The Unpleasantness of Midterm Elections

Following my post this morning about the impact (or lack thereof) that smugness and complacency can have on an election, I’ve been fortunate to enjoy an informative back-and-forth with some friends who study the American political process with a great deal of rigor.

I have learned the error of my ways and will no longer suggest that either the Left or the Right should concern itself with messaging or with getting people out to vote. Here’s a summary of what I learned today:

Midterm elections are always forgone conclusions because it’s all about the economy (which the voters mostly don’t understand). If I sense that the economy is bad (whether because of personal circumstances or looking at the newspaper or whatever), then I will vote against the people in office because I presume they have something to do with the state of the economy and it doesn’t matter at all to me that I have no idea if this is correct. If I sense that the economy is good, then I’ll probably keep things as they are because I have no reason to do anything.

And I matter, even though I don’t know anything and the only salient variable for my vote is an economy whose relationship to politics I don’t understand, because there’s so much ideological polarization that the middle group (who don’t have a commitment one way or the other) tend to dominate since the two poles largely cancel one another out.

Basically, a good deal of time and effort is spent in trying to convince people to do something even though those people can’t be convinced because the only thing that matters is their perception of an economy they don’t understand. Why bother with that effort? No real reason.

This summary makes me very sad.

I’m sad because the results of midterm elections matter: maybe we’ll have governmental gridlock; maybe we’ll now adopt policies that won’t fix the economy; maybe we’ll adopt policies different from and worse than the ones we would have adopted if the election had gone differently; and maybe the economy will continue its slow improvement and the wrong politicians will receive the credit.

With these possible stakes, it’s very depressing to learn that there’s seemingly no way to actually make a difference with regard to how miderm election results will shake out.

Of course, the picture I’ve painted here isn’t very nuanced. But, as far as I can tell, it’s a pretty fair look at midterm elections from the perspective of the political scientists who study them.

Happily, my friend Michael Ensley worked with me on all of this and provided the following:

Now let me try to pull you back from complete disenchantment. Elections can change the type of policies that are adopted and discussed (even the losing candidates issues can become part of agenda — Tracy Sulkin at U Illinois shows this).

One significant problem that you have put your finger on is voter myopia. They are too focused on recent events with economy. Larry Bartels in his book Unequal Democracy has an apt analysis of this with regard to presidential elections. He argues that voters have been electing Republican Presidents based on short term benefits (income growth is high in the year leading up to election) but overall voters do better under Democratic Presidents. And this is true ACROSS THE INCOME DISTRIBUTION: Poor, Middle Class, and Wealthy people have done better under Dem Pres than Rep Pres overall.

But overall, the truth is that people aren’t well informed. They follow simple cues. Some scholars say that this works well. Others say this naivete is a big problem. I am not ready to issue a verdict.

I’m not at all sure I’m coming back from the brink of complete disenchantment after this, I must say. I’d need a lot more than what Ensley provides here.

It’s like Socrates said, “how grandly does she trample all these fine notions of ours under her feet, never giving a thought to the pursuits which make a statesman, and promoting to honor any one who professes to be the people’s friend.”

Democracy, ladies and gentlemen!