the death of the landslide, the death of the swing voter, and their certain resurrections
Although the outcome was different in each of 2012, 2016, and 2020, in terms of which party won the White House, the popular vote split between the two major parties barely shifted, ranging between 51.11% and 52.27% for the Democrats. This three-election spread of 1.16% is the smallest spread since 1880-1888. The tiniest of shifts decided whether Hillary, Trump, or Biden spent the next four years in the White House.
More typical has been a shift of 8-10% across three elections, although we haven't seen a shift that large since the 20th Century.
The 20th Century saw frequent landslide elections, in which the President won by at least 10 points, and occasional wide swings in the electorate of over 20% across three elections. For example, Democrats took 61% of the vote in 1964, but only 38% of the vote in 1972 -- a gigantic shift in only eight years.
What happened to swing voters and landslides? Why are our elections so close now? Even as the amount of money openly poured into our elections has skyrocketed after Supreme Court decisions that banned limits on campaign spending. It seems all that cash is buying ever-smaller shifts among the electorate. Adjust campaign spending totals by how many swing voters are left, and only billionaires need donate cash anymore. The rest of us should spend our cash on popcorn instead.
Political scientists say that political identity and polarization have soared -- far more people strongly identify as Democrat or Republican; far fewer people split their tickets between the parties when they vote in national, state, and local elections; and the numbers show that far fewer people are swinging from one party to the other between elections.
This combination of tiny shifts and close elections is making election fraud sound like a winning tactic to a large chunk of Republicans who are obsessively frustrated with Trump's 2020 loss.
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The lesson of the 1880s is that this situation probably won't last. It may seem like a fact of life right now that Democrats and Republicans are evenly divided and that swing voters are extinct, but history shows that politics is more fluid & dynamic than solid & static. Somebody will come along who can figure out how to build a larger coalition within one party. It could follow a dramatic failure that one party gets blamed for, such as the Great Depression, or the Korean War, or 1970s Inflation. It could follow a one-time coalition breakthrough, such as LBJ's very temporary unification of liberal Northerners and conservative Southerners. Or a one-time coalition breakdown, such as when Republicans split in two in 1912 and allowed Democrats to take an Electoral College landslide with 42% of the multi-party popular vote.
People who don't study history, who don't put the present in a historical context, can develop a kind of tunnel vision that presumes political, economic, or social conditions will remain the way they have been in recent memory. For example, when low inflation dominated for many years in a row, people presumed inflation would always stay low. When peace dominated Europe for many years in a row, people presumed the continent would remain peaceful. We thought low mortgage rates were here to stay, we think high stock valuations are here to stay. Nobody expected a pandemic would come along and kill over one million Americans in two years. Who thought abortion would become illegal after 50 years of Roe v. Wade? Gay marriage for the first time in modern history! Legalizing marijuana?
A lot of what I do in my LJ is --> study history, look at the present, and speculate about what might come next. Sometimes I'm right, sometimes I'm wrong, even historical trends can swerve in new and unprecedented directions -- who would've guessed that interest rates would go negative across much of the world for the first time in human history? That made zero sense.
Has global crude oil production finally peaked? It has seemed to peak before, only to be (temporarily) rescued by technological innovations like fracking.
It is likely that US election results will begin to revert to the mean, that our subsequent elections will not be so darn close, that our voters will begin to swing wildly back and forth between parties, that new political identies will arise and old ones will crackup or fade. If you, personally, identify strongly with either the Democrats or the Republicans today, you may find yourself in a very different place 10 years from now.
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I was having a discussion with a friend about "identity", about how sometimes we discover a pattern within ourselves and decide to double down on that pattern, forming an "identity" -- but sometimes we discover a pattern within ourselves and decide to change that pattern, learning how to grow as an individual.
"I've always been attracted to men, I guess that means I'm gay" vs. "I've always been attracted to men, maybe I should try dating a woman"
Some places have criminalized getting the help of a therapist to change from gay to bisexual or straight -- so-called "conversion therapy" -- isn't that strange after centuries of criminalizing gay sex? Huh.
But it is possible to discover, after a while, that you've made your "identity" more important than your actual self. Whatever that identity may be. Perhaps you've identified as having PTSD, or being an introvert, or being neuroatypical, so you've researched that issue, you've read books about it, you've joined social groups, you've joined advocacy groups -- but then, perhaps decades later in your life, you may find you've outgrown that identity, that it doesn't actually describe you anymore, maybe it never described you as well as you had believed.
Because you are not your identities. Identities are ways to describe yourself, but they are not yourself. You still have the capacity to change, the capacity to grow, the capacity to adopt new identities. This is as true of a culture as it is of you.
The identities that grip our culture today will not last. They are descriptors of our culture, not our culture itself. We will change, for better or for worse.
More typical has been a shift of 8-10% across three elections, although we haven't seen a shift that large since the 20th Century.
The 20th Century saw frequent landslide elections, in which the President won by at least 10 points, and occasional wide swings in the electorate of over 20% across three elections. For example, Democrats took 61% of the vote in 1964, but only 38% of the vote in 1972 -- a gigantic shift in only eight years.
What happened to swing voters and landslides? Why are our elections so close now? Even as the amount of money openly poured into our elections has skyrocketed after Supreme Court decisions that banned limits on campaign spending. It seems all that cash is buying ever-smaller shifts among the electorate. Adjust campaign spending totals by how many swing voters are left, and only billionaires need donate cash anymore. The rest of us should spend our cash on popcorn instead.
Political scientists say that political identity and polarization have soared -- far more people strongly identify as Democrat or Republican; far fewer people split their tickets between the parties when they vote in national, state, and local elections; and the numbers show that far fewer people are swinging from one party to the other between elections.
This combination of tiny shifts and close elections is making election fraud sound like a winning tactic to a large chunk of Republicans who are obsessively frustrated with Trump's 2020 loss.
-----
The lesson of the 1880s is that this situation probably won't last. It may seem like a fact of life right now that Democrats and Republicans are evenly divided and that swing voters are extinct, but history shows that politics is more fluid & dynamic than solid & static. Somebody will come along who can figure out how to build a larger coalition within one party. It could follow a dramatic failure that one party gets blamed for, such as the Great Depression, or the Korean War, or 1970s Inflation. It could follow a one-time coalition breakthrough, such as LBJ's very temporary unification of liberal Northerners and conservative Southerners. Or a one-time coalition breakdown, such as when Republicans split in two in 1912 and allowed Democrats to take an Electoral College landslide with 42% of the multi-party popular vote.
People who don't study history, who don't put the present in a historical context, can develop a kind of tunnel vision that presumes political, economic, or social conditions will remain the way they have been in recent memory. For example, when low inflation dominated for many years in a row, people presumed inflation would always stay low. When peace dominated Europe for many years in a row, people presumed the continent would remain peaceful. We thought low mortgage rates were here to stay, we think high stock valuations are here to stay. Nobody expected a pandemic would come along and kill over one million Americans in two years. Who thought abortion would become illegal after 50 years of Roe v. Wade? Gay marriage for the first time in modern history! Legalizing marijuana?
A lot of what I do in my LJ is --> study history, look at the present, and speculate about what might come next. Sometimes I'm right, sometimes I'm wrong, even historical trends can swerve in new and unprecedented directions -- who would've guessed that interest rates would go negative across much of the world for the first time in human history? That made zero sense.
Has global crude oil production finally peaked? It has seemed to peak before, only to be (temporarily) rescued by technological innovations like fracking.
It is likely that US election results will begin to revert to the mean, that our subsequent elections will not be so darn close, that our voters will begin to swing wildly back and forth between parties, that new political identies will arise and old ones will crackup or fade. If you, personally, identify strongly with either the Democrats or the Republicans today, you may find yourself in a very different place 10 years from now.
-----
I was having a discussion with a friend about "identity", about how sometimes we discover a pattern within ourselves and decide to double down on that pattern, forming an "identity" -- but sometimes we discover a pattern within ourselves and decide to change that pattern, learning how to grow as an individual.
"I've always been attracted to men, I guess that means I'm gay" vs. "I've always been attracted to men, maybe I should try dating a woman"
Some places have criminalized getting the help of a therapist to change from gay to bisexual or straight -- so-called "conversion therapy" -- isn't that strange after centuries of criminalizing gay sex? Huh.
But it is possible to discover, after a while, that you've made your "identity" more important than your actual self. Whatever that identity may be. Perhaps you've identified as having PTSD, or being an introvert, or being neuroatypical, so you've researched that issue, you've read books about it, you've joined social groups, you've joined advocacy groups -- but then, perhaps decades later in your life, you may find you've outgrown that identity, that it doesn't actually describe you anymore, maybe it never described you as well as you had believed.
Because you are not your identities. Identities are ways to describe yourself, but they are not yourself. You still have the capacity to change, the capacity to grow, the capacity to adopt new identities. This is as true of a culture as it is of you.
The identities that grip our culture today will not last. They are descriptors of our culture, not our culture itself. We will change, for better or for worse.