{"id":1338,"date":"2008-10-17T16:01:31","date_gmt":"2008-10-17T21:01:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=1338"},"modified":"2008-10-18T09:24:15","modified_gmt":"2008-10-18T14:24:15","slug":"talking-to-your-own-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2008\/10\/talking-to-your-own-people\/","title":{"rendered":"Talking to Your Own People"},"content":{"rendered":"

The best part about politics, and particularly presidential elections, is that each news story or political ad\u00a0 demonstrates the well-known negotiation theory of confirming evidence.\u00a0 In other words, we only believe data that confirms what we already think.\u00a0 And, watching the debate last night or listening to the political commentary afterwards probably confirmed for you what you already thought about the candidates.\u00a0 And, this\u00a0phenomenon doesn\u2019t really help us or the candidates.\u00a0<\/p>\n

First, as to the candidates, if you only go to political rallies where everyone already supports you, you might be forgiven for thinking that what you are saying is persuasive.\u00a0 So . . . the\u00a0allegations that Obama \u201cpals around with terrorists\u201d seemed to be really popular last week at rallies\u00a0until the polls come out showing that most voters think that McCain is running a more negative campaign and that\u00a0the attacks aren\u2019t\u00a0persuasive.\u00a0\u00a0 (It also doesn\u2019t help\u00a0when the rhetoric goes so far that McCain needs to correct his own constituents.)\u00a0(See this\u00a0hilarious clip\u00a0<\/a>from Lewis Black on negative advertising.)<\/p>\n

Second,\u00a0the echo chamber phenomenon doesn\u2019t help us\u00a0either learn about the candidates or\u00a0what the rest of the population is thinking.\u00a0\u00a0For example,\u00a0after last week\u2019s debate, 86% of Fox viewers (who phoned or texted their opinions)\u00a0thought that McCain won the debate.\u00a0 My guess is that a poll of\u00a0Daily Show\u00a0<\/em>viewers might skew equally strongly\u00a0in the other direction.\u00a0\u00a0Polls conducted of random samples of voters had McCain losing that debate but by a closer margin.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

This phenomenon is one of the reasons that watching the debates on CNN with the \u201cundecided\u201d voters\u2019\u00a0opinions scrolling\u00a0at the bottom of the screen is addicting.\u00a0 I am really curious to see what those who are uncommitted think (and, at the same time, wondering who in the world these people are\u2013See John Oliver\u2019s<\/a>\u00a0analysis on this)<\/p>\n

My guess is, however, that the presidential debates are the last opportunity for voters across the spectrum to hear from candidates without a filter.\u00a0 Now that the\u00a0debates are over, the candidates and their supporters can safely return to only talking to people who already support them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Cross-posted at Indisputably<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The best part about politics, and particularly presidential elections, is that each news story or political ad\u00a0 demonstrates the well-known negotiation theory of confirming evidence.\u00a0 In other words, we only believe data that confirms what we already think.\u00a0 And, watching the debate last night or listening to the political commentary afterwards probably confirmed for you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political-processes-rhetoric","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1338\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}