What the fuck just happened? First, the near-miss on Scottish independence, then the 2015 general election, Jeremy Corbyn’s election as Labour leader, Brexit, Corbyn’s re-election and now Donald Trump’s victory. Well, I’ve been working through a theory for a while now. I suspect some of you have been doing the same too. But if you just baulked at my use of the word ‘fuck’ in my opening sentence consider yourself part of my theory. What do I mean? Let me explain. …
I believe all of the above campaigns were successful because they employed emotional messaging aimed at particular personality types. In effect they were much less about what people are (demographics, data) and more about what they feel (anger, disillusion, etc). The latter are at least, if not more, important influencers in determining how people vote in my opinion. So it is puzzling to me that our politics continues to analyse data and less how voters represented in the data think or feel. CONT.
Ian Warren, Election Data