I forget where I heard this take but it was describing trump’s first election. The broader electorate knew it would be chaotic, that was almost the point. Everyone can tell that the status quo is bad, that things are getting worse for most people. When the options are ‘more of the same that isn’t working’ and ‘throw a grenade at it and see what happens’ people chose the grenade. Low information voters don’t care about Gaza, millions of voters couldn’t even tell you what region it’s in.
All they knew is that inflation was making everything unaffordable and their pay certainly didn’t keep up. Did they correctly assign blame for the economic conditions? Of course not. But when your main basis for voting is just the general vibe and the vibe is bad then you either vote for the other guy or stay home. So yes, people do prefer crisis to stability when stability just means things continue to get worse at a steady pace.
I forget where I heard this take but it was describing trump’s first election. The broader electorate knew it would be chaotic, that was almost the point. Everyone can tell that the status quo is bad, that things are getting worse for most people. When the options are ‘more of the same that isn’t working’ and ‘throw a grenade at it and see what happens’ people chose the grenade. Low information voters don’t care about Gaza, millions of voters couldn’t even tell you what region it’s in.
All they knew is that inflation was making everything unaffordable and their pay certainly didn’t keep up. Did they correctly assign blame for the economic conditions? Of course not. But when your main basis for voting is just the general vibe and the vibe is bad then you either vote for the other guy or stay home. So yes, people do prefer crisis to stability when stability just means things continue to get worse at a steady pace.