Surprised by the Surprise
The American media are reporting that many citizens are "in shock" or "surprised" by the result of the Presidential election. They had reported similar responses after the British "brexit" vote earlier this year.
How can people possibly be surprised? For brexit, it was a matter of stay in the E. U. or leave ("Should I stay or should I go now?"). For the Presidency, there were more candidates (at least three on the ballot, depending on one's state), but two were the most likely to be elected. In a case of one or the other, how can anyone be surprised that one of those choices was approved?
posted by Captain Chlorophyll @ 7:35 AM
1 Comments:
Right now, there are only two possibilities: either you will get hit on the head by a falling meteorite or you won't. Both are entirely possible, but I think you'd be more surprised by the second one. And poll-based predictions were putting the actual outcome of the election at fairly low odds. (Higher than the meteorite thing, admittedly. But fairly low.)
Plus, some of us mistakenly believed that people are actually, y'know, reasonable. Which, in retrospect, was dumb, but it did create a certain expectation.
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