We Are a Divided Nation
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/2016-election-day/analysis-rural-america-silent-majority-powered-trump-win-n681221
Using the concept of information cascades, one can hypothesize several reasons why so many pundits and polls predicted – incorrectly – that Hillary Clinton would become the first female president of the United States and why the silent majority only made their true voices heard in “the privacy of the curtain of the ballot box” (Whitaker) on the day of the election.
According to what we learned in lecture, people imitate the behaviors of others either because they think others have more information than they do or because they think they can obtain some type of direct benefit by following the crowd. It is likely, then, that many people chose to lie about who they were going to vote for prior to the election because they assumed others were more knowledgeable about the candidates and the candidates’ proposed policies than they were or because they knew that they can maintain the respect of the crowd, which was their direct benefit as of that moment, by following along. And because of how contrasting the two main candidates were, only one person in each social group was needed to start an information cascade. As such, like Marie Whitaker wrote in her article Editorial: Rural America and a Silent Majority Powered Trump to a Win, “those being polled are not always honest” (Whitaker), which makes sense because pollsters are ignoring their own information and beliefs to follow the crowd.
But when Election Day hit, people disregarded the information cascade they have always known because it no longer applied and no longer existed. The only information everyone had was the research he or she did themselves, possibly right before the election, and the only direct benefit everyone anticipated getting was the benefit of having one of the three candidates elected for president. It’s upsetting to realize, then, that everyone’s vote was completely based on his or her own true opinion, for the electing of a “sexist, misogynist, and racist” (Whitaker) businessman means the nation is more divided and more discriminating than we were ever meant to be.