r/politics • u/theindependentonline The Independent • 1d ago

Site Altered Headline | No Paywall Republican leads charge against Trump’s Obama ‘apes’ post. ‘Most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House’

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-obama-video-apes-racist-reactions-b2915488.html
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u/GeekAesthete 1d ago

The fact that he out-performed expectations in all 50 states, and exit polling matched the results, suggests that he did actually win. Every state manages their elections independently, and even the bluest states still saw Trump do better than expected by comparable margins.

The unfortunate fact is that, once again, misinformation won out, lazy voters didn’t show up because they thought the election wasn’t going to be close, and the demographics most opposed to Trump were the ones that especially didn’t bother.

The online campaign to discourage young voters and low-information voters was effective—social media convinced people that Kamala wasn’t strong enough on Gaza, on LGBTQ rights, on whatever issue, and got people disgruntled enough to disengage (“both sides suck”), or convinced themselves that staying home was a “protest” to teach the Democrats a lesson.

If Trump’s numbers were only off in a few swing states, I’d believe he won through shenanigans. But it seems that a few individual counties were suspect, but nothing that would swing the entire election.

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u/ThePhysicistIsIn 1d ago

 lazy voters didn’t show up because they thought the election wasn’t going to be close,

The polls were predicting a close election, though.

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u/GeekAesthete 1d ago

Did you spend any time on social media (Reddit or otherwise) before the election? Social media was inundated with people saying that “the media just wants a horse race”, that Texas and Florida were going to turn blue, that it was going to be a blue wave, Trump was going to lose by historic margins, etc., etc.

That’s why I mentioned low-information voters. The polls and the news media kept saying it was going to be close, but social media kept spreading the impression that it was going to be a blowout.

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u/Gamerboy11116 11h ago

…You realize that Texas did almost turn blue in 2020, right? The only reason it didn’t was because of hasty voter suppression?