Wednesday, April 27, 2022

ENDURING FINDINGS IN POLITICAL SCIENCE RESEARCH: RELEVANCE TO ELECTIONS IN 2022 AND 2024

 Harry Targ

 


I was a political science teacher for over fifty years. As a person of the left, I confess, I regarded much of the “professional” literature in the field as either irrelevant to the day-to-day lives of most people, wrong in methods and substance, or manifestations of prevailing ideologies. I have begun to feel that my initial conclusions about the discipline were short-sighted.

Consequently, I have begun, with the help of friends, to review some of the literature on elections and voting behavior and various public opinion surveys. I have been drawn to reflect on several findings from the literature and polling data that may bear on electoral activism today. For example:

Generalizations About Party, Issues and Voting Behavior:

--The best predictor of voting behavior is the voter’s self-identified party preference (and most people “learn” their party preferences early in life).

--People who identify themselves as “independents” are less likely to vote.

--Issues usually do not matter for voters, However, in unusual times (such as the high inflation and unemployment in 1980 or enduring wars in 1968 or 2008) issues could have some impact on voting behavior.

--When issues matter economic ones are a primary motivator of voters.

--“The Politics of Resentment” (a title to a book by Katherine J. Cramer on Wisconsin voters), particularly over the last decade, has impacted on changing voter preferences and/or non-voting.

Domestic Concerns of Voters in 2022:

--Inflation is the biggest concern today.

--Less than half of voters polled think that the unemployment rate is lower than it was in 2021.

--Less than half of voters know that wages are rising faster today that ten years ago.

--In other words, when potential voters raise concerns about economic issues they often are ill-informed about key economic performance indicators.

Many potential voters are not familiar with prevailing policies and those being discussed such as:

--The 1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure package including building roads and bridges, investing in rail and high speed internet and other public transportation.

--The $1.9 trillion COVID relief program

-- The Biden Proposal to Build Back Better; a large expenditure on social and economic needs such as child care, education, health care, labor, and the environment.

Party identification has not changed much since the 1990s and earlier

 


On non-voters

--As the percentage of nonvoters narrowed to the smallest proportion in 120 years, the 80 million Americans who didn’t vote in 2020 had deep-seated reasons for not casting ballots.

--The survey of 1,103 nonvoters and 740 voters conducted by Ipsos from Nov. 4 to Nov. 13 found that those who didn’t vote in the 2020 election are set in their belief that voting just doesn’t matter. Four out of five people polled in November, 2020  said they made the choice not to vote for that reason. 

 


On Domestic Programs and Military Spending:

--While the Build Back Better program is stalled in Congress, bipartisan support has emerged to authorize $3.4 billion in military aid to Ukraine since the February 24 Russian invasion of Ukraine.

--Since August, U.S. military aid to help Ukraine repel Russia has surpassed $3 billion under Biden. The aid has provided more than 1,400 Stinger anti-aircraft systems and some 5,500 Javelin missiles. Biden provided another $800M Wednesday to widen Ukraine's military capabilities for a drawn-out war (an April 15, 2022 USA Today story).

 

Conclusions that may be relevant to electoral activists today

1.The percentage of voters who are less committed to a party or can be moved are small.

2.A large pool (80 million) of those who need to be “reached” are non-voters.

3.For those who need to be reached: non-voters, ‘independents”, less committed Republicans should be approached. For many of these issues will matter.

4.When issues matter, they are usually economic.

5.Progressive Democrats should run on economic issues, publicize those aspects of Biden’s program that have been adopted, and identify who opposed the Build Back Better program.

6.Such an outreach might include opposing the transfer of scarce financial resources to the military and the Ukraine war.

7.In sum, candidates and organizers should campaign around economic issues. Racism and/or militarism may be barriers to the mobilization of voters to make progressive choices. In response economic issues should be stressed in conjunction with strong anti-racist and anti-militarist stances. And prospective voters should be reminded of how divisive these issues are in covering up grotesque economic injustices.







     

The Bookshelf

CHALLENGING LATE CAPITALISM by Harry R. Targ

Read Challenging Late Capitalism by Harry R. Targ.