In this article:<\/b><\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Gerald Gamm<\/a> is a professor of political science and history at the URochester. The coauthor of the forthcoming book Steering the Senate: Party Competition and the Emergence of Leadership, 1789\u20132022<\/em>, Gamm studies Congress, state legislatures, the culture war, and party polarization.<\/p>\n (Ä¢¹½´«Ã½ photo \/ J. Adam Fenster)<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Gamm:<\/strong> Partisan polarization is a relatively new development in American politics that began about 40 years ago. Through most of the 20th century, there was more overlap between the political parties than there was division. It\u2019s only since the 1980s that the parties begin to divide systematically along ideological lines.<\/p>\n Gamm<\/strong>:<\/strong> A number of events: the civil rights revolution, which guaranteed basic rights for Black people in the South and enfranchised Black adults in the South. That ended the historical allegiance of white southerners to the Democratic Party and, as a consequence, a lot of white southerners became Republicans, while many of the more liberal Republicans in the Northeast started drifting toward the Democratic Party. That marked the start of the ideological sorting of the parties.<\/p>\n The other big events of the 1960s and 70s were the beginnings of the culture war and the introduction of issues such as abortion, women\u2019s rights, and the rights of gay people into our politics. It\u2019s not until the 1990s or the early 21st century that the culture war issues neatly sort along party lines, but the beginnings date back to the 60s and 70s. By the 21st century, you have parties that are increasingly ideologically different from one another.<\/p>\n Gamm:<\/strong> People\u2019s views of Bill Clinton diverged sharply by party in a way that views of past presidents hadn\u2019t diverged; the same happened again with George W. Bush. The Obama presidency was an unusually polarizing presidency; a lot of people<\/a> came to believe the lie that he wasn\u2019t even a legitimate president.<\/p>\n During the Trump presidency, Americans took sides more than ever before. On top of this came growing concerns about economic inequality and unfairness, and the inability of globalism to deliver jobs and meaningful work for a large proportion of Americans. In addition to Trump\u2019s populism, you have people\u2019s concerns about the nation\u2019s borders, growing nationalism, and a deep-seated suspicion of elites. And if that weren\u2019t enough\u2014the pandemic arrives.<\/p>\n By 2020, we have a world that\u2019s been growing polarized\u2014at first steadily, and then increasingly so\u2014for 40 years, where we basically have already divided into tribes over every conceivable issue and where our tribes have started to become more meaningful to us than the issues themselves. And then the pandemic acts as an accelerant and makes everything worse.<\/p>\n Gamm:<\/strong> Every year for the last 20 years I have thought that this is as bad as it can possibly get. And then somehow it manages to get worse. So, I\u2019ve given up making predictions for the future. I have a residual faith in American democracy. There\u2019s a piece of me that thinks somehow we\u2019re going to figure this out.<\/p>\n The worst thing that has happened in American politics in the last five years hasn\u2019t just been polarization. It\u2019s been the conviction of a very large number of Americans that democracy itself has failed. And no one has expressed that conviction more vividly than President Trump. He\u2019s led a movement to persuade people that elections can\u2019t be trusted; that election officials can\u2019t be trusted; that majorities are fraudulent. And that, therefore, democracy itself is fraudulent. Of all the developments\u2014much worse even than polarization\u2014it\u2019s this development that calls into question the viability of the whole American experiment in democracy.<\/p>\n Gamm:<\/strong> The greatest threat that we face right now is that we can\u2019t even agree anymore that elections work. That\u2019s new in American democracy. Even in the 19th century, even with massive numbers of people disfranchised, even on the eve of the Civil War, no one doubted the basic integrity of the American electoral system. The emergence of that non-agreeing on electoral outcomes as an issue strikes me as a genuine emergency for our Republic.<\/p>\n What\u2019s fascinating is that while we have this existential issue about the survival of our democracy, it doesn\u2019t appear to be shaping most people\u2019s electoral decisions. Remember, there are hundreds of people running for office in this country right now\u2014including people running to be governors and secretaries of state and United States senators and members of the House of Representatives\u2014and many of them, all Republicans, reject the results of the 2020 election and thus declare their refusal to accept legitimate elections, in the absence of any supporting evidence. For me, that should be the single defining issue of this election. But it isn\u2019t.<\/p>\n Gamm:<\/strong> In the Republican primaries we saw very little disputing of election results. Going back to 2020, there was no disputing of election results for any office other than the presidency. One of the oddest and scariest outgrowths of the 2020 election was that on the same ballots where we elected our Congress and elected our governors and state legislators, we also elected our president.<\/p>\n And yet, there appears to have been very little questioning [by those who bought into the \u201cstolen election\u201d narrative] of how those ballots were legitimate for any office other than the presidency. That\u2019s just intellectually inconsistent. Maybe I\u2019m na\u00efve, but I don\u2019t expect any real disputing of the results of the midterm elections. Yet, I do think that it\u2019s a staging ground for how the country reacts to the presidential election in 2024.<\/p>\n Gamm:<\/strong> Yes, of course, I\u2019m worried. I went into the study of American politics thinking I was studying the world\u2019s oldest and most stable democratic political system. Now I\u2019m deeply worried about the sustainability of the democratic experiment in America.<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Gretchen Helmke<\/a> is the faculty director of the Ä¢¹½´«Ã½\u2019s Democracy Center<\/a> and the Thomas H. Jackson Distinguished University Professor. She is a founding member of Bright Line Watch<\/a>, a team of nonpartisan academics that polls the public and experts at regular intervals about the health of US democracy.<\/p>\n (Ä¢¹½´«Ã½ photo \/ J. Adam Fenster)<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Helmke:<\/strong> We just fielded a new Bright Line Watch survey this week: we did one wave in October right before the midterms and will field a second wave afterwards. An important survey indicator asks about free and fair elections, which was hyperpolarized in 2021. Essentially, we\u2019re asking how well the US meets this standard.<\/p>\n In 2021, we found<\/a> that only 22 percent of Republican survey respondents regarded elections as fraud-free, compared to 71 percent of Democrats. In this week\u2019s survey<\/a>\u2014American Democracy on the Eve of the 2022 Midterms<\/em>, October 2022<\/em><\/a>\u2014we saw that the gap narrowed a bit between the two camps but nevertheless remains gigantic: about 67 percent for Democratic voters rate US elections as fraud-free, versus just 27 percent of Republican voters.<\/p>\n We\u2019ll repeat the survey right after the midterms to see whether the gap narrows or broadens and whether such perceptions roughly track with which party gains the majority in Congress.<\/p>\n A second important point is the \u201cconceding an election loss\u201d indicator in our surveys, where we\u2019re asking respondents how important they think it is for the losing candidate to publicly acknowledge the winner. When we asked this question in 2021<\/a>, more than three quarters of Democrats said conceding an election loss was important for democracy. But just over half of Republicans agreed. Obviously, there\u2019s a deep connection: If you thought elections weren\u2019t free and fair, then you probably thought it\u2019s less important to concede because the election wasn\u2019t legitimate in the first place.<\/p>\n American Democracy on the Eve of the 2022 Midterms<\/i><\/a> (October 2022 surveys) from Bright Line Watch<\/p>\n Join us for the\u00a0Bright Line Watch Update<\/a>\u00a0virtual panel on Monday, December 5, from 1 to 2 p.m. ET. The event, hosted by the Ä¢¹½´«Ã½\u2019s Democracy Center<\/a> (as part of the cross-university Democratic Erosion Consortium<\/a>), is free and open to the public.<\/p>\n This week, we changed the question and asked specifically about the upcoming Congressional races and found that, in principle and in advance of the midterm election, 79 percent of Republican voters and 94 percent of Democratic voters respectively do think that all losing Congressional candidates should concede their defeat. We will see the extent to which those numbers shift depending on what happens in the wake of the midterms and how many candidates cry foul after the election.<\/p>\n Helmke:<\/strong> I don\u2019t think that the fundamental problem here is people\u2019s commitment to democracy as an ideal. I think the problem is that we lost an essential feature of any democracy\u2014the willingness of parties to lose elections. We now have a situation in which one of the major parties is signaling that it\u2019s no longer willing to do that; a problem obviously most closely associated with Trump and the 2020 election. In 2021, only about 27 percent of Republicans<\/a> admitted that President Biden is the rightful winner. Now, in our October survey, the number has moved slightly up, which is better, to 33 percent of Republican voters who accept Biden\u2019s election win.<\/p>\n Helmke:<\/strong> It\u2019s spilled over in a number of ways. There are, for example, now hundreds of election deniers on the ballots across the country. A candidate like Kari Lake<\/a>, who is running for governor in Arizona, is explicitly using Trump\u2019s rhetoric to undermine the validity of these elections and won\u2019t pledge to accept a loss. That kind of copycat rhetoric signals to people that an election is only valid if you win and cuts against the basic principle of a democracy\u2014the willingness of parties to lose elections.<\/p>\n Most striking in our latest survey findings is that the polled academic experts place about a 75 percent chance on some high-profile Republican candidates in these midterm elections refusing to concede their election loss. These experts also rate the prevalence of the 2020 election denialism among Republican candidates, who are now running for statewide office, as the most abnormal and important event of the past year and one of the most extreme events to take place since\u00a02016.<\/p>\n Now, Republican elites seem to be aware of the fact that Trump legitimately lost the election. Nevertheless, they are very wary of challenging him because they\u2019ll get blowback from him and from the base, and we\u2019ve seen how that can end in primary defeats.<\/p>\n What\u2019s so pernicious about the big lie is that the vast majority of Trump supporters still claims the democratic principle of free and fair elections was violated. In denying Biden\u2019s legitimacy, they likely think they are protecting democracy, not undermining it.<\/p>\n Helmke:<\/strong> What keeps me up at night is that people no longer share the same set of facts about elections and that the legitimacy of the electoral process has been eroded fundamentally and has become so polarized. All that makes it very hard to sustain a democracy.<\/p>\n Also very concerning is the politicization of the electoral process itself: not just this effort to put candidates on the ballot who are election deniers, but to potentially challenge every local race, and to try to insert people as poll watchers who may already be convinced that the system doesn\u2019t work.<\/p>\n Related to that are the threats we saw against people who are doing heroic work by serving as poll watchers, working on election boards, and trying to just do the basic work of counting votes. They\u2019re receiving threats against their safety and the safety of their families. If those threats accelerate in this election cycle, it\u2019ll really be a problem. It\u2019s a strategy of trying to throw spokes in the wheel of elections, trying to undermine their legitimacy.<\/p>\n Helmke:<\/strong> I don\u2019t think the end of democracy in the United States, if it happens, is going to be a single event. Instead, I think it\u2019s a series of piecemeal, incremental steps. In a way we are already coming apart: if the majority of voters in one party won\u2019t accept the results of an election, then that\u2019s already a sign that democracy is not functioning.<\/p>\n Helmke:\u00a0<\/strong>Let me be clear\u2014there\u2019s absolutely no evidence that there\u2019s been any election fraud that has swayed the 2020 presidential election in any way whatsoever. There\u2019s no factual evidence of that and no court in the country has found any evidence of that, and yet here we are where most people in one party believe that exactly that happened. It\u2019s not that we\u2019ve lost free and fair elections in the US; it\u2019s that people believe<\/em> we\u2019ve lost them. And that\u2019s a real problem for democracy. But will this lead to civil war? There are so many factors that contribute to civil war, there isn\u2019t going to be a straight line just like that.<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n James Johnson<\/a>, a professor of political science at the URochester, is the coauthor of both\u00a0The Priority of Democracy: Political Consequences of Pragmatism<\/em><\/a> (Princeton University Press, 2011) and\u00a0Should Secret Voting Be Mandatory?<\/em><\/a> (Polity, 2020). His<\/span>\u00a0research runs the gamut from pragmatist political thought and democratic theory, to the philosophy of social science and theories of political economy.<\/span><\/p>\n (Ä¢¹½´«Ã½ photo \/ J. Adam Fenster)<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Johnson:<\/strong> I think that the arguments about convenience voting are confused by both Republicans and Democrats. The Democrats tend to think that making voting more convenient through absentee ballots and basically allowing people universal excuses for not voting on election day itself, is really going to increase turnout, and that increased turnout presumably will work to their own advantage<\/span>. Republicans meanwhile think that convenience voting has a discriminatory impact in partisan terms. But neither of those things is true.<\/p>\n What we know is that making voting more convenient makes it more likely that people like you and me will vote, because we\u2019re the high-turnout voter demographic\u2014middle class, educated, suburban\u2014and we\u2019re very likely already going to vote. But the people who are not voting are not moved by convenience voting.<\/p>\n Johnson:<\/strong> Our argument was that if you really want to increase turnout, and you want to eliminate some of the ways that people can be intimidated or prevailed upon to vote in particular ways, you\u2019d have to introduce mandatory voting because that would eliminate the incentives for political parties to engage in untoward activities, like turnout buying or voter suppression. Australia, for example, has compulsory voting. In Australia you have to go to the polls; if you don\u2019t go\u2014you\u2019ll get fined. Once you get to the polls, of course, you can do all kinds of things: you can simply vote for one of the alternatives on offer, you can spoil your ballot, you can write in \u201cMickey Mouse,\u201d you can write \u201cnone of the above,\u201d whatever you want. But you have to go to the polls, which increases turnout to relatively high levels. And with increased voter turnout, parties have to appeal to a broader array of voters, instead of just the extremists in their parties.<\/p>\n Johnson:<\/strong> I don\u2019t think it\u2019s the answer, but I think it would help. It would present an incentive to parties to try to appeal to a wider array of voters, other than their confirmed Republican voters or confirmed Democratic voters. Right now, they have no real reason to try to appeal more broadly to anybody; instead, they keep playing to the more extreme views of their base. That\u2019s because the base are the people who both parties know will turn out and vote for them.<\/p>\n Of course, if we had mandatory voting, you would have to shore up the institutional infrastructure of casting, counting, and monitoring votes, instead of relying on so many volunteers. You\u2019d have to fund the institutional infrastructure to make that work. Right now, we basically run voting by bake sale.<\/p>\n Practically, the way mandatory voting works in other countries, is that there\u2019s some sort of consequence for not going to the polls. In some places, it\u2019s a small fine, not much. In some places it means you can\u2019t get your passport renewed. In others you wouldn\u2019t be eligible for certain kinds of government policies or programs, which I think is a bit draconian.<\/p>\n Johnson:<\/strong>\u00a0I think we\u2019ve lost a lot of that ability. What really brought that home to me wasn\u2019t even national politics but what happens at the local level. Last year, at my local school board meeting, some parents were trying to defend a voluntary after-school program about the variety of families that live in our town\u2014gay, straight, lesbian, single parent, etc. Yet people from the community objected to the program. At the school board hearing, some in the room were yelling \u201cpedophile\u201d at the people who were trying to defend the program. That kind of behavior over a voluntary after-school program in a local middle school is, in my estimation, crazed. It suggests a level of hostility and a level of disagreement that mirrors what\u2019s at stake in the country.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, that behavior ties in directly with the national situation in which for many people, the idea of losing an election is anathema. They can\u2019t fathom allowing the other side, whether that\u2019s Democrat or Republican, to hold power. You saw this early on to a degree with the bumper stickers when George W. Bush was president that would say \u201cnot my president.\u201d Oh yes, he was your president. Maybe not the one you voted for. You lost that election. Ultimately, that\u2019s what January 6 was about\u2014not being willing to recognize the possibility of losing. And if that\u2019s the case, you\u2019re not playing in the same game.<\/p>\n Johnson:<\/strong> No, I really didn\u2019t. I\u2019m 67. Not in my lifetime has the refusal to concede an election loss ever been an issue. Now it is. We don\u2019t just have the former President of the United States but also his supporters who turn up and invade the Capitol Building in an attempt to disrupt the certification of a lawful election. We currently have some 290 election deniers across the country running for office in the midterm elections. Some of them are running for positions of secretary of state in various states. Of course, the secretaries of state are the ones who administer elections. What does it mean to have elected representatives who refuse to acknowledge the outcome of legitimate elections, even when the aggrieved party\u2014in this case, former President Trump and his supporters\u2014has lost more than 60 court cases when they were trying to show fraud and malfeasance in the 2020 election? It\u2019s frightening.<\/p>\n Of course, something to consider is that a lot of what\u2019s happened in this country results from our institutions that are creating non-democratic outcomes. By that I mean that we\u2019ve had five minority presidents<\/a> so far\u2014they win the electoral college but lose the popular vote. That\u2019s an antidemocratic outcome and it happened most recently with George W. Bush in 2000, and again with Trump in 2016.<\/p>\n Johnson:\u00a0<\/strong>Worldwide, we have quite a few countries that are moving in the direction of\u2014or have already slid into\u2014authoritarian rule, such as Turkey, Brazil, Hungary, Poland, India, the Philippines. That\u2019s a lot of people, a lot of constituencies. Some of these instances are quite dangerous and I think we\u2019re at an important inflection point in this country.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t want to be a Cassandra, but if we have another election in the US that runs like the last one in 2020, in which one candidate refuses to recognize the outcome of the election, we\u2019re in trouble. As Gretchen\u2019s work shows, we\u2019re not losing our democracy over one single event. Rather it\u2019s death by a thousand cuts.<\/p>\n\n
\nGerald Gamm on the recent hyperpolarization in US politics<\/strong><\/h3>\n
\n![\"Headshot](\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/Gerald-Gamm-2022-midterm-elections.jpg\")
<\/p>\nWhen did we as a nation become so polarized?<\/strong><\/h4>\n
What exactly happened in the 1980s to cause this divide?<\/strong><\/h4>\n
For about the last two decades polarization has been in overdrive. Why?<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Are we going to sink further into division and dysfunction? <\/strong><\/h4>\n
What does distrust in US democracy mean for the midterm elections?<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Do you expect both parties to accept the midterm election results?<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Are you worried about the survival of our democracy?<\/strong><\/h4>\n
\nGretchen Helmke on democratic backsliding and \u2018the big lie\u2019<\/strong><\/h3>\n
\n![\"Headshot](\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/Gretchen-Helmke-2022-midterm-elections.jpg\")
<\/p>\nWhat are you and your colleagues in Bright Line Watch watching for in the midterm elections? <\/strong><\/h4>\n
Read the survey<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Get involved<\/strong><\/h4>\n
\n
Have Americans become less committed to democracy?<\/strong><\/h4>\n
How has Trump\u2019s refusal to accept his election loss in 2020 spilled over into the midterm elections? <\/strong><\/h4>\n
![\"Line](\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/BLW-survey-was-biden-rightful-winner-October-2022.png\")
<\/p>\nWhat keeps you up at night?<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Is US democracy acutely in danger of coming to an end in our lifetime? Are we inching closer to civil war?<\/strong><\/h4>\n
\nJames Johnson on voting procedures and antidemocratic outcomes<\/strong><\/h3>\n
\n![\"Headshot](\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/James-Johnson-2022-midterm-elections.jpg\")
<\/p>\nYou argued in your recent book that\u00a0<\/em>attempts to make voting more convenient have made it harder to guarantee voting secrecy. Since then, several states have rolled back some of these convenient voter options. Are you satisfied?<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Is that why you suggest mandatory voting? How would that work?<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Is mandatory voting your answer to society\u2019s hyperpolarization?<\/strong><\/h4>\n
In your 2011 book, you and your coauthor argued that the \u201cpragmatic role of democracy\u201d was not so much in achieving consensus, but in addressing conflicts and \u201cstructur[ing] the terms of persistent disagreement.\u201d A decade later, where do we stand?<\/strong><\/h4>\n
When you wrote that book in 2011, did you imagine that a mere decade later US democracy would be in such dire straits?<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Are we in danger of losing our democracy?<\/strong><\/h4>\n
\nRead more<\/strong><\/h3>\n
![\"Protest](\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/fea-flickr_anne-meador_cool-revolution.jpg\")
Corporate money in politics threatens US democracy\u2014or does it?<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n![\"Voter](\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/fea-mandatory-voting-secret-ballot.jpg\")
Should secret voting be mandatory? \u2018Yes\u2019 say political scientists<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n![\"US](\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/fea-bright-line-watch-october-2022.jpg\")
Bright Line Watch assesses American democracy on the eve of 2022 midterm elections<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n