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this post was submitted on 21 Jan 2024
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Voters don't reward doing the right thing at the wrong time.
Most Americans support progressive policies: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/27/majority-of-americans-support-progressive-policies-such-as-paid-maternity-leave-free-college.html
Who is defining the "wrong time" here?
On top of the answer you have already received (people forget by the time election rolls around), I'll be extra pessimistic and say that majority of Americans publicly support progressive policies, but may in private and in the ballot box lean more conservative. If you know you sound like a monster, you might say the nice things in public, but then when not accountable for their image in the ballot box... well...
You might have a point if the poll was asking people about race or any other sensitive topic, but people will not dress up their opinions if they don't think they'll get attacked for them. Nobody has their job threatened if they advocate for private health insurance companies.
Sure, not all progressive policies have this phenomenon, but for some, even in a relatively private but not actually private or anonymous context being asked about some policies may elicit a different reaction.
All of the cited policies in that article has a counterpoint that may drive different anonymous private behavior.
They will mean either taxes go up or companies that you buy from may have to spend more money. So it's incredibly selfish to declare that people shouldn't have a livable wage, shouldn't have access to workable income when accommodating a newborn, shouldn't have access to higher education. However, in the ballot box someone might be very selfish "I make more than minimum wage, so I don't care, but I do care that it might raise prices, I am not about to have a kid, so happy to screw over those that are for the sake of the companies saving money, I have health insurance and so I don't care if someone else can't realistically have it/afford it".
So you're saying that in a poll, people would lie and say they want higher taxes but in private they want lower taxes? Why? Wanting lower taxes is, again, not something that would bring on attacks, there is no reason to lie about that. No one's name is being publicized in this poll either. You're making up all these odd scenarios to try to get an opposite answer to what is staring you in the face right there.
People argue against a livable wage all the time, though. They just say that those jobs "were never meant to be a career", that it's "supposed to be for kids earning extra spending cash", that "if people want to make good money they need to develop skills". They'll tell you that if we interfere in the "free market", it will wreck the economy, and we'll all be starving. They're thrilled to tell you how they, or their parents, made sure to be in a good financial position before having kids, and if people have kids who can't afford the costs including time off to be good parents, that's because those people are irresponsible. And on down the line. They'll shame you for "demanding free stuff", and walk away feeling smugly superior.
It's just fundamentally not how human psychology works to publicly acknowledge what you think is good, and then privately work against it. People who do the worst and most selfish things always have a justification for it.
Some people will happily express that sentiment.
Others might be more reserved...
At least that's the a way I can reconcile all these countless articles that repeatedly show that like 70-80% of people support key policies of the democrat platform, and yet the elections seem to break almost even between republican and democrat. Districting shenanigans and the electoral college can account for some oddities, but the senate keeps being roughly a tie and even the popular vote for president is much closer than all this data suggests it should be.
The Senate is affected by the OG of gerrymandering, giving an enormously greater weight to votes in less populous states.
Most people are not as informed as you. They aren't analyzing their views on specific issues and voting for the candidates most in alignment with that. They're voting based on single hot-button issues like abortion or gun control. They're voting based on the way they feel about a politician. They're scared of terminology made up to scare them, seeing the Democrats as representing "cultural Marxism" and "critical race theory". They are in an information bubble that builds a worldview which is complete, compelling, but incorrect, and their votes reflect that.
The election cycle.
It doesn't matter if people support it if they don't remember it well enough to come out to vote when it matters. You see this with Biden already, people completely missing the effort they have made for tons of work that people support.
Yet republican voters are far more dedicated to voting because the republican party makes bold promises and pushes to do them. Even if it's as stupid as a border wall, they'll make that promise and actually get funding for it and build at least part of it. Democrats, though, "it's not feasible", "it's not possible", "we can't do that", "it's not realistic". If democrats would show that they at least try, voters would try. No, forgiving a few billion in student loans here or there after letting the problem build up to 1.7 trillion dollars isn't enough effort. What if instead they said "we will eliminate student loan debt completely" and then work on it, instead of hitting up low-hanging fruit like enforcing existing student loan forgiveness programs that forgive after 10+ years of interest payments?