Is there a reason why many of these left/right progressive/reactionary votes are so close to 50:50? This election, the US presidential election, the Brexit vote. It seems really peculiar.
Possible reasons I could think about:
* People get angry on some kind of 1-1 basis. If there's a certain amount of anger on one side that generates a reaction on the other side, which generates a reaction on the first side and so on.
* We're at a time in history where views are changing and we just happen to be in a period at a 50:50 cross-over.
* Selection bias: We only pay attention to close run-offs and ignore the normal ones.
Parties adjust policies/messaging in response to polling, so balancing the tradeoffs ends up close to the cutoff? That doesn't really work for brexit as much though.
If Brexit was extremely popular it wouldn’t be news or even interesting, it would just be obvious. Lots of things end up passing in a landslide but nobody cares.
Possible reasons I could think about:
* People get angry on some kind of 1-1 basis. If there's a certain amount of anger on one side that generates a reaction on the other side, which generates a reaction on the first side and so on.
* We're at a time in history where views are changing and we just happen to be in a period at a 50:50 cross-over.
* Selection bias: We only pay attention to close run-offs and ignore the normal ones.