Based Camp - September 24, 2025
The Statistical Divide In How We Perceive Life
Episode Stats
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Summary
In this episode, Simone and I discuss a recent study from NBC looking at the priorities of men and women voting for and against the Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris. We talk about why these priorities are so different, and why we should be worried.
Transcript
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Hello, Simone. I am excited to be here with you today. Today, we are going to be discussing
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a fascinating study that came out from NBC that was looking at what was important to men
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who voted for Trump versus Kamala Harris and women who voted for Trump versus Kamala Harris.
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And what you can see is people who vote for Kamala Harris are not going to play a big role
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in our country's future. They're basically deleting themselves from the population.
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Because while there had been differences in the past in fertility rates within these groups,
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it is exploding. So I want to talk about these preferences. I want to talk about why they're
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different. And to give you an idea of how different they are, men who voted for Trump when they were
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important for their definition of success, literally the top thing, the number one thing
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was having children. Women who voted for Harris, literally the last thing of importance to them
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was having children, which only 6% of women voted for Harris. Which, by the way, tied with being
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married and able to retire early. So financial stability is the other thing they don't care
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about. So thoughts on that number before we go further. Because a lot of the numbers that I've
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looked at before show Democrat and Republicans being like 78% to 100% different in terms of fertility
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rates. But this would suggest that it's dramatically higher than that for this next generation.
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Yeah, this doesn't look good. I'm used to seeing much more moderated results from surveys like
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these. You know, like, oh, they're meaningfully different, but this is violently different.
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It's because these two groups are becoming more violently different from each other.
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Absolutely. It is also sobering to me, however, just how low priority having children is for anyone.
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It's literally the top priority for men who voted for Trump.
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Yes. Except everyone else, it's not at the top.
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So let's talk about this. Let's talk about women who voted for Trump.
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It's right in the middle of the list of things presented. Although 26% still want to have
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children. But that's, Malcolm, that's 26%. That's a quarter.
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Yeah, it's only 26% of women who voted for Trump.
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And then keep in mind, so men, oh, men who voted for Trump who really value having kids. Sorry,
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34% value kids. That's a third, Malcolm. All right?
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Oh, they value with them. No, yeah, sure. Of the population polled, but this is...
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So women who voted for Trump, like, what did women who vote for Trump care about more than
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The top thing for them, and this was more important than them, than having kids was for
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men who voted for Trump, was financial independence.
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Mm-hmm. Yeah. And second is having a fulfilling job career, which is also...
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Fulfilling job career is number one for women who voted for Harris.
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No, no, no. It's also true for men who voted for Harris. So the funny thing about the women who voted
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for Trump who, you know, care about money and career, right, is the way that they framed it in
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terms of what they picked, was financial independence. And then for both the men and
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the women who voted for Harris, it wasn't that they wanted financial independence. It's that
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they wanted enough money to do the things they wanted and to have a fulfilling job or basically
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They wanted to have fun and have money, but they didn't care about independence.
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Fertility is inversely correlated to the extent to which you opt in to an atomized capitalist
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society where you buy everything you want. So if you opt in to...
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To a community-based society or a family-based society where the vast majority of the goods
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and services that you value and enjoy and pastimes involve... Or we'll say endogenous.
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They come from within your family or community unit. You're going to have kids. But the more
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you lean into, I will buy every single thing individually. I'm going to buy all my food.
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I'm not going to make it home. I'm not going to get it from my family. I'm going to buy
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all my entertainment. It's not going to come from within my home or from my kids or from
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my spouse. I'm going to pay for stuff that makes me entertained. That will make you less
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and less fertile. And I think that's why the focus is on getting this job and career because
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they're opting into the very dynamic that caused the beginning of demographic collapse
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to begin with, which was industrialization, which was leaving the home, going out and working,
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and trading money for anything that you want instead of getting it from within your own
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Yeah. I think that's right. To go over what men who voted for... Well, actually, let's look
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at what women who voted for Harris, what do they actually value? Because I think that helps
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us key into this. And we'll go through the chart and we'll contrast it with some of the others.
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Number one, and this was true for men who voted for Harris. So they're actually pretty aligned,
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the men and women who vote for Harris. Their top three are the same.
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Yeah. So for women, number one, fulfilling job career. Number two, having money to do things you
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want. That's the same for men. But then women's number three priority, and God help them, because
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it's never going to happen, is having emotional stability.
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But what's funnier is if you look at the charts, and we often go over this on our show, is that there
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is no demographic that is more emotionally unstable than progressive women.
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Well, I'll point out that emotional stability is near or at the bottom of the list for men and
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women who voted for Trump. And I think this just goes to show how mental health, and specifically
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poor mental health, it's downstream of obsessing about mental health.
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Well, yeah. And it's pervasive within progressive culture, and they're aware of it. And they're like,
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I wish I had this, and they don't. And I do think also that there's a big correlation
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between having poor mental health and not having a family and religion and strong, hard culture
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that gives you something more important to worry about than your stupid whims. Because we all have
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demons. We all have demons. There's no space for my demons, because we have kids, right?
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Yeah, it burns the selfishness out of you, is one of the other ones I'm saying.
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No, I completely agree with that. But I think this is something that we used to intuit as a
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society much more easily. A lot of progressives, they don't have conservative friends, they don't
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watch conservative influencers, so they are unaware of the, within conservative spaces,
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the significantly higher degree of emotional stability that's expected. But when we look
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into the past, even with recent models of conservatives, like, say, Ron Swanson.
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I've been developing the Swanson pyramid of greatness for years. It's a perfectly calibrated
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recipe for maximum personal achievement. Categories include capitalism, God's way of determining who
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is smart and who is poor. Property rights, fish for sport only, not for meat. Fish meat is practically
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a vegetable. Haircuts, there are three acceptable haircuts. High and tight, crew cut, buzz cut.
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All right. Ron Swanson may be incorrect about things in a conservative-like way, but he is
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nothing if not emotionally stable most of the time, other than when he's dealing with his
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exes. When he's dealing with ex-women, he becomes emotionally...
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No, he's logical in his attempt to resist, to resist them.
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But generally speaking, he is, like, when contrasted with the progressive-coded boss character who's,
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like, all into yoga and all into, like, eating healthy and is a vegan, he's constantly shown
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as being, like, the epitome of emotional stability.
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Because he knows what he's about, as he would say.
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And knowing what you're about, I think, is really the key to emotional stability.
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That and not living for your own whims, which is, you know, like having some higher
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objective function you're attempting to maximize above self-validation and personal pleasure.
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Well, and I think there's also something to the fact that Ron Swanson, in comparison to other
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more progressive-coded characters on the show Parks and Rec, wants things that are easily attainable.
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He wants independence, privacy, family, the government to fall apart.
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He wants to become increasingly less attainable as technology develops throughout the show.
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If you would like to go to Google Earth and type in your address.
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This is a flying robot I just shot out of the sky after it delivered a package to my house.
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Because it knows too much information about him.
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You know, he's increasingly annoyed that he can't have his, as many viewers of our show would want,
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But I would contrast that to the other characters in the show who want things that they don't,
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well, they don't know what they want, first and foremost.
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And they're pursuing them in all the wrong ways.
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And then you have, so the first ones, which I love because we talked about this,
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Like when I say that the urban monoculture is just about hedonism maxing,
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You know, the fulfilling job or career, when you hear that,
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that means a job that makes me feel good to do, right?
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And the having money to do the things that you want,
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contrast this with what men who voted for Trump want,
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which is what women who voted for Trump want the most,
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then having money to do the things that they want,
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then using talents and resources to help others.
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Finally, like second to last is being able to retire early
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with conservative men, which I think is interesting.
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I also think it's interesting that women who voted for Trump,
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the very last thing they wanted was to be able to retire early.
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So you see this across Trump voters is wanting to retire early
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And I think that you actually see this across the board
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but it's also pretty clear with men and women who voted for Harris.
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and we saw this when we went to that college campus
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that there is not going to be such a thing as retirement anymore.
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So it's just, it's one of those things of like,
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And I'm going to put it at the bottom of my list
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in terms of the things that they're looking for.
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It's only 20% seeing that as important to life success.
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to just obviously thinking I had to get married.
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I know you had your stuffed animals get married.
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whatever they find they're gonna put you in the bag
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do you remember the bug that was rolling up into a ball