Wednesday, August 3, 2016

j reacts to a possible plot twist around the polling propaganda

just another twist on this idea of polling as a means to shape the media that generates popular opinion, though: we've never been in a situation where both of the candidates are so overwhelmingly unpopular, and this kind of standard approach could consequently fail.

so, let's say that hillary's ipsos propaganda panel manages to get an upper hand in the news cycle and we're stuck dealing with weeks of flawed polling that ends up convincing most people that hillary is going to win in a landslide. under normal circumstances, we would expect the projection to create a herd mentality: hillary will get a bump in the polling because people are fucking sheep and they want to vote for the winner. that's what the whole thing is trying to engineer, and that both sides are going to be pushing. but, in this particular circumstance, i'd be a lot more likely to vote for jill stein - especially in a swing state - if i thought clinton was comfortably ahead, and more likely to vote for clinton if it looked very close (and i was convinced she was a lesser evil). a lot of republicans will say the same thing. and, some will even argue that they'll vote for trump in a landslide to send a message.

the same logic applies on the other side, too.

so, this may end up backfiring this cycle, because everybody is so disliked.