My understanding was that a sentence of the form:
I won't do X if Y happens
means something along the lines of
if Y happens I will not do X
Nigel Farage stated in a speech 'I wouldn't vote for Clinton if you paid me'. To my mind, this seems to be saying 'If you pay me, I will not vote for Clinton', but obviously he didn't mean that. What was the meaning he intended to convey?
Note: the full quote is
“I will say this: if I was an American citizen, I wouldn’t vote for Hillary Clinton if you paid me!”
Best Answer
The use of would and paid are examples of backshifts, which indicate that this is a hypothetical condition, not a real one. Furthermore, not if you paid me is a well-known idiom meaning under no circumstances.
The bit that makes the meaning clear is an implied even
What it now means is that under any and all circumstances, even if you were to offer me money to do it, I would not vote for Clinton.