The (Political) Theory of Everything
By: Peter Ramirez
Tags: Democrats, Republicans, Politics, Elections, Polarization

The (Political) Theory of Everything

Illustration by Peter Grabowski.

For years now, the media has been force feeding the all-too-familiar “Democrats in disarray” story. An uncompromising left flank tenuously married to a more moderate establishment. Who wins the future for the Democratic Party?

A few weeks ago, a curious finding emerged that surprised only those that believe in such imaginary civil wars.

The New York Times/Siena polled six battleground states and asked primary voters who had backed progressive Elizabeth Warren who they would support in the upcoming general election, Joe Biden or Donald Trump. A whopping 96% said they planned to vote for Joe Biden, and 0% — zero! — said they would vote for Trump.

“No Warren supporter in the survey — which was conducted in June — allowed for the possibility that there was even ‘some chance’ they would vote for Mr. Trump,” Nate Cohn, the poll’s author, said. (The Bernie-or-bust movement appears to have waned as well, as 87% of Bernie backers plan to vote for Biden, with only 4% defecting to Trump.)

Wouldn’t such a fractious, big tent party have a hard time coalescing? What forces explain the Democratic Party’s remarkable unification?

The answer isn’t polarization. Studies have shown that loyalty or positive feeling towards one’s own party isn’t spiking as much as people think. Between 1980 and 2012, for example, approval ratings for a voter’s own party has been relatively constant, hovering in the upper 60s and lower 70s.

Less than half of Republican voters identify as Republican because they “have a lot in common with other Republicans.” For Democrats, the number is 51% who identify with the party because of commonality.

Even in the last presidential election, only 56% of Republicans viewed a Trump presidency as a net good for the country, while 64% of Democrats viewed a Clinton presidency as a net good for the country. Data from the American National Election Studies (ANES) show that from 2000 to 2016, favorability in the Democratic Party fell from 59% to 49%, and with the Republican Party from 54% to 43%.

So much for partisan love.

The real answer is negative partisanship, or the idea that we vote not for our party but against the opposing party. It is not love for our party’s positions that draws us to the polls, but a mistrust or hatred of the opposing party. Hatred is a stronger motivator than love — at least politically.

In the 1990s, fewer than 20% of voters viewed the opposing party as “very unfavorable.” Now, 44% of Democrats and 45% of Republicans view the other party as very unfavorable, more than doubling in just two decades. If you are to include “unfavorable” in addition to “very unfavorable,” the number of those with negative views towards the opposing party balloons to over 80%.

Even more ominously, about a third of voters view the other political party as a “threat to the nation’s wellbeing,” with Republicans slightly more likely to subscribe to this belief.

To show how negative partisanship has impacted our politics, look no further than split ticket voting. Once a normal practice, split ticket voting is quickly fading into extinction. Just a few decades ago, about a quarter of voters split their ballot. An example would be voting for a Republican presidential nominee and a Democratic senate nominee. Currently, this voting pattern happens in less than 10% of ballots, the lowest level ever recorded.

Former Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill once famously said “all politics is local.” Perhaps then it was true. Maybe a voter would cast a ballot for a Democratic presidential nominee, but vote for a local Republican congressman due to a hyper-localized issue, such as ethanol policy or swan hunting.

Now, due to negative partisanship, American politics is increasingly becoming nationalized, according to political scientists Alan Abramowitz and Steven Webster. “The result has been a growing nationalization of elections below the presidential level: the outcomes of elections for U.S. Senate, U.S. House, and even state and local offices are now largely consistent with the outcome of the presidential election,” they note.

“In 2016, all 34 Senate elections and 400 out of 435 U.S. House elections were won by the party winning the presidential election in the state or district,” Abramowitz and Webster found.

Could negative partisanship explain everything in politics? Sanders and Warren supporters overwhelming back Biden, not necessarily out of mutual agreement on policy, but a shared hatred for Trump. This new theory also explains why there were few Republican defectors in the 2016 presidential election, and why any discussion on whether Trump will lose his base is moot. As long as Republicans hate Democrats, they’ll excuse the president’s questionable antics. What’s the alternative — voting for the enemy?

Negative partisanship explains why there’s so little ticket-splitting these days, as political scientists Shanto Iyengar and Masha Krupenkin assert that “it is out-group animus rather than in-group favoritism that drives political behavior.” Negative partisanship explains why approval ratings for presidents almost never exceed 60% or dip below 40% anymore, either. If half the country hates the president, and the other half hates the haters, where’s the wiggle room?

This new theory also explains why political discourse has gotten so toxic, and why the political stakes have never been higher. The percentage of Democratic voters who are angry at Trump “most of the time” or “just about always” is 73%, up from 33% towards Mitt Romney in 2012. Two thirds of Republican voters were consistently angry with Hillary Clinton, up from 43% towards Obama.

Next time a seemingly illogical political issue crops up, ask yourself — “does this solely exist because we hate the other side?”

The answer may surprise you.