I voted today for Elizabeth Warren in the primary here in Minnesota. As I left the building, someone else who voted recognized me from the precinct caucus. He asked me if I would tell him who I voted for. I told him and asked who he voted for. He replied that he voted for Biden, even though he liked the ideas of Warren and Sanders a bit better. He admitted he was worried about electability.
I can’t help but wonder how many other people feel this way. Is the electability argument keeping Warren from winning the nomination?
Today Tom Sullivan in the Hullabaloo blog posted this article about this very subject, and linked to another article; How Voters Psych Themselves Out and Choose the Wrong Candidate. This article discusses a phenomenon social scientists call “pluralistic ignorance”.
The pluralistic ignorance process goes like this: You feel a certain way. So do most other people. But you don’t realize other people feel the same way you do. You think it’s just the opposite. You behave based on your false beliefs about other people, rather than behaving in a way that is true to yourself.
It’s “pluralistic” because you are holding onto two sets of beliefs at once — your true beliefs and what you think other people believe. It is “ignorance,” because you are wrong about other people’s beliefs.
It would be tragic if the candidate who would be the best President loses because of fear that Trump could be reelected. This could be added to the long list of damage caused by Trump.
Off topic, I can’t help adding that we would be a lot better off without the Electoral College. If that was the case any of our candidates could beat Trump in the popular vote, and it would make it a lot easier for people to vote how they really feel about the candidates. If the writers of the Constitution had known about the result, they would never have put the Electoral College in.