I’ve been thinking about the 70 Million voting for Trump and one can sort of explain it using Ultimate Game- an economics experiment designed by Güth, Schmittberger and Schwarze in 1982. Basically you have 2 parties, one a proproser with $100 who can distribute amongst others as they want, and another- a responder who can accept or reject the offer. Clearly any acceptance of any offer will economically benefit the responder even if the offer is say $1, but they found responders overwhelming rejected offers they didn’t consider fair, even to their detriment. There are multiple explanations for this behaviour, but one is the self-control theory which argues that the responder is simply frustrated with the inequality of the offer and will cut off their own nose to spite the proposer’s face.
Voting for Hillary Clinton/ Biden in the US and the Remain campaign during the EU Referendum in the UK didn’t feel like solutions to society’s uneven split in opportunity and prosperity for many people. Voting either way in an election or referendum would change absolutely nothing for some people who don’t have much and don’t stand to gain anything, while other completely oblivious people continue to benefit from the EU or a Democrat government — so why not teach them a lesson?
