Why do some "Why do (group) think that...?" questions do very well and others quietly collect close votes?

Question

• Why do Republicans prefer President Trump to President Pence? (+9/-3)
• Why do Republicans oppose the Voting Rights Advancement Act? (+20/-3)
• Why are right-wing politicians in the US typically pro-Israel? (+50/-3)
• Why do Republicans and others accept the propagandaic use of the term “Progressives”? (+44/-2)

are all well-received and well-answered, but my question Why did those in the recent enrollment surge in US Native American tribes (especially Navaho) not enroll until now? has three close votes for

Questions asking for the internal motivations of people, how specific individuals would behave in hypothetical situations or predictions for future events are off-topic, because answers would be based on speculation and their correctness could not be verified with sources available to the public

This does not apply obviously because I've asked "Why did...?" which is past tense and about something that actually happened and the close reason mentions "hypothetical" and "predictions"

Certainly there are going to be sources available about Native American enrollment in tribes, why they don't, what can be done to encourage them to do so. These may not be popular reading for those focusing on US palace intrigue, but that doesn't mean they don't exist.

I wrote there that:

I think the difference here is that the three close voters suspect (without research) that there are no citable, well articulated reasons for this and that not enrolling was for no particularly coherent or documented reason, so nobody should be allowed to post an answer. This is not a good reason to quickly close a question. Instead let's have a little faith in the resourcefulness of the community and see if it turns out that there is in fact a good answer. Thanks!

Is it possible that "I don't know so nobody could know" is happening here, or even "Native Americans probably don't act in rational and collective ways" is happening here?

Questions:

1. Why do some "Why don't (group) think that..." type questions do very well and others get neglected and closed? Do folks sometimes just close some because they are inherently less interesting, or because of some "I don't know so nobody else could know" rationalization is in effect?
2. What could be done to spice this up so that it looks at least a little more like the four highly popular questions I've cited above that to me look like they are just as eligible for the same close reason I've cited, yet escaped that with flying colors? What "secret sauce" is my question missing?

Answer 1

The difference is that in the questions that were well received, the group in question is a political party with an ideology, policy positions, and ample targeted polling. In your question, you’re asking about the motivations of individuals, which is the definition of the close reason.

Look at those 4 questions you used as examples: in 2-4, the group is Republican politicians and pundits. Only the first asks about individual Republicans and, while it perhaps should have been closed, opinions of partisans on the US President is one of the best polled topics in the world, so it’s a reasonable exception.

In your question, on the other hand, you’re asking about why individuals did or did not make a personal decision. There is nothing linking these people except having tenuous Native American heritage, and “people who were not associated with a tribe but then later did” is not a category included in polling. We could certainly speculate on why someone might do that and back it up with a few anecdotes, but that’s all it wild be: speculation.

Answer 2

Narcissism

The well received questions you cited are all broadly about the left-right divide in the United States. Questions about that provide those answering the opportunity to indulge in discussing their own political identity as well as the identity of people they don't agree with. That also creates a bandwagoning effect where those answering who don't agree with each other also start writing or commenting on answers in a very short period of time, creating a highly active question.

Your question doesn't have a partisan dimension to it as asked, so it doesn't allow people who would answer it an opportunity to say something about themselves and how smart they are compared to people they don't like.

Consider the following thought experiment

Your question could have been phrased as "How did the Biden administration increase the enrollment of Navajo Nation tribe members?"

This would be a use of the post hoc ergo propter hoc logical fallacy and presume some additional causality that you probably don't want to presume. But it would shift the apparent subject of the question away from the human beings affected by policy, to being about how Joe Biden affects the policy that affects those people.

Even though the internal motivations of people applying for the benefits would be just as impenetrable, the thinking and actions of the Biden administration would not be viewed as such, and would allow right-wingers the opportunity to say "Well, Joe Biden had nothing to do with it, the real reason is X" and for left wingers to say "Well, Joe Biden did Y, and that's why more people signed up", and we could also have plenty of opportunities for tedious commentary about all of our ideological hobby horses. We also wouldn't care at all about how we know nothing about people signing up for tribal membership; the presumption of action on the part of Joe Biden strips those people of agency and therefore their internal motivations are no longer a question, so are no longer the basis for closing the question.

Now let's take the experiment one step further

Even though our thought experiment above started from cynical observations about how users of Politics Stack Exchange react to partisan questions, it ended with a demonstration that the internal motivations of Navajo Nation members do not actually matter to the answer of the question. When we form the question as "what did Joe Biden do" we also implicitly added an assumption that it is possible for Joe Biden to do something to get prospective Navajo Nation members to change their behavior from what it otherwise would have been.

If we generalize that statement, we can rephrase it as "We assume it is possible to use public policy to get people to change their behavior."

The above is really very uncontroversial; it's the assumption that is the basis of almost everything government does. Yet the question still got closed.

It was wrong to close your question because doing so effectively turns the "internal motivation" rule into a ban on asking any questions related to public policy

We should back away from this interpretation of the rule because it basically makes the entire SE useless for asking any important question about politics.

Answer 3

Simply a matter of who sees those questions and where they see them. Not all users see those questions and some of them get spotted. If a question like that gets spotted and put into the close vote queue there is likely a wider audience that will see it and vote to close.

There have been plenty of examples of a question not getting spotted by those that would close it only to see them get closed shortly after they enter the close vote queue.