Govt 1: The fundamentals of political parties, elections and voting (v1.0)

 A key reference is Professor Jennifer Nicoll Victor PhD of George Mason University.

In a democracy, sovereignty springs from the people. It is a form of self-rule. But a hard question is to answer what the people want. There really is no voting mechanism by which we can determine the will of the people. As the number of voters gets larger and as the number of choices increases, a coherent group choice is even more elusive. This creates a huge problem for democracy. If the US had a true democracy or direct democracy, nothing would get done and there would be chaos. Institutions and their rules play a key role in solving this. They also provide stability. The alternative to democracy is dictatorship, authoritarian states, monarchies, theocracies, oligarchies which are all extremely unpleasant including the sacrifice of individual liberties and rampant inequalities. If the people feel the rules and procedures of the institutions (like the legislature) are fair, they will accept it and it would be democratic. If not the stability of the institution suffers. Democracy therefore is not about doing the will of the people but agreeing to a set of rules and procedures and institutions to make decisions for ourselves.

Political parties are much maligned. This is especially true in today’s hyper-partisan environment. But people often mistake political parties with political partisanship or polarization. When a person becomes an ardent supporter of a party it is partisanship. But the institution of political party help organize democracy. A political party is a coalition of interests to get its candidates elected and its policies enacted. A political party is interested in winning elections more than policy outcomes. That separates it from interest groups, advocates, or political activists. Americas political institutions were created as though political parties do not exist (because the founders did not foresee political parties – a big failure of vision). Therefore, the institutions do not account for the partisanship that can arise from parties. This can result in major problems. In an environment like today where parties exist and there is huge polarization, the incentives of political actors do not often align with the political institutions they operate in. For candidates, political parties provide a brand to use and some campaign money. For voters, political parties provide an information signal about ideas for what a candidate stands for. For politicians, political parties help them assemble coalitions like in congress.

 Why are there only 2 parties? The number of parties in a system is determined by the electoral laws in that system. Duverger’s law (will not go into reasoning details) states that “Any system that is characterized by single member districts and plurality election rules will naturally tend to have two and only two political parties. Single member district means there is only one representative in congress representing that district. Plurality rule means the candidate with the most votes gets elected. There are many other systems and rules possible in a democracy. But these are the rules used in the United States with few exceptions. That is why the US has two stable parties. There were 4 successive flavors of political party systems before 1932 into which I will not go. Between 1932 to 1968, the fifth flavor came about. There were two robust parties – democrats and republicans. Republicans were primarily blamed for the great depression and became weak. Democrats were anchored by a new deal coalition. It was concentrated mostly in the south (southern democrats) and was anti-Black. John F Kennedy was the first democrat in this period to reach out to Black people. Johnson capped it by passing the voting and civil rights act. This aligned Black people with democrats which persists today. During this time ideology and political parties were not as aligned as today. The sixth party system was launched in 1968 (still current today) by Nixon who managed to entice southern racial conservatives to defect to the republican party. In this sixth system, Democrats were focused on social, racial, and economic justice. There was an emphasis on equality and civil rights. There was an emphasis on environment and climate. There were many activists. Union workers and middle-class intellectuals favored democrats. Republicans coalesced on personal liberty, free markets, and religious conservatism. In the sixth party system there is near perfect alignment of ideology and political parties. Democrats are liberals and republicans are conservatives. Political scientists believe such alignment causes instability in this system.

The defining feature of modern politics is polarization. Polarization is greater support for the extremes in each party more than the moderate in-betweens. It is different than partisanship. Partisanship is support for one political party and disdain for the other. Polarization could be greater distance between the centers of each party. It could be less overlap in the distribution of the parties. It could be greater uniformity within each party. It could be greater proportion of extremists in each party. In the US today we have the first, second and fourth. There is also hyper partisanship. This is seen both in congress and the public. People today often make many decisions based on their party identity. They also often take opposing decisions based on the positions of the out party (called negative partisanship). The combination of partisanship and polarization is self-perpetuating and amplifies and is difficult to get out of (see prospect theory for reason). 

Why is congress so polarized? The republican party has shifted much further to the right and the democratic party in reaction has moved (but less) to the left. Examining history, the current trend in polarization began in the 1970’s. So, what happened since then? There are three driving factors according to political scientists. The level of polarization in congress is strongly correlated with income inequality in the population which has increased. A second factor is racial realignment that first started by John F Kennedy and accelerated by Nixon. The democrats became liberal on race (and later gender and LGBTQ issues) and republicans became conservatives. There was less and less overlap. This leads to gridlock and polarization on this axis. The third factor is campaign finance laws. There is strong correlation between major changes in campaign finance laws and deepening polarization. The federal election campaign act and the creation of the federal election commission were the triggers. Candidates now get more of their campaign finance from individuals rather than parties. These individuals tend to be more ideological or polarized. My personal belief is lately, far right republican politicians and far left democratic liberals and their media aligned outlets and social media enhancers pushed their polarization further into their constituents. However, the evidence on this is mixed.

 In the US everyone over 18 can vote today, but the journey was a long one since the founders only gave the right to vote to white, male, protestant property owners. In a presidential election about 55 to 60% of the eligible people may vote while in a midterm about 40% may. Why is voter turnout so low? One reason is there is no penalty for not voting. Second reason is there is wide acceptance of democratic institutions which are stable and therefore the incentive is less. The third reason is that Americans are asked to vote quite frequently and sometimes with long ballots. The fourth reason is that there is an excessive cost to voting (register, find polling place, research candidates, etc.) and your vote is just one among millions. However, it is not just a matter of cost benefit analysis. If people you know vote, you are more likely to. If a campaign worker personally visited, you are more likely to. They tendency to vote is to a significant extent a socially determined and contagious activity. Lastly people also are more likely to turn out if they are dissatisfied with the status quo.

There are many inhibiters to voting. Factors that influence the likelihood of voting is income (increases), education (increases), race (whites more than others), gender (women more than men), and age (older more than younger). Of these, education is the most significant. Another factor is if they live in a community in which they feel deeply rooted (because there is a big social aspect to voting). People are more likely to vote if the election is close. They are also more likely to vote if the process is easy with fewer restrictions and steps. The primary predictor of how someone will vote is partisanship. A voter tends to identify with the party that more closely aligns with their ideology. The voting population is more likely to get attention from political parties, interest groups and candidates. Gerrymandering contributes a little to the voting patterns but is not a significant factor since state courts (the federal courts mostly bowed out of such disputes) have jurisdiction over such disputes. A disturbing trend lately in many republican states is to tilt the odds of winning by schemes like voter suppression tactics, so called "cleaning" the voter registry efforts, making it harder to vote, and interjecting partisan legislatures into the voting process.  These were enacted in the name of election security. Also, the supreme court ruled that corporations and organizations can contribute unlimited amounts to PACs and have diluted the reach of the voting rights act. Such things weaken democracy of the people. 

 For the candidates, there is a political science theorem that the candidate positioned at the middle of the spread is more likely to win. This is the reason that candidates have strong incentive to position themselves in one place in the primary but a different place in the general. However, a candidate who dramatically changes position over a few months could be accused of flip-flopping. Candidates are savvy about this and some handle this better than others.

How the votes are counted matter. Different counting methods can lead to different outcomes. They are all democratic. It can be majority wins, ranked choice voting, electoral college, etc. If most people perceive that the outcomes of the counting approach consistently yield unexpected or perceived unfair outcomes, then the method would be challenged and would become unstable. This is currently the case for the electoral college method for democrats.

Campaign finance is a complicated subject but there are major problems, and it is beyond the scope of this blog. Organizations can contribute unlimited amounts to super PACs, and dark money (undeclared doners) is also at play. The key question we have to ask ourselves is, is it healthy in a democracy for so few doners to contribute the lion's share of campaign funds? It is hard to prove that a policy change was bought by a doner, but doners are listened to more, and are given significant access. 

Ideologically I am center left. Since at the moment the two political parties have strong alignment with ideology, I am a moderate democrat. But I am not really that partisan although I like Biden and fear the non-democratic streak in many current day republicans. But the history of parties shows that policy positions can change over time and even the character of a party can change. My hope is that the US democratic institutions are strong enough to withstand any attacks. Nothing is forever. 

However, if due to media or politicians’ rhetoric or partisanship or polarization, people start distrusting the institutions of government, or the integrity of elections, or believe the second amendment rights are so people can rise against the government that they disagree with, or they believe violence by the people is justified under certain circumstances, or that certain qualified peoples votes shouldn’t count, or there is no longer a shared reality between supporters of the two parties, then we will sink into a very dark place and all bets are off.