A NEW ELECTORATE
Even before the January 2017 installation of the 45th president and the 115th Congress, a coherent opposition was taking shape. It didn’t have a name or a program or consensus, or even agreement on what it was for. Rather, its adherents knew who and what they were against. They had a singular goal: to end the tenure of the president as soon as possible, along with those who had chosen to empower him.
In just two years, from 2016 to 2018, the Democratic share of the voting public increased from 48 percent to 53 percent. Such an upsurge in so short a span is extremely rare, and in national reckonings, five points is a significant swing. If nothing else, those who want to retain office ought to ask why, or at least try to ponder the public’s mood. But there are no signs that the president or his party have done this. On the contrary, they feel they still have an ample mandate, and need only feed the spirits of their 2016 loyalists.
Clearly, this strategy didn’t work in 2018, considering the loss of the House of Representatives, plus a passel of state legislatures and governorships.1 Yet there’s no sign that their 2020 campaign plan will be any different.
The GOP sees itself as a party of deep principles as well as pragmatic policies. At the forefront are its stances on abortion and firearms; the first with its irreversible view of human life, and the second celebrating instruments designed to end it.2 There is also its antipathy to democracy, signaled by constricting eligibility for the franchise. Less overt but equally evident are anxieties over the increasing racial diversity, impelling restrictions on immigration and retreats from civil rights. Yet recent voting, poll responses, and social trends make clear that these and other GOP canons have become minority stances.
• All polls show ambivalence about abortion. Many people get uneasy about the procedure as pregnancies proceed. Still, of those with opinions—and almost all have—fully 73 percent of 2018 voters wished to preserve Roe v. Wade, which means they want the procedure to remain available.
• On guns, exit polls found 61 percent saying they wanted more controls than currently imposed.
• When asked if they viewed fraudulent voting or suppressive measures as a greater danger, 60 percent of people said they were more worried about attempts to reduce the rolls.
• An earlier poll, in 2016, found 74 percent saying they believed undocumented workers should be eligible for a legal status rather than deported. This response may be lower now, since the president has devoted much of his term to demonizing immigrants. Still, voting numbers suggest that a solid majority haven’t changed their minds. Case in point: the total lack of impact when he consigned troops to the Rio Grande on the eve of 2018 voting.
Other samplings have found most Americans favoring serious steps about the climate, less reliance on incarceration, and more open views of sexuality and marriage.
At the same time, research shows that Democrats are less ideologically engaged. Alan Abramowitz of Emory University, a leading political scientist, has devised ways to quantify how deeply people feel. On his scale of ideas and issues, Republicans come out 82 percent more passionate than Democrats.
Thus the 2018 CNN poll found 66 percent of Republicans painting themselves as conservatives. (The interviews also gave them a moderate option, which most of them eschewed.) Across the aisle, only 46 percent of Democrats made liberal their choice. (There wasn’t a progressive box.) Across the country, this would have self-styled conservatives surpassing liberals, 34,068,180 to 28,014,338. It’s statistics like that which hearten the GOP.
If so many Democrats are diffident about ideology, it’s because they see the liberal label as constricting, burdened with a checklist of beliefs. Current voters like to see themselves as independent spirits, with their own penchants and principles. In fact, it includes an aesthetic sensibility, which abhors Donald Trump’s deportment as demeaning of the presidency. It dishonors an entire nation to have a schoolyard bully at its head.
In all, changes we’re seeing are less outwardly political than in the internal sensibilities of actual individuals. Americans are becoming increasingly open in their thinking, as they adapt to social and global trends. Not least are new and exacting occupations and technologies, with the sophistication they expect.
The most revealing indicator is level of education. Each year finds more of the electorate earning additional years of schooling. (Our most recent figures found 1,956,032 bachelor’s degrees awarded, totaling to about half the relevant age group.) Among all those voting in 2018, four of every ten possessed at least a four-year degree. What’s striking is that 46 percent of Democrats were in this pool, while only 39 percent of Republicans were. For many, really most, having completed college is transformative, a decisive rite of passage, a route to becoming a different kind of person. Allow a longtime academic a few musings on this score.
High schools are basically local. Their mission is to serve communities, with almost all their pupils living nearby. Those who end their education at that tier tend to bring more bounded outlooks into their adult lives.
Colleges, even those with regional enrollments, open students to wider realms. This involves a lot more than the topics taught in classrooms. Students know they are preparing themselves for new spheres of knowledge, employment, and citizenship. And that also entails new approaches to the scope and substance of politics.
It’s a fact that most professors are liberal, if not overtly Democratic. So is the ambience of many campuses. That noted, it isn’t clear how far this bias leaves a lasting imprint on undergraduates. After all, college life is an interlude. The real world starts after graduation.
Still, most of what is experienced during campus years is not explicitly ideological. Advanced instruction does not allow abbreviated answers. College students are expected to elaborate. Whether the subject is urban sociology, fashion merchandising, or software engineering, syllabi stress understanding complexities and coping with contradictions. Students learn to write and think in paragraphs.
This helps to explain the link between additional years in classrooms and Democratic voting. True, Democrats do devise mantras. “Medicare for All” and “Free Tuition” are recent examples But once pronounced, they feel obliged to spell out every codicil, including actuarial projections and cost-benefit ratios. Or proposals on climate change will be supplemented with software spreadsheets and mathematical models. Republicans believe that gripping phrases suffice. No need was felt to accompany “Build the Wall!” with a budget for its 1,954 miles.
Such shortcutting has given the GOP its populist veneer. Most conspicuous have been Donald Trump’s rallies, which he began during the 2016 primaries and made a hallmark of his presidency. They’ve worked because of their avid audiences, willing to roar back on cue. It’s hard to visualize an assemblage of Democrats thundering “Lock Her Up!” or “Send Them Back!”
To be sure, Barack Obama attracted upward of 80,000 admirers at Denver’s Empower Field at Mile High and 240,000 in Chicago’s Grant Park. They didn’t lack for fervor. But there was no rancor or venom. Perhaps there will always be an appetite for red meat. But each year sees its avatars outnumbered by voters who prefer a more urbane diet.
Also in the mix is the ubiquity of livelihoods that call for conversational skills. Nor does this hold only with well-paid professions. In hosts of occupations, an expected skill is the ability to explain, whether how a new device operates or the provenance of items on a menu. Here, too, Democrats, in their positions or as a party, appeal to people accustomed to thinking and reading and listening.
Today, the divide is less between blue and white collars than a willingness to adjust to the century ahead, anticipate a transformed future, and refurbish yourself to meet it. Not surprisingly, milieus like Seattle and Silicon Valley, Route 128 and the Beltway, are heavily Democratic. In fact, replicas of them can now be found all across the country: Witness 2018 outcomes in Oklahoma, Iowa, and Kansas.
Also relevant is that, at last count, fully 57 percent of bachelor’s degrees and 58 percent of advanced degrees were earned by women. More than coincidentally, in the 2018 midterms, 59 percent of the women who voted backed Democratic candidates.
To be sure, 36 percent of Republicans boast at least one diploma. But that should not occasion surprise. The most common bachelor’s and master’s degrees are in business, with 561,851 annual awards. Engineering also ranks high, at 189,036; with law enforcement, at 71,118, a popular major. For a considerable catchment of students, the highlights of higher education are football weekends and fraternity parties. How or why this correlates with party choice deserves some research.