In this special briefing, Hoover fellows analyze key issues defining the upcoming midterm elections. They also examine the effects of polarization on the United States’ electorate and policies that can help shore up confidence in American democracy.
Key Issues in the 2022 Midterm Elections
In an October seminar of the Technology, Economics, and Governance Working Group, senior fellows David Brady and Douglas Rivers presented their polling-based research on the issues that are shaping the 2022 midterm elections.
In the presentation, Brady described three basic strategies that political parties adopt to win elections: turning out their own base, persuading members of the opposite party to defect, and attracting independents.
He said that over the last forty years, the Republican and Democratic parties have been on a trajectory of becoming deeply polarized from each other. Large numbers of Democrats, for example, defected in favor of Dwight D. Eisenhower in the 1952 and 1956 presidential elections and then for Richard Nixon in the 1968 and 1972 campaigns. Jimmy Carter, the incumbent president in 1980, even had a significant number of his own party members move toward Ronald Reagan. During these times there were significantly more moderates in both parties, conservatives in the Democratic Party, and liberals among Republicans. Today, large majorities of liberals prefer the Democratic Party and conservatives align Republican, respectively. Defectors make up smaller numbers of the electorate than in the past but can be a decisive vote in some states and districts, along with independents.
In the current cycle, Brady explained, the voting public is aligning in greater proportion toward issues that advantage the GOP (the biggest being inflation) than the liberal causes where Democrats poll stronger (abortion, health care, and climate change).
During the seminar, Rivers provided polling analysis on timely issues including abortion rights, considering the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade; and allegations that the 2020 election was stolen. Rivers argued that although portions of the voting public are concerned over abortion rights and election denial, they are confronted with "all sorts of important problems, that can't all be simultaneously pertinent."
Click here to watch the entire seminar.
In a November 2 article at RealClear Politics, Brady, Rivers, and Stanford JD/PhD student Brett Parker, write that the issues continue to advantage Republicans.
"The difference between inflation (or crime) and issues like abortion and election denial is that there is no difference of opinion between the parties," write Brady, Rivers, and Parker. "Both Democrats and Republicans are opposed to inflation and crime."
Saints, Sinners, and Salvageables
In August, the Hoover Institution launched a special podcast series, Saints, Sinners, and Salvageables, featuring distinguished visiting fellow, preeminent election law expert, and nationally recognized attorney, Benjamin Ginsberg that will run through November 15, the week following the midterm elections. He and his guests consider a range of political perspectives of US elections, analyze the issues causing partisan rancor over voting processes, and provide solutions on how confidence can be restored in American democracy.
In the latest episode, Ginsberg talks with Bill Whalen, the Virginia Hobbs Carpenter Distinguished Policy Fellow in Journalism, about what to watch for in the midterm election returns—and the chances that the battle for Congress goes into overtime thanks to runoffs, slow vote counts, and legal challenges.
Click here to listen to all episodes of Saints, Sinners, and Salvageables.
America’s New Political Division
In Reason magazine, Senior Fellow Morris Fiorina reviews The Other Divide: Polarization and Disengagement in American Politics, by Yanna Krupnikov and John Barry Ryan (Cambridge University Press, 2022).
Fiorina writes that the book highlights another major political division that has further exacerbated the trajectory of polarization over a period of more than four decades: “the one separating the people who have deep political involvement from the people who don’t.”
Those in the former group make politics a central part of their lives at the expense of other activities, attach significant importance to keeping up with political events, and are motivated to share their opinions with others. The members of this small and deeply partisan minority are more positive about their own party and hold more negative views of the opposition, a behavior referred to as “affective polarization.”
“In contrast to most people, they would not like their child to marry someone from another party even If that person did not talk about politics,” Fiorina explains. “Their issue priorities are different from those of the less involved, and they are more certain that their issue positions are ‘right.’”
The factors driving deeply involved people are experiences of frequent political discussion in their family upbringing and attendance at elite liberal arts colleges. They also tend to use social media more frequently to amplify their views. On this point, Fiorina notes that just 2 percent of the adult population generates 97 percent of all political content on Twitter.
Fiorina concludes his essay by urging Americans who are not deeply involved to read the book so that they can “get a better understanding of the people responsible for the sorry state of contemporary politics.”
Click here to read the entire review.
The Impact of Motor-Voter Reform in Colorado
Senior Fellows Justin Grimmer and Jonathan Rodden conducted a study of 2020 electoral reforms in Colorado, where residents are automatically registered to vote when they apply, renew, or change an address for a driver’s license at the department of motor vehicles, or DMV.
Grimmer and Rodden explain that voter registration behavior reflects the natural human tendency to accept the path of least resistance. Given the option of voter registration at the DMV, most citizens will either decline or procrastinate.
However, the two Hoover political scientists found that when voter registration became the default option for a large number of Colorado DMV patrons, very few of them opted out, dramatically increasing voter registration in the Centennial State. They also discovered that the reform led to substantial growth in preregistration among 16- and 17-year-olds; and more accurate voter information and a reduction in provisional ballots, resulting from a feature of automatic back-end updates in the new system.
“This simple study provides strong evidence that with the right set-up, the Department of Motor Vehicles can be an extremely valuable player in registering voters and maintaining accurate voter files in the United States,” Grimmer and Rodden conclude.
Click here to read the entire study.
Bring on the Audits
In an article at the Washington Post, Ben Ginsberg writes that Donald Trump’s claims of massive voter fraud have proven to be illusory and will remain so.
However, Ginsberg is concerned that Trump’s charges are leading to the erosion of American democracy. Thirty percent of voters and 66 percent of Republicans believe that the 2020 presidential election was stolen in favor of Joe Biden. Ginsberg maintains that election denial isn’t a good political strategy that can improve outcomes for Republicans.
“Having two-thirds of your voters not trusting election results will over time injure Republicans more than Democrats,” Ginsberg argues. “Why should Republican voters turn out? It’s a lethal path for a party that has already seen depressed turnout in some elections, such as the Georgia Senate runoffs and California governor’s recall.”
Ginsberg asserts that one way to change minds is to welcome more of the type of audits that Trump and his allies have demanded. If the audits continue to prove that voter fraud is rare or nonexistent, these experiments could have some impact in reducing the number of people who lack confidence in America’s voting processes that are time tested and demonstrate a consistent record of accurately reflecting the will of the people.
Click here to read the entire article.
