The New York Times’ “Moderation Advantage” Is a Statistical Illusion (data4democracy.substack.com)

submitted 23 hours ago by psychothumbs@lemmy.world to c/politics@lemmy.world

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[-] TheFogan@programming.dev 21 points 22 hours ago

IMO it's so fricking obvious.

Moderation advantage works, in a world where most people are happy with the way things are. The problem is these elites pushing it are either in a bubble where everyone they know is doing well... or they are outright lying because they are also doing well, and only care about things not changing for them.

Reality is, 90% of the country knows, things aren't fucking working as they are. They are struggling for the bare minimum needed to survive, they know something is wrong, and needs to be massively changed.

When you know everything is completely broken, and one candidate is saying "things are almost perfect, lets keep this amazing country headed the way it is", and the other is saying "everything is wrong, I'll make major changes".

Analogy I use is, the titanic is headed for an iceberg. Passengers see it and are begining to sweat.

Now we have 2 captains, one that says "everythings great, we just stay as where we are, there's no reason to worry". Captain 2 says "That iceberg up ahead is going to destroy us... we need to pick up a ton of speed and ram it with enough force that it breaks".

It's a bad idea... but at least it's not ignoring the problem. So with only those 2 options, the second sounds less crazy. The solution doesn't comport with reality, but aknowledging that there is a real problem, is a huge advantage to someone undermining it and telling you "no really look everything is great".

[-] Credibly_Human@lemmy.world 9 points 22 hours ago

I think it's more like, from a corrupt rich politicians perspective, no matter what they run as, their goals are most often aligned with Conservatives.

Their backers want lower taxes and more handouts, and so the most they're willing to go is "moderate".

Then, the people are forced to pick between the "moderate" and the fucks the country up but "at least is racist" option, and somehow many pick the latter.

[-] samus12345@sh.itjust.works 3 points 17 hours ago

Reminds me of my dad saying "Elections are won in the center" back when Bernie was running.

[-] frezik 2 points 20 hours ago

This is a good example of 1) it's easy to fool yourself with statistics, and 2) the solution is more mathematical nuance, not less.

this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2025

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