The politics of fear

The quotations are from an article by Ezra Klein on Vox.com discussing a study done by Emory University political scientist Alan Abramowitz and his colleague Steven Webster.

"Politics isn't about who you love. It's about who you fear.

"That's the upshot of a draft paper by political scientists Alan Abramowitz and Steven Webster that attempts to untangle a mystery about modern American politics: how can there be record levels of party loyalty and straight-ticket voting at the same time that fewer Americans than ever before are identifying as Republicans and Democrats?

"To answer the question, Abramowitz and Webster test a host of political characteristics to see what best predicts party loyalty. The real key, they found, was fear of the other party: 'Regardless of the strength of their attachment to their own party, the more voters dislike the opposing party, the greater the probability that they will vote consistently for their own party’s candidates.'

"It's worth saying that a bit more clearly: you're more likely to vote Democratic if you hate Republicans than if you love Democrats, and vice versa. What parties need to do to keep you loyal isn't make you inspired. Rather, they need to make you scared. . . ."

[In other words]  "we like the party we belong to a bit less, but we hate the other party much more" . . . .  [I]n politics, many believe — often correctly — that if the wrong side wins, the consequences will be grievous.

"What's more, politicians from both parties have an incentive to keep it that way.   [A Pew survey] . . . shows that the more you hate the other party, the likelier you are to vote, and the likelier you are to donate money to candidates from your party."

Abramowitz and Webster then go on to discuss why the polarization and fear of the other party has increased so dramatically.   Their conclusion is that "the two parties are becoming more demographically dissimilar from each other, and that's making it easier for them to hate each other . . . . [and] as the parties become more distant demographically and culturally, they become more distant on policy, too."

What does this mean about future elections?   The authors predict that Republicans will continue to control both the House and the Senate because of the patterns of geographical distribution of their voters.   However, they also predict that Democrats will continue to hold the White House.   In part this is due to the electorate in presidential elections being younger and less white.   Here's the final word from Ezra Klein's article:

"[A]s American politics becomes more partisan, and more based on fear of the opposing party, individual candidates matter less. So for all the talk of how much less enthusiastic Democrats are for Hillary Clinton than they were for Barack Obama, it's not likely to matter all that much because Democrats are going to be extremely enthusiastic about beating the Republicans, and vice versa."

It's going to be an interesting next 18 months.

Ralph