A mathematician analyzes the election

Vi Hart, like most other homo sapiens, has a theory about the election, which she features in her latest video.

We are divided in the United States, of course, but it’s mostly by age, the Internet math star calculates.

“But if it’s really that younger people are looking towards the future while older people want to go back to how things were, that’s a different conversation. Trump didn’t just lose the popular vote, he lost the younger half of America,” she says in her latest video.

Older voters didn’t grow up with the idea of climate change, it’s not about liberals being smart and Republicans being science deniers, the numbers tell me it’s about age.

Statistics tell us Trump voters are uneducated but remember education levels have increased with time and that’s a good thing, and also maybe we have some work to do in bringing education innovation to people who aren’t in school, and don’t come into contact much with more recently educated people.

Older voters didn’t grow up with the internet. The numbers show that older you get the more time you spend watching television, that’s where information comes from for a lot of people, and legacy media, in their efforts to be fair to the other side and get ratings from their audience are completely missing how pro-Trump they sound to younger demographics, whether they—or Trump—think they’re being pro-Trump or not.

Maybe when young people rejected old media and went to the internet, we didn’t think through all the side-effects.

Maybe we can spend some time teaching older folks about climate change and how to sort out hoaxes on the internet, and they can spend some time teaching younger folks about the importance of turning out to vote and how to use telephones to call representatives.

“Be kind to those who truly define themselves as Americans first, those who would whole-heartedly welcome you into the country they would give their life for,” she says. “That is a kind of nationalism to be respected, and I think we can find a way to come together in support of America’s new culture while still honoring those who got us here.”

(h/t: Brad Althoff)