🧩 BND Motif Index · M914
Hold your nose
Voters are told to back their side's candidate however bad, because the other side is worse, and those who won't are blamed for what follows: hold your nose and vote.
- 17claims filed under it
- 2left shows it came up on
- 8right shows it came up on
- 8claims retold online
⚠️ A story people tell, not a claim that it's true.
A motif is the shape of a story as its tellers tell it, named the way a folklorist names a tale type, so the same story told about other people, by the other side or in another year lands in the same place. Some of the claims below are true, many are false. Arguing against a story is often a story of its own, its answer (Voter fraud is answered by Voter suppression, Lawfare by No one is above the law), and we file it there; where no answer has a motif yet, the arguments against a story sit with its tellings.
🪜 Its family
what it rests on, what rests on it, and the motifs that answer it
↔️ answers and mirrors:
- 🧩 Earn my vote counter pair
- 🧩 The lesser evil is still evil counter: the answer to hold your nose
🔗 goes with: 🧩 The perfect is the enemy of the good
🎙️ Who it came up with
the shows we follow where its claims came up (2 left-leaning, 0 center, 8 right-leaning so far), colored by the show's lean; the bar is how many of its claims each one heard
- 🐘 The Dan Bongino Show 4 claims
- 🐘 Clay Travis & Buck Sexton 1 claim
- 🐘 Fox News Rundown 1 claim
- 🫏 Pod Save America 1 claim
- 🐘 The Benny Show 1 claim
- 🫏 The Bulwark Podcast 1 claim
- 🐘 The Jesse Kelly Show 1 claim
- 🐘 The Mark Levin Show 1 claim
- 🐘 The Megyn Kelly Show 1 claim
- 🐘 The Michael Berry Show 1 claim
- left-leaning
- right-leaning
"Came up on" means one of its claims was heard on the show: told, reported or argued against. We don't yet mark which. Show leans are our own grouping of the shows we transcribe.
📰 In the news
the stories its claims were told about, the most told first (matched by our tools, so a link can be wrong)
- 📰 Republicans face internal conflict after midterm losses 2026-11-02 to 2026-11-06
🗣️ In so many words
the words that carry it
💬 the tellers' own words: “A Christian is asking whose policies are most likely to slow societal decay.” “a lot of Christians just end up not voting because they see flawed candidates like we have now” “a vote is not a valentine” “But not voting at all you will for sure give them a win” “Eby's awful & the cons are worse.” “for however much this guy sucks” “I think if you're helping the worst of two people take power, you should feel shame.” “I vote for the GOP because we Americans are sadly presented with two options.” “I would rather have a Democratic representative working on it than a Republican one bc they actively hate you.” “I'm just not going to vote for Paxton this time. That is a vote for Talarico.” “I'm not the one supporting fascism. I actually vote.” “it is a binary system... you have to choose the lesser of two evils... I knew we'd be in far worse shape if Kamala Harris won.”
🧶 Its claims
what's been told in this shape, in our words, by who told it: newest first in each; a claim's dots are the shows it came up on, in their lean's color (point at them for their names)
Told on the left 1
claims heard on left-leaning shows, and no right-leaning one
- 2026-10-18 “Disaffected Republicans may suck it up and vote Republican to keep the Senate, or prefer a one-term Democrat to a senator they didn't choose.” 1
Told on the right 7
claims heard on right-leaning shows, and no left-leaning one
- 2026-11-04 “Democrats win midterms because their voters turn out to keep Republicans out however bad their own side, and because whoever holds power gets shellacked.” 1
- 2026-11-02 “The MAGA base remains overwhelmingly committed to the Republican Party.” 2
- 2026-11-01 “A vote is not a valentine or a sacrament: Christians shouldn't vote on looks, nor refuse flawed candidates, but back whoever slows decay.” 1
- 2026-11-01 “Democrats are running the worst slate of candidates ever seen, so even a flawed Republican is the better vote.” 1
- 2026-11-01 “The country would be in a much worse state if Kamala Harris were in office.” 2
- 2026-10-27 “Christians should vote for candidates whose policies slow societal decay rather than seeking flawless candidates.” 2
- 2026-10-22 “Voters should choose the GOP over Democrats because the GOP is the lesser of two evils.” 1
Told on both sides 1
claims heard on left- and right-leaning shows alike
- 2026-10-29 “Republicans who refuse to vote for Paxton are effectively voting for Talarico.” 2
Retold online 8
claims many people posted in their own words
- 2026-11-04 “Not voting straight-ticket Democratic, as Josh Turek is said to have done, helps the worst people into power; Iowans should still back Turek over Hinson.”
- 2026-10-25 “Not voting concedes the election: staying home or refusing the lesser evil hands the win to the bigger evil.”
- 2026-10-24 “Voters debate whether to support the BC NDP to prevent a Conservative victory or vote for the Greens based on environmental morals.”
- 2026-10-19 “Voters are being urged to vote NDP instead of Green to prevent a Conservative victory.”
- 2026-10-15 “Third-party and protest votes let the fascists win: protest votes created the second Trump administration, and not voting is a choice to support fascism.”
- 2026-10-12 “Democrats are betraying trans people by prioritizing political expediency and moderate voters over protecting trans rights.”
- 2026-10-10 “The Democratic Party isn't transphobic: Democrats in power protect trans rights, and any Democrat will treat trans people better than a Republican who hates them.”
- 2026-10-05 “Angela Paxton, Ken Paxton's estranged wife, is supporting her husband's Senate bid while avoiding mentioning him by name, casting the Republican ticket as a corrupt, unethical entity that subjugates women and denies them bodily autonomy.”
M914 · first seen 2026-10-12 · last 2026-11-04 · what this is · how the index works