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Comment by energy123 | Hacker News Reader

Only 17% of all U.S. voters think the killing was "acceptable" or "somewhat acceptable", topping out at 41% among young voters, according to Emerson.

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I think I would have checked the "unacceptable" box if I took that survey.

At the same time, I can't disagree with the fact that at this point I'm not sure what else will force a change to our absolutely depraved health care system. Every time I think it's as bad as it can possibly be it gets worse.

I also hope Mangione gets at least one mistrial due to jury nullification.

I might have checked acceptable, even if I'm not sure if it is. Just to steer the result to the direction that conveys the message.

Nullification means acquittal with no retrial, not a mistrial.

Fair enough, I mean that I hope at least one juror is willing to return a verdict of not guilty based on their desire to achieve jury nullification.

It was 41% approve, 40% disapprove. All the polls are filled with massive numbers of "don't know" people that I think is likely going to be filled with people struggling with cognitive dissonance. How can one oppose murder, but not feel particularly upset, to say the least, about this murder?

> All the polls are filled with massive numbers of "don't know" people

Not the case. The "neutrals" were only a few %, while 68% said "somewhat unacceptable" or "unacceptable".

No, they weren't. In the 18-59 age group, they made up about 20% of every response group. Even in the 60+ group it was about 10%. [1] And in the YouGov poll [2] that surveyed all Americans instead of just voters, and also asked the question in a less leading way found 37% "don't know" amongst all Americans.

The Emerson poll quite disingenuously chose to frame the typical "don't know" as "neutral", which is going to be interpreted as a value position - not the lack of a formed position, which their poll completely lacked. Their questions and answers were poorly framed if the goal was to actually query public sentiment and not just get a desired response.

[1] - https://emersoncollegepolling.com/december-2024-national-pol...

[2] - https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/51189-presidentia...

The same way people justify killing in wars, regardless of how justified they feel the wars are.

The "enemy" combatants are of course just operating within the parameters of their laws. Nevertheless, war is seen as a battle between two competing powers which discard human lives in their struggle.

This is a different type of war being fought now. Brian Thompson didn't create the system, he was just a high-ranking agent.

Luigi declared war against the system, and people feel so strongly about the necessity for that system to be defeated that they can simultaneously support the resistance (even if the resistance had no choice but to play by its own rules) and recognize the tragedy in a death and the associated impact of that.

It's similar to how a lot of people feel about the Palestinian resistance in their struggle for liberation from the profoundly evil system of violence which has been victimizing them for years and killing them with impunity.

"Only"?! That's 1 in 6 people. A terrifyingly high number, regardless of your stance on insurance companies.

I'd guess that most people that responded "somewhat unacceptable" really wanted to say "somewhat acceptable" but without directly admitting that they semi support the act.

Or, perhaps because people actually think that murdering people is not acceptable.

Which in that case they would just answer "unacceptable".

"Somewhat unacceptable" is logically equivalent to saying "Somewhat acceptable".

The young voter thing seems weird to me.

Consider these facts:

• A significant majority of Americans are medically satisfied with their health insurance provider.

This should not be surprising because a large majority of Americans have only ever used their health insurance for things routine checkups, routine lab tests, common infectious illnesses like colds and flus, minor burns and cuts and other physical injuries, routine diabetes care, routine high blood pressure care, and vaccinations.

Those are all things where almost all of the time any insurance company will cover without any hassle or pushback.

• Older people are generally more likely to have medical problems beyond the kind described above, medical problems where insurance companies do start pushing back on coverage and treatments.

• The older you get the more likely that becomes.

What I'd expect then is that sentiment in favor of killing insurance company officers over the medical decisions of that insurance company to be higher in older people and lower in younger people. But it appears that reality is opposite of that.

> A significant majority of Americans are medically satisfied with their health insurance provider.

Before some life changes that mooted the point, I lived in fear of needing serious medical care, and as far as things go I'm more privileged than most.

> What I'd expect then is that sentiment in favor of killing insurance company officers over the medical decisions of that insurance company to be higher in older people and lower in younger people.

I don't know man, having the loved ones around you get literally killed by the dollar the insurance companies took from them and wouldn't give back sounds like something somebody too young to be beaten down by reality would feel enraged by. The loving heart can only take so much damage before it starts to break.

I just think that it's a bunch of people who developed with their empathy under attack before their emotional armor fully formed. Abuse begets abuse and we see an abused public lashing out. Extremely tragic, but nothing especially mysterious about it.

Polls are only as good as the pollster. Watch how “popular” Kamala was in polls because it was the “right” thing to say.

Most people (including rich boomers) I know are at minimum ambivalent to Luigi with many actively supporting him. But if asked on record they would deny it.

Kamala did quite well in the election, it was close. In hindsight I don't think there was any particular evidence the polls were inaccurate. Poll-watchers like fivethirtyeight.com predicted that the election was a coin toss (with the toss sliiightly biased towards Trump up until their final forecasts from what I recall) but whoever won the coin toss would probably achieve a comfortable victory. That is pretty much what transpired.

Then why the disparity with private polling.

If you want me to refer to private polling you're going to need to hint which poll you mean. I'm working off public data which was pretty accurate on aggregate, there weren't any surprises on election night which was something of a https://www.xkcd.com/1131/ moment.

Eyeballing https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2024-election-forecast/ it looks to be in 1-sigma territory or maybe just venturing in to 2-sigmas.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/kamala-harris-advisers-internal-p...

Leaks of the Biden polling had trump getting 400 EC votes. Public polling is a PR exercise to convince you how to vote, the intention is to deceive.

I dunno. Given the public polls seemed to be accurate in hindsight that just suggests Harris' internal polling was off. They were the C-team that were losing to Trump with Biden and struggling to match his raw charisma with Harris' campaigning. Maybe their pollster wasn't very good or they didn't do that much polling? We can't really assess what was going on inside the campaign in that way.

> In hindsight I don't think there was any particular evidence the polls were inaccurate.

One notable exception was The Des Moines Register poll the day before the election.

Presidential polls were "inaccurate" by only a few %, which is to be expected. But to be so inaccurate that >50% support for Luigi is reported instead as only 17% would be staggering and unprecedented, requiring nothing short of fraud.

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