans that Farage might have made because it would be evidence that someone on the Leave side of the issue perhaps has a clue.
Yet net migration figures stayed around 350k, which showed that either the politicians were not really engaging or were ineffective.
I also don't see how you can call the idea of restricting that "mad". Genuinely I don't. I understand you can disagree, I understand you can disagree with the premises it's based on. But how is it "mad"?
Your insistence on only dealing with the conservative government is also puzzling when we're talking about something that goes far further back.
>Yet net migration figures stayed around 350k, which showed that either the politicians were not really engaging or were ineffective.
Which, consulting Wikipedia’s list of countries by net migration, puts us below (amongst many others) Norway, Spain, Australia, Canada, Sweden, Switzerland, Italy, Ireland and Portugal. So it’s not exactly an unreasonably large number of immigrants we’re talking about here. (Especially when you consider that our net migration figures are bogus, since international students are wrongly included in them. Around 135,000 non-EU students entered the UK in 2014, for example.)
>I also don't see how you can call the idea of restricting that "mad". Genuinely I don't. I understand you can disagree, I understand you can disagree with the premises it's based on. But how is it "mad"?
We have an aging population and an economy that was just coming out of a recession. It’s not difficult to see why we need more immigrants. They’re young and net contributors to the economy. The idea that we could make things any better by shutting everyone out is, simply, mad. Perhaps in the short term some unemployed British people could switch from being unemployed to doing very badly paid, very menial jobs that are currently being done by Polish people. The net cost to the economy would most likely be far greater than the cost of simply increasing their benefits, though.
>Your insistence on only dealing with the conservative government is also puzzling when we're talking about something that goes far further back.
I don’t think I am insisting on that (?) I’m not quite sure what you mean.
The British people considered it unreasonably large, for whatever reasons. They considered it important enough that after years of being ignored millions voted for UKIP or the Tories.
Again I'm not here to argue merits. What you have there is more justifications for ignoring the views of large sections of the electorate.
The rest of your argument is purely economic, as if that is or should be everything to everyone. And some of those points are arguable. I don't think that warrants calling people who disagree "mad".
>> I don’t think I am insisting on that (?) I’m not quite sure what you mean.
Oh just that I've been trying to make the point that politicians have been at this for decades and you bring up the conservatives as having tried to engage.
I don't think they really did, and by the time they did it was too late. Engagement should have been there from Blair onward.
>The British people considered it unreasonably large, for whatever reasons.
For no good reason. That's why I said that it's mad.
The economic argument is the only respectable argument against immigration, which is why I focused on it. The only other arguments against immigration that people put forward are racist and/or xenophobic.
Ok, so what is an argument against current levels of immigration to the UK that is neither racist, xenophobic, nor based primarily on economic considerations?
Most EU immigration is to London and the South East, somewhere that already feels like it's creaking at the seems and overcrowded.
We could start a massive programme of building houses and infrastructure, but that would further change the face of the country. Limiting immigration would alleviate some of the pressure.
That's just one off the top of my head.
Remember, the point made in this article is not that you have to agree. The point is that calling people mad and shouting them down as racist is toxic to politics and drives people away.
--edit--
I also find it strange when people bring up racism in the context of limiting migration from the EU - a region primarily peopled by white Europeans.
>Most EU immigration is to London and the South East, somewhere that already feels like it's creaking at the seems and overcrowded.
> Limiting immigration would alleviate some of the pressure.
First of all, housing is an economic issue.
Second, London voted overwhelmingly for remain. I live in London. No-one here seriously thinks that London’s housing crisis can be solved by stopping immigration. Nor did the country vote Leave because people in the North were particularly interested in solving London’s housing crisis.
Third, London out of all areas of the UK would be harmed the most by greater restrictions on immigration, and the vast majority of the people who live here know that.
>I also find it strange when people bring up racism in the context of limiting migration from the EU - a region primarily peopled by white Europeans.
Actually I was careful to say “racist and/or xenophobic” in anticipation of this kind of pedantry, but I guess I needn’t have bothered. The current climate is such that even Polish people aren’t considered sufficiently Anglo-Saxon to be entitled to live here!
I asked for an argument against current levels of immigration that was neither based primarily on economic considerations nor racist/xenophobic. I really don't think there is any such argument. Unless you're really saying that people are opposed to immigration because they're worried about houses being built on the greenbelt.
Overcrowding of the country is a valid concern, for more than purely economic reasons, the south east is one of the nost densely populated parts of Europe already.
As I say, if you want to see racism everywhere, and if you presume that the economic arguments are all won then fine, you just carry on shouting everyone down as mad and racist, and watch as your political viewpoints fail to gain traction over and over again.
Again, I'm not really here to argue the merits of Brexit or Trump, I voted for neither. But I am taking great delight in the frustration of those who hector, judge and shut down all discussion, shouting loudly about virtue while in fact practising all the bigotry they claim to despise.
>The strategy you're proposing (engagement) was tried and has failed.
What was tried wasn't engagement, it was an attempt to suppress the issue by holding what they expected to be a doomed referendum, so they could use the result as an excuse to ignore the issue.
True engagement would mean acknowledging people's concerns, and explaining their true causes and how you're going to address them.
How are you going to address the concerns of people who are opposed to all immigration from non-white and/or non-English-speaking countries? The Conservatives had already restricted immigration to a greater degree than is sensible.
They did actually make suggestions, despite not campaigning to form a government. For example, an Australian style immigration system, striking a trade deal with the EU, continued cooperation in defense issues and so on. You just ignored them.
Unfortunately it's rather hard to make plans about leaving the EU because the EU itself is in a catatonic state of denial. Their glorious leader banned even writing things down about the possibility of exit before the referendum, and afterwards announced they would still refuse to discuss it until Article 50 is invoked.
This total denial of reality and absolute refusal to discuss it, is then used by people like Martin Schulz and yourself to claim Leave had no plan!
Yes, Leave has a plan! It's called "get the hell out of this madhouse as quickly as possible". That's it!
You can blame it all on the EU if you like. We're still fucked. There's no way the EU will give us a good deal, and it turns out that no-one had any kind of realistic negotiating strategy. (Remember all that delusional nonsense from the Leavers about how Germany would have to give us a good deal because the country is run by its car industry? Oops...)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the US is now run by a guy who thinks the EU sucks, that Brexit was great, and whose best buddy in Europe is Nigel Farage.
And is it not the case that the most popular politicians in other core countries are all anti-EU?
Ah I see, so their plan was for Trump to win the presidency and for the entire EU to collapse before we make a deal. Sure, let's see how that plays out. Third time lucky?
"Let's get out before the EU implodes" was actually a campaigning point, though not one that affected my own decision much. I would be surprised if the EU collapses. But then again, almost everyone was taken by surprise when the USSR disintegrated, and the conventional wisdom was that neither Brexit nor Trump could happen. So we'll see. Suffice it to say that there are structural weaknesses there.
Regardless, sometimes you have to leave a social group if that group is becoming self-destructive, even if it hurts in the short run.
Right, so we are going to have to negotiate while the EU is still in tact. What's the plan for how we do that? What reason does the EU have to give us a good deal?
Well, I'd say "because it'd be what's best for people in EU countries" but I don't honestly believe the EU cares about that, beyond perhaps avoiding mass expulsions on both sides. So far they seem more interested in securing payments into their pensions.
So my view is that they have no incentive to give the UK a good deal. This does not imply the UK should have remained. They have no incentive because they aren't accountable to the people, except via very indirect and essentially broken ways, and besides lots of Europeans buy the argument that they must suffer to preserve the union.
Why is any plan Farage might have come up with of the slightest interest? Are you suffering from the misapprehension that the referendum was an election for the leave campaign?
Boris? Who knows.
I'm not really defending Brexit here. My argument is that something along these lines was inevitable due to decades of ignoring people.
The conservative government wanted to put a lid back on this and make it go away, their strategy was to show it up for what they assumed was the obviously stupid, minority viewpoint it was. They failed, but they were just the latest in a line of governments suffering from the smugness identified in the article.
>So the public insisted that they do something ridiculous.
The public aren't the ones who decided to have a referendum, the government are. If you're arguing that it was moronic to hold a referendum with no clear plan for one of the possible outcomes, I totally agree, but that's not the public's fault.
I mean that the public insisted that we leave the EU by voting to leave the EU. Just because someone asks a silly question doesn't mean that you have to give a silly answer.
People voted in the way that best expressed their beliefs given the choice as presented. If they'd voted remain, the government wouldn't have said "Oh I guess that was a poorly defined referendum, let's work out a proper plan and have another." they'd have used it as an excuse to ignore the issue.
>People voted in the way that best expressed their beliefs given the choice as presented.
That is true of any election, no?
>If they'd voted remain, the government wouldn't have said "Oh I guess that was a poorly defined referendum, let's work out a proper plan and have another." they'd have used it as an excuse to ignore the issue.
Quite possibly, but I don't see how that is relevant. We seem to be in agreement?
Sorry, I'm not sure what you're getting at. I think that it was silly of David Cameron to hold a referendum, and I think it was silly of the British electorate to vote to leave.
It's really not clear it actually exists. Both the 2015 general election and Brexit misses were primarily due to turnout modeling problems: people accurately reported which candidate they preferred, but different groups turned out in different numbers than had happened historically, so the (educated) guess about who would actually vote turned out to be wrong.
The British Polling Council postmortem is a very interesting read. They considered 'shy Tory' but once again ended up ruling it out.
I get that social desirability bias is a thing, and that those with views considered socially unpopular are less willing to share them. But for a hypothetical Shy Tory effect to have an effect on polling you'd need something like all of the following:
* Tories to be unwilling to admit to voting Tory (plausible);
* Tories to claim to be voting for someone else, instead of refusing to answer, as if they refuse to answer then the demographic weighting will increase the impact of similar respondents who will tend to also be Tories (somewhat less plausible);
* The source of errors from the above to outweigh other known problems such as turnout modelling, non-response bias, demographic variations in telephone/Internet access, late changing of minds, anti-Tories in Tory areas doing the same things for the same social desirability reasons (I suspect it wasn't any more fun being a Hillary supporter in Trumpland than a Trump fan in Hillaryland this cycle), and so on.
Polling is not easy. Its statistical guarantees are only valid under circumstances that basically don't hold, and there is a great deal of variation due to design decisions which cannot be empirically grounded. You don't need a "shy Tory" effect to produce the misses seen recently, and the evidence doesn't support it happening on a scale big enough to have any impact at all.
I already gave an answer earlier in the thread that is true for the two similar polling misses in the UK and my best guess for what happened in the US: differential turnout. Trump supporters voted with higher probability than they had historically (or Clinton supporters voted with lower probability, which seems more plausible looking at the turnout figures). So even if people's preferences for president were completely honest and recorded correctly, the projected "likely voter" poll results were wrong.
This is known to have happened in Britain, because there was a very thorough postmortem by the pollsters' professional body after the 2015 miss.
