# Internet support intensity vs. real world support **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [August 1, 2019, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-support-intensity-vs-real-world-support/837975 "2019-08-01T02:22:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![MyFootsZZZ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/myfootszzz/32/12580_2.png) [@MyFootsZZZ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MyFootsZZZ)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2019, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-support-intensity-vs-real-world-support/837975/21 "2019-08-08T20:23:22Z")
> [@Icarus](#): > > And those people are out of touch with the other world. Goes both ways. I agree however I’ve seen the other world too I’ve been pretty to both. One dissects the other much like The Daily Show did or used to. But things can be taken out of context, too. If it were Bernie and Trump who would swallow their pride and vote for Bernie? If it were Biden and Trump do you think that kids care about Trump being reelected? I hope so. ---
**Author:** ![Icarus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/icarus/32/72_2.png) [@Icarus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Icarus)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2019, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-support-intensity-vs-real-world-support/837975/22 "2019-08-08T20:27:22Z")
> [@MyFootsZZZ](#): > > I agree however I’ve seen the other world too I’ve been pretty to both. One dissects the other much like The Daily Show did or used to. > > But things can be taken out of context, too. > If it were Bernie and Trump who would swallow their pride and vote for Bernie? If it were Bernie invited with the kids show up to vote? Oh, I’m not endorsing one side over the other. I just like to point out that EVERYONE, the youngs included, can end up in a media bubble. And it pays to be generally aware of the numbers to understand where the broader population is. ---
**Author:** ![MyFootsZZZ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/myfootszzz/32/12580_2.png) [@MyFootsZZZ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MyFootsZZZ)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2019, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-support-intensity-vs-real-world-support/837975/23 "2019-08-08T20:28:09Z")
> [@Icarus](#): > > Oh, I’m not endorsing one side over the other. I just like to point out that EVERYONE, the youngs included, can end up in a media bubble. And it pays to be generally aware of the numbers to understand where the broader population is. I agree… By the way I edited that last part it didn’t make any sense. ---
**Author:** ![Boycott](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boycott/32/6741_2.png) [@Boycott](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boycott)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2019, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-support-intensity-vs-real-world-support/837975/24 "2019-08-08T20:36:41Z")
Look at the UK. Jeremy Corbyn is popular on Twitter and Reddit. Theresa May was despised. In some real life polls for who would be the better PM…Undecided beat the pair of them! ---
**Author:** ![Boycott](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boycott/32/6741_2.png) [@Boycott](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boycott)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2019, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-support-intensity-vs-real-world-support/837975/25 "2019-11-23T19:07:05Z")
> [@](#): > > But while Warren was disappointing her more serious Democratic allies, she was titillating the online left by devoting her time to crafting childish tweets. Warren wrote passive-aggressive indirect responses to peripheral conservative figures with no profile outside social media. She buried Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey in an avalanche of greatly aggrieved tweets attacking him for refusing to silence political advertisers with whom she disagreed—a campaign of agitation to which Dorsey replied simply, “We haven’t announced our new rules yet.” She attempted to demonstrate her hipness by linking her war on capital markets to pop culture by suggesting the song artist Taylor Swift had become private equity’s most visible victim. She redefined car accidents as “traffic violence,” and pledged to end it. Somehow. Don’t think too hard about it. > > But while Warren was being called “president of Twitter clapbacks” by apple-polishing Millennial bloggers, she was bleeding support in the polls. The senator has lost ground in the Real Clear Politics national average of primary polls relative not just to Joe Biden but Bernie Sanders. She’s lost over eight points in that measurement in the space of just six weeks. The story is much the same in Iowa, where Warren has shed five points from her October peak and ceded momentum to South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg. In New Hampshire, the Bay State’s backyard, Warren’s position deteriorated by eight points in roughly the same timeframe. > **[What Happened to Elizabeth Warren?](https://www.commentary.org/noah-rothman/what-happened-to-elizabeth-warren/)** > > Perhaps the most revealing exchange in a Democratic debate short on fireworks took place between Sens. Cory Booker and Elizabeth Warren over Warren's constitutionally dubious “wealth tax.” It wouldn’t have ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2019, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-support-intensity-vs-real-world-support/837975/26 "2019-11-23T19:47:58Z")
Conservative pundits are perhaps not the best choice to cite about Democratic politics. As in this piece, they cherrypick to find the worst things to say. In the long run, they may be right - everybody but one person will lose the nomination, after all - but they are saying what their constituents want to hear rather than being objective. Yeah, this is a generalization, but I haven’t yet found a counter-example. ---
**Author:** ![MyFootsZZZ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/myfootszzz/32/12580_2.png) [@MyFootsZZZ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MyFootsZZZ)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2019, 3:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-support-intensity-vs-real-world-support/837975/27 "2019-11-24T03:16:48Z")
Man… I can barely read my own posts in this thread. I apologize if people can’t get the gist of what I’m saying. I think I’m good a rereading my posts before I send them, and it turns out to still be a disaster. It’s a little embarrassing. ---
**Author:** ![Boycott](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boycott/32/6741_2.png) [@Boycott](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boycott)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2020, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-support-intensity-vs-real-world-support/837975/28 "2020-01-31T20:16:10Z")
**The Twitter Electorate Isn’t the Real Electorate Social media is distorting our sense of mainstream opinion.** > [@](#): > > The Twitter Primary drives its members to extremes, while chilling the speech of outsiders. An excess of certainty leads activists to bad decisions and misapprehensions. Spend enough time on Twitter and you could believe that Corbyn “won the argument” in December, despite losing the general election. The postmortem on Labour’s defeat risks being hampered by a pervasive sense on social media that the party didn’t really lose, not really: Well, everyone I know voted for Corbyn. Activists may intellectually concede the reality of the Conservatives’ 80-seat majority, but it doesn’t feel like the Tories won. And that means there is less reason for them to support a change in tactics. > > The small-p politics of culture journalism is also affected by tweeters’ lack of awareness of being exceptions rather than representatives of mainstream opinion. The journalist Jesse Singal recently published a post arguing that “super-wokeness is mostly an elite phenomenon.” Singal noted that Dave Chappelle’s latest Netflix show was widely condemned in ways that suggested everyone was offended by it, although, as he wrote, “the best data we have suggest that the vast majority of Americans view political correctness as a problem … The opinions most commonly represented in mainstream progressive outlets are not held by the masses, including by the groups seemingly with the most at stake.” He’s right: Ultra-liberal attitudes to race and gender are indeed not held by the masses, including racial minorities. But, crucially, they are held by the peers of the journalists writing those pieces, with whom these journalists hang out on Twitter. Once again, the cloistered world of Twitter is creating a false sense of consensus. A good piece on how Corbyn was set to win a landslide according to Twitter only to lose in the biggest landslide his party has suffered in 90 years when it came to real voting. Corbyn and his party spent the whole of 2019 demanding a snap election so they certainly believed they could win. And incredibly one of Team Corbyn’s self-reflective analysis is "despite the party’s defeat, the party leader “gained more likes and retweets on 12 December [election day] than UK Labour or Boris Johnson in the entire campaign”. > **[The Twitter Electorate Isn’t the Real Electorate](https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/01/jeremy-corbyn-labour-twitter-primary/604690/)** > > Social media is distorting our sense of mainstream opinion. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2020, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-support-intensity-vs-real-world-support/837975/29 "2020-01-31T20:59:50Z")
Everything I’ve been reading lately points to the correctness of **Boycott** ’s point. Decades ago we all watched Walter Cronkite. We didn’t all read the _N.Y. Times_, but our local papers often carried top opinions via syndication. Many of us lived in segregated communities, but when the underclass rioted it was on the 7 o’clock news. Nowadays print media is almost dead. For televised news many turn to shrill voices like Maddow or Hannity. An idiot of any ilk can create his own lying website for a few dollars; even here at SDMB we see links to such sites apparently posted more-or-less in good faith. The predominance of Fake News has led many Americans to act as though all News is Fake. With news habitually slanted, and reporting priorities quite faulty, strikes and protests no longer get fair coverage. Instead, outrage and concern focus on contrived issues. Lies and propaganda are the new norm. Even commentators on the “correct” side of an issue can turn off potential converts with their exaggerations and excessive “correctness.” The country is divided into the Informed and the Misinformed, with the latter group an ever-growing majority. The Misinformed Majority is ripe for manipulation by Putin, the Koch Brothers and other malicious agents. Campaign finance reform might help a little, but with the Supreme Court now firmly controlled by the evil-doers we can expect little progress. That Court continues to rule in favor of GOP suppression of voters likely to favor reforms. In America, income inequality is rising. School quality is declining. Politicians with real solutions are laughed at. Many voters focus on guns, guns, guns. European countries have not yet had their democracies as thoroughly destroyed as that of the U.S., but they’re moving in the same direction. Billionaires hold unprecedented power. As Western values erode, expect the “benevolent dictatorships” of East Asia to become the new model. How can anyone imagine the outlook isn’t very grim? ---
**Author:** ![ZipperJJ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zipperjj/32/211_2.png) [@ZipperJJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZipperJJ)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2020, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-support-intensity-vs-real-world-support/837975/30 "2020-01-31T22:14:38Z")
I just got done playing the “Totally Unrigged Primary” game that was put out by Samantha Bee’s show, Full Frontal. You sign up for the game and align yourself with a candidate, and answer questions about the primary race every day for points. Since the game started on Oct 31, Andrew Yang has been the frontrunner by about 2 million points over Warren (meaning the people who backed Yang’s collective score is about 2 million more than the Warren supporters’ collective score). Yang only had 19,000-some supporters to Warren’s 22,000-some supporters but either Yang’s supporters were that much better at answering questions, or Warren supporters stopped answering questions as soon as they signed up. You could make a donation in the game, which would end up going to the winning candidate. So Andrew Yang just got $49k in PAC money from this game, even though he’s polling so low. Warren supporters (me!) are not too excited about that. FWIW the game shook out like this: Yang - 13,796,531 pts / 19,934 players Warren - 11,776,662 pts / 22358 players Buttigieg - 3,095,340 pts / 8071 players Sanders - 2,311,927 pts / 6785 players Klobuchar - 1,164,516 pts / 2132 players Biden - 535,226 pts / 1744 players Bloomburg - 142,095 pts / 432 players Gabbard - 81,339 pts / 472 players Steyer - 72,096 pts / 245 players Bennett - 60,445 pts / 125 players Patrick - 24,487 pts / 97 players Delaney - 16,637 pts / 51 players Anyway, I thought it was interesting to see Yang being the random frontrunner the whole time (not Warren or Sanders or Biden). But of course, it’s not random. Apps are where Yang supporters are at. ---
**Author:** ![dalej42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/67e7ee/32.png) [@dalej42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dalej42)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2020, 10:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-support-intensity-vs-real-world-support/837975/31 "2020-01-31T22:41:35Z")
Social media and narrowcasting has definitely made our bubbles worse and it can greatly amplify or diminish the perceived support of a candidate. I’ve mentioned that no one in my bubble supports Biden yet he constantly polls strongly. Those polls aren’t fake, they just remind me that my bubble and social circle are very different than those across the USA. I have to remind myself that on a given day, the only people I interact with that don’t have a college degree are the doorman at my apartment building, the maintenance and cleaning staff, Uber drivers, and maybe bartenders or servers. At my last job, there were only a few without degrees and they started running tickets on the floor of the CBOT to learn the financial markets the day after they graduated high school. ---
**Author:** ![Boycott](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boycott/32/6741_2.png) [@Boycott](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boycott)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2020, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-support-intensity-vs-real-world-support/837975/32 "2020-04-18T01:08:33Z")
Brutal [![](https://i.imgur.com/wLRhrcT.jpg) ](https://i.imgur.com/wLRhrcT.jpg) ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2020, 2:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-support-intensity-vs-real-world-support/837975/33 "2020-04-18T02:49:08Z")
And of course Biden came back and smashed all the internet favorites in the Super Tuesday primaries because while their supporters could be very loud online they couldn’t bring themselves to actually vote. The real world always wins a contest involving reality. ---
**Author:** ![Bijou\_Drains](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bijou_drains/32/2814_2.png) [@Bijou\_Drains](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bijou_Drains)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2020, 1:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-support-intensity-vs-real-world-support/837975/34 "2020-04-18T13:00:58Z")
Ron Paul had a lot of fans online and he had way less votes. ---
**Author:** ![Jonathan\_Chance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jonathan_chance/32/701_2.png) [@Jonathan\_Chance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jonathan_Chance)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2020, 1:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-support-intensity-vs-real-world-support/837975/35 "2020-04-18T13:06:55Z")
Yeah, I read somewhere recently that Twitter is just terrible for its predictive value. Maybe at 538? Something like only 20% or a bit less of Twitter accounts represent people instead of causes or corporations and of that 20% less than 10% post more than once per month. So when you’re hearing a newsie talking about ‘Twitter users say’ or ‘Twitter trends’ what you’re hearing is ‘An unrepresentative sample of less than 2% of Americans believe…’ Using Social Media as any form of marketing/propagandizing is only useful is something gets picked up and shared in more mainstream, broadly viewed media. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-support-intensity-vs-real-world-support/837975.md?page=1)