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Comment by TeMPOraL | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if this isn't some kind of mass denial happening in some subset of the world. I've been seeing a lot of theories abot why Trump won, including mass manipulation and Russian influence. But what about the simplest explanation - that he won because people voted for him (usual vote counting shenanigans that happen every election aside)? Is this fact so scary people need to rationalize it away?

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Saying "he won the election because he got more votes" doesn't explain anything. The question is who voted for him, and why.

And that's not about Trump specifically, it gets asked after every election.

I think if you are ideologically opposed to Trump then you find it tough to accept something like this. Please also note that HN by nature tends to be more on the liberal spectrum. Like everything else, it is a bit of everything. It's Clinton complacency with Trump's strong messaging + democrats backstabbing their own voters by sabotaging Sanders. Being someone from marketing, it is easy for me to see that "MAGA" is much catchy & better slogan than "Stronger together" (what does it even mean?), it is difficult of any American to argue against MAGA vs. Stronger together since you will be considered "unamerican" & nationalism is currently a theme globally. Trump kept things simple and easy to grasp. If you read Daniel Kahneman & Amos Tversky's work, he basically appealed to our system 1 minds which prefers shortcuts and jumps to conclusion. (which does not mean that people who does this are somehow bigots because we all do this all time, in fact living would be really difficult we were ultra rational and thoughtful about everything)

That's not how the electoral system works more often than not people do not vote for, they vote against.

Things would be different if we actually voted for policies instead of oligarch strawman.

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