Who Makes Up The Majority of Non Voters? POLL

[Argent Stonecutter]

The point is, we don't really get much out of voting, on an individual level, except a sticker.

In Australia there's Democracy Sausage.

 

[Anya Ristow]

Here are some disincentives I can think of...

1. My one vote is unlikely to make a difference. "But if everyone thought that way..." is kinda like "But someone wins the lottery."

2. If I don't live in a swing state, my vote is not only unlikely to make a difference, it is mathematically impossible to make a difference. Hurray winner takes all. This point can be mitigated for those who pay enough attention to local politics to care. But for the presidency?

3. Anyone who is financially and legally doing just fine, with no insecurity the government can address, and no ideological bent to have been manipulated by church or media, is served just fine by either party. Who cares? Kinda requires some callousness, but we got that aplenty, too.

4. I don't remember what Bush Junior's campaign promises were, but he got us into a war over lies, presided over torture, etc. He was replaced by hope and change guy who delivered for the banks and wall street and not so much anyone else, and expanded two wars to seven. Let's see...going back farther we have the guy who brought us ruinous banking and media deregulation and unfavorable trade deals and started the gentrification of the Democratic party. Before him was the war hero who also presided over a recession. Before him was the father of trickle down economics. Jeesus fuckin' Christ, why don't we just launch them all into the sun?

5. Today's main divide is not left vs right, but we aren't allowed to field a presidential candidate off that axis. Two candidates on that axis are a no-win scenario. Worse, one who pretends to be off that axis vs one who is on it, spells disaster.

 

[bubblesort]

In Australia there's Democracy Sausage.

Democracy Sausage would be a great name for a rock band.

 

[GoblinCampFollower]

Very likely, but are there many peer-reviewed studies to back up either of those assertions?

(And don't get me started on IQ tests).

The abc news article I linked above gives sources.

But yes... essentially any peer reviewed study on intelligence correlations is rooted in IQ. I certainly don't believe IQ tests are perfect, but they aren't nothing either. IQ is strongly correlated with job performance, academic performance, criminality and a lot of other meaningful factors. I don't think IQ measures intelligence, but I do think that your performance on pattern recognition certainly seems to be correlated with intelligence.

Nothing in the social sciences is that firm relative to math and physics, but we have very good reason to think that apolitical people are on average less intelligent. It's not proven in the way that we can prove everyone is affected by gravity, but I think it's clear where most of the evidence is.

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

3. Anyone who is financially and legally doing just fine, with no insecurity the government can address, and no ideological bent to have been manipulated by church or media, is served just fine by either party. Who cares?

If Hillary was in the white house the US would be safely opening up right now, with a fraction of the deaths and long term aftereffects of COVID-19, just like pretty much every other modern industrialized country. This is not a situation in which _anyone_ is safe, or served just fine by either party.

 

[Aribeth Zelin]

The abc news article I linked above gives sources.

But yes... essentially any peer reviewed study on intelligence correlations is rooted in IQ. I certainly don't believe IQ tests are perfect, but they aren't nothing either. IQ is strongly correlated with job performance, academic performance, criminality and a lot of other meaningful factors. I don't think IQ measures intelligence, but I do think that your performance on pattern recognition certainly seems to be correlated with intelligence.

Nothing in the social sciences is that firm relative to math and physics, but we have very good reason to think that apolitical people are on average less intelligent. It's not proven in the way that we can prove everyone is affected by gravity, but I think it's clear where most of the evidence is.

Yes and no. As I learned this year - I'm brilliant at problem solving, which means a high IQ - but my ability to -focus- is dead average, which in this sense makes me ADD.... and I can't hold a job, even when my depression isn't a factor - though I can create, so..... once cons are running again, I should be able to keep working at that.

TL;DR - I've got genius level IQ, but it doesn't matter because I've the attention spam of a demented ferret [except sometimes, when its impossible to make me stop to eat.....]

 

[Jopsy Pendragon]

You liked this:

I also think that the majority of Americans are idiots. Whether they vote or not.

 

[Monica Dream]

I also think that the majority of Americans are idiots. Whether they vote or not.

Excuse me, but I'd like to disagree with you
...sadly, I cannot.

 

[Spirits Rising]

I also think that the majority of Humans are idiots.

FIFY

 

[Fionalein]

I also think that the majority of Humans are idiots.

FIFY

But at this one for once at least Muricans live up to their expectation of being exceptional.

 

[danielravennest]

Here are some disincentives I can think of...
2. If I don't live in a swing state, my vote is not only unlikely to make a difference, it is mathematically impossible to make a difference.

But if other people think that way, then your vote *does* make a difference. You are only applying first-order thinking, when human behavior is multi-level. We consider what other people do, then decide what we will do in reaction to it.

Even if I didn't live in Georgia, which is now a swing state, I would still vote to help Trump lose by ten million votes. That's so his attempts to question the results will get shouted down and we don't end up with civil insurrection.

 

[Jopsy Pendragon]

2. If I don't live in a swing state, my vote is not only unlikely to make a difference, it is mathematically impossible to make a difference. Hurray winner takes all. This point can be mitigated for those who pay enough attention to local politics to care. But for the presidency?

If voters stay home because their party can't win that election, then the winners presume they have a mandate and will pursue more radical and polarized agendas.

It's important to be counted. The stronger the losing side is, the more likely the side that regularly wins will run a moderate.

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

Sturgeon's Law: 90% of everything is crud.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

The abc news article I linked above gives sources.

But yes... essentially any peer reviewed study on intelligence correlations is rooted in IQ. I certainly don't believe IQ tests are perfect, but they aren't nothing either. IQ is strongly correlated with job performance, academic performance, criminality and a lot of other meaningful factors. I don't think IQ measures intelligence, but I do think that your performance on pattern recognition certainly seems to be correlated with intelligence.

Nothing in the social sciences is that firm relative to math and physics, but we have very good reason to think that apolitical people are on average less intelligent. It's not proven in the way that we can prove everyone is affected by gravity, but I think it's clear where most of the evidence is.

My problem with IQ is that it's no more than a somewhat dubious statistical construct. The idea is that we know that people who do well in tests for one of a particular set of skills tend to do pretty well in tests for some other skills in the same set of tests, and the theory is that there's some sort of measurable meta-ability, Intelligence, that manifests itself in the various discrete skills measured in the different tests.

That's all well and good, though I'm not qualified to comment on the statistics behind the theory, but the idea of then trying to correlate something else with the statistical construct, when there are necessarily going to be so many other factors involved seems to me completely fanciful, so I'm never sure what IQ tests measure other than your ability to do IQ tests.

I last took an IQ test when I was 10, as part of the (highly competitive) entrance tests for the secondary school I attended. I assume I must have done pretty well, since they gave me a scholarship, but ever since then people were more interested in what I knew about English, history, Latin, maths, physics, French and so on, and later, in my degrees and professional qualifications, and after that in my work record.

How do you separate out, in all that, the role played by IQ in my later life from the roles played by the quality of the education I received, the nature of my family life, financial circumstances, general good health, and so on?

 

[Jopsy Pendragon]

IIRC, IQ tests are intended to show someone's general cognitive ability compared to people their own age. The more we mature, the harder it is to design tests that have sufficient common ground to provide anything remotely like an accurate assessment.

I think there's more to being 'smart' than just being 'clever' or 'being able to learn'. It's being able to draw upon accurate knowledge+experience and applying it as needed. If people stop learning about the changing politics that affect them, who cares if they're 'smart in other areas'?

Making good political choices becomes more a matter of 'luck' than 'smarts' when the bases for those decisions is little more than ignorance and scraps of strategically calculated mis-information.

 

[GoblinCampFollower]

My problem with IQ is that it's no more than a somewhat dubious statistical construct. The idea is that we know that people who do well in tests for one of a particular set of skills tend to do pretty well in tests for some other skills in the same set of tests, and the theory is that there's some sort of measurable meta-ability, Intelligence, that manifests itself in the various discrete skills measured in the different tests.

That's all well and good, though I'm not qualified to comment on the statistics behind the theory, but the idea of then trying to correlate something else with the statistical construct, when there are necessarily going to be so many other factors involved seems to me completely fanciful, so I'm never sure what IQ tests measure other than your ability to do IQ tests.

I last took an IQ test when I was 10, as part of the (highly competitive) entrance tests for the secondary school I attended. I assume I must have done pretty well, since they gave me a scholarship, but ever since then people were more interested in what I knew about English, history, Latin, maths, physics, French and so on, and later, in my degrees and professional qualifications, and after that in my work record.

How do you separate out, in all that, the role played by IQ in my later life from the roles played by the quality of the education I received, the nature of my family life, financial circumstances, general good health, and so on?

If we roll this discussion back to the original question of this thread, people who are apolitical are also likely to have lower education levels and income levels than people who are politically active, so there is more evidence than JUST IQ that they are less intelligent on average.

I think the idea that taking a test could prove you're not as smart as you think terrifies people. This results in an incredibly strong bias against IQ tests and causes people to want to believe that the science behind it is a lot less mature than it is. There are vast bodies of research digging into the questions you raised. I encourage you to dig through the literature on your own even if you want to disregard what this random person on the internet says. A lot of peer reviewed literature on psychology (not just pop psychology articles) either builds on or references IQ. It's widely used in the scientific community. 77

...I'm never sure what IQ tests measure other than your ability to do IQ tests.

Pattern recognition. Old fashioned IQ tests looked for a lot of weird things, but modern "culture neutral" tests focus on pattern recognition logic problems. I don't really think of IQ tests as the end all, be all intelligence tests, I just think of them as pattern recognition tests. Pattern recognition isn't the only meaningful cognitive skill you can have, but it's certainly not nothing. So much of how humans learn is thought to be based in our ability to recognize patterns. There is very little evidence that a super high IQ makes you special, but there is very good evidence that being really bad at pattern recognition seems to inhibit learning and indicate disability.

For example, the US military won't let people in below 85. On two occasions they tried to test of people down to 80 could make good soldiers but found they seemed to struggle a lot with basic tasks. Similar civilian research found that people below 87 seem to have a lot of trouble holding down a job.

I don't claim to be an expert on cognitive psychology, it's not what my degrees are in. I have friends that could explain this better than I can, but I think it's very anti intellectual and bias to dismiss IQ as a "statistical construct".

 

[Imnotgoing Sideways]

IQ = ~70. I think 68. Test taken by request of counselor due to <1.0 GPA. Dropped school after repeating 10th grade a second time.

So, I abstain as an example.

If there are non-voters due to lower IQ, GOOD!

 

[Aribeth Zelin]

Again, sometimes knowing more is more likely to make you not vote - and if it were true that more high intelligence people vote, explain to me why the US and UK are such a mess right now? Smart, well-educated people don't tend to be the ones who vote, in my experience, because if we did, then we'd not do such a horrible job of it.

 

[Free]

Again, sometimes knowing more is more likely to make you not vote - and if it were true that more high intelligence people vote, explain to me why the US and UK are such a mess right now? Smart, well-educated people don't tend to be the ones who vote, in my experience, because if we did, then we'd not do such a horrible job of it.

What???

I doubt there is a "how smart are you?" question on these kinds of polls, but Pew did a survey in 2006 and found that "intermittent voters are somewhat less well educated and less affluent than are regular voters." A majority also state they don't feel educated enough about the candidates. Non-voters tend to be politically estranged, claim they were too busy to vote, or are "new to the neighborhood" -meaning they don't feel they know the issues and candidates because they've recently moved.

If smart, well-educated people don't tend to vote, maybe they should do some learnin' and educate themselves on why they should vote.

An interesting point from the Pew survey:

One other key difference: Regular voters are more likely than intermittent voters to say they have been contacted by a candidate or political group encouraging them to vote, underscoring the value of get-out-to-vote campaigns and other forms of party outreach for encouraging political participation.

Get out the vote efforts can work.

 

[Aribeth Zelin]

What???

I doubt there is a "how smart are you?" question on these kinds of polls, but Pew did a survey in 2006 and found that "intermittent voters are somewhat less well educated and less affluent than are regular voters." A majority also state they don't feel educated enough about the candidates. Non-voters tend to be politically estranged, claim they were too busy to vote, or are "new to the neighborhood" -meaning they don't feel they know the issues and candidates because they've recently moved.

If smart, well-educated people don't tend to vote, maybe they should do some learnin' and educate themselves on why they should vote.

An interesting point from the Pew survey:


Get out the vote efforts can work.

I'm not saying that I agree with it, but either smarter voters aren't voting, or they are getting kept from voting - or else they are not all that smart, or they wouldn't vote for things like Brexit or Twitler.