Current Events > Nearly a year after Trump's election, both sides think they're losing

(+) Yeah! (+)

http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-political-divide-poll-20171024-story.html

Nearly a year after the election of a president who promised Americans would win so much they would grow tired of winning, a funny thing has happened in American politics both sides think theyre losing.

That lose-lose mood, which is on display daily on Capitol Hill, is strongly reinforced by a study of public opinion released Tuesday by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center. More than 6 in 10 Americans say they believe their side is losing more than its winning on the issues that matter most; only about 1 in 4 think their side is mostly winning.

That attitude might not be surprising from Democrats, who, with the election, lost control of all three branches of the federal government. More strikingly, Republicans, too, think theyre getting the short end of the stick.

The Pew study is the latest in a series the research group has done for the past three decades using peoples answers to a battery of questions to group them into clusters according to political views. This years study produced eight such political groupings four mostly Republican and four mostly Democratic plus a ninth category of about 8% of the public who are primarily bystanders to Americas political debate.

Of the eight groups who do have opinions about politics, none has a majority who think their side is winning; only one has even a plurality who feel that way.

Among Democrats, that sense of loss undergirds the rage many feel as they see policies adopted under President Obama or previous presidents rolled back under President Trump.

On the GOP side, the belief that their side is losing, despite holding a majority in both houses of Congress, fuels conservative challenges to Republican incumbents and efforts to overthrow party leaders.

In addition to the question about winning, the pessimistic view jumps out from a question about whether life for the next generation of Americans will be better or worse than life today. Overall, 48% of those surveyed said worse, compared with 29% who said life would be better, continuing a downbeat view of Americas future that has dominated U.S. public opinion for more than a decade.

The two largest groups in Pews political typology core conservatives and solid liberals have fairly similar levels of pessimism about the next generations prospects, albeit for different reasons. In both groups, only about 3 in 10 feel the next generation will have better lives. Just over half the solid liberals and slightly less than half the core conservatives feel life will be worse.

This is a really interesting article about political perception, and it perhaps explain why there seems to be rising radicalism on both sides.
---

A rare case of both sides being right. We are all losing here.
---

TommyG663513 posted...

A rare case of both sides being right. We are all losing here.

---

Both sides know they are unfit for running a country, but they keep doubling down on it.

When Trump wins, America loses. I predicted this over a year ago.
---

how about we increase wages so that people don't have to live pay-check-to-paycheck and with relative comfort so that they don't have to feel defensive and victimized when someone tries to force change
---

I've been rooting for both sides to lose for years. Their only purpose is to ensure we stay divided against eachother.
---

You shouldn't have voted for trump tbh
---

inb4 someone insults TC
---

V-E-G-Y- posted...

You shouldn't have voted for trump tbh

He voted for Hillary and will chastise liberals for not voting for her, yet he also says she is terrible and would have been every bit as unpopular as Trump.
---

A politician's only true goal is to get re-elected. Trump is just fucking that up for everyone - likely also himself.

fire810 posted...

how about we increase wages so that people don't have to live pay-check-to-paycheck and with relative comfort so that they don't have to feel defensive and victimized when someone tries to force change

Nah, gotta keep the proles stressed out, distracted and easier to divide.

Unless you are a rich straight white male, you are losing.

makes sense, they're polling voters

voters have been losing for a long time.

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download;jsessionid=37EDA24D1D5DA87AEB950CEFE63883FF?doi=10.1.1.668.8647&rep=rep1&type=pdf
---

Darkman124 posted...

makes sense, they're polling voters

We've got two parties that are roughly 90% identical, with someone in charge who's completely unpredictable about roughly 90% of that 20% margin, and occasionally dogpiling some idea neither party ever wanted.

Nobody knows what the hell is going on, and uncertainty is a scary thing.

Questionmarktarius posted...

We've got two parties that are roughly 90% identical

no, we do not
---