> There is a lot of "Don't believe that Republican voters are stupid" in the comments, but why is that true?

I’m taking a shot in the dark here but I’m guessing they voted R themselves, we can all portray ourselves to be objective in comments when we really aren’t. This happens a lot on social media, especially the faux-smart part.

I find it hard to believe that the majority of ~70,000,000 people are that stupid and/or mislead, the only other option is that the majority actually want what is now coming and I do not feel obliged to refrain from passing judgement on that. My feelings on brexit, which far more directly affects myself, are similar.

People who were naive enough to be misled do undoubtably exist (I know a couple of otherwise intelligent people who massively regret the brexit thing) but I don't think they are the majority.

Brexit was a special case of stupid. There should never have been a referendum with such a stupid question, devoid of any context or potential impact.

Democracy only works when voters are informed.

I suppose your definition of stupidity doesn't fit their definition of stupidity

Mostly because "they're stupid" is a lazy argument that ignores why you think they're stupid. You can say "Well, they voted against their best economic interests," assuming they're all net recipients of government cash, but they say they don't want to be, and they want to dismantle executive departments they perceive as wasteful. You can say "They're violent," but Trump campaigned on being the peace-negotiator who didn't start any wars, and Harris had no real response to that. You can say "He hates women," but there are apparently enough women who are either pro-life or didn't see abortion as the main campaign issue. Harris's commercials said "We want change," but she's the incumbent! If change didn't happen by now, why would it four years from now?

I think there's something to be said about the value of a calculated protest vote.

For young men, who doesn't feel that the Democrats are offering them a world view where they are valued at all, why should they vote Democrat? Maybe at some level they realize that Trumps policies are worse for them in some ways than Harris'. But when Harris loses despite Trump being such an awful candidate it sends a very powerful message to the Democrats: you can't just keep ignoring a huge portion of the population and make them feel like they're not valued in society.

People put self-worth above almost anything else except self-preservation.

Are you really going on and calling people that have different opinions stupid with that word salad?

My point precisely. We seem to forget Churchill's famous dictum that "no one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time".

I am for democracy because everything else is worse, but that doesn't mean I need to delude myself that "the majority is always" right or some nonsense like that. Yet the latter seems to be an increasingly common talking point, I've noticed.

Because any choice in a two party system is stupid to some degree, for most people. Most people’s beliefs don’t all line up exactly with one political party or the other. So every election is a compromise: which of your values must you prioritize? A whole lot of Americans aren’t doing well economically, they haven’t been doing well for decades, and under Biden they saw everything get more expensive. So they don’t like either side, and if you can convince them to vote, it’s only going to be for change. Kamala didn’t portray any change from Biden, so she lost.

70% of Republicans think Trump was the fair winner of the 2020 election. They are just collectively massively misinformed.

Well, half of the population is more stupid than the other half (not saying republicans are, just saying that yeah, hackernews is definitely a subset not representative of the total population)

I think calling it mere stupidity is a little too reductive. There are genuine grievances among his supporters, such as rising inequality, loss of opportunities/jobs and an economic system which is not working out for them. But expecting a narcissistic misogynistic racist billionaire rapist to actually help them is…the definition of stupidity.