Summary
- The US has majoritarian voting systems that continuously reproduce a duopoly of two parties. The parties plastered over this democratic deficit by introducing primary elections.
- In the last 30 years, a “sorting” of the electorate has made districts more clearly aligned with either Democrats or Republicans resulting in many uncontested, one-party districts.
- This shift increases the importance of primary elections that are often dominated by the extremes and the wealthy donors of each party. This affects the Republican party more, I argue, because their activists as well as their donors are more homogeneous.
- At the same time, big money from wealthy donors and business interests skewed the positions of both parties. Republican elites push positions that their base don’t support, like government tax-cuts for the rich.
- This setup is highly susceptible to a populist revolt against the party elites in the primaries - which is what Donald Trump was.
Intro
Whether it’s the Republican head of the US Senate Environment Committee bringing a snowball to the chamber floor to demonstrate that climate change isn’t real; or Senator Ted Cruz, who gave a symbolic 21-hour speech to protest President Obama’s healthcare reform1; or the conspiracy theory spread by Donald Trump that Barack Obama wasn’t born in the US; or Trump’s election itself - for well over a decade, Republicans have been sinking deeper and deeper into the mire of irrationality. But why?
Context: Size and Electoral System
The background is the size and electoral system of the USA.
Similar in Size to the EU
Why size? In Switzerland, one quickly draws an analogy between the US capital, Washington, and the Swiss capital, Bern. However, in terms of size, Washington is less like Bern, but more like Brussels. In this analogy, European countries are like US states, and the EU like Washington. Seen this way, part of the shrill rhetoric doesn’t sound so very odd at all. The sentiment “less power to the central authority, more autonomy to the states” is also heard in many countries across Europe. The British even left the EU amid similar clamour.
In the USA, this same attitude is reflected in surveys: Trust in institutions goes hand in hand with their distance from the citizenry. Americans trust their community the most, their state a little less, and Washington the least2.
Americans Trust Local Government Most, Congress Least. 2023. Gallup.
Majoritarian Electoral System
This giant country uses election systems that give the two dominant parties a huge advantage: They are almost all majoritarian elections (the loser goes away empty-handed, like elections to the Swiss Council of States). There are only a few proportional elections (proportional distribution, as in the Swiss National Council).
Majoritarian elections tend by their inherent logic to reduce the decision to two options, because voting for candidates with no chance of winning a majority is a waste of the vote. That’s why many people naturally vote for their second favourite but viable option 3 - or even just the lesser of two evils, as in these US presidential elections.
This logic explains why the US Congress has almost always had two dominant parties throughout its turbulent history. This logic has cemented the duopoly of the Democrats and Republicans since 1857.
Percentage of seats in the House of Representatives not held by the two largest parties.4
In Switzerland, this effect of majoritarian elections was recognised and after the First World War - on the third attempt - proportional representation was introduced. Here’s a Swiss campaign poster from 1918 that I believe would resonate with US-Americans today:
“Justice elevates a nation! Confederates, vote: Yes! on October 13” A Swiss campaign poster for proportional representation from 1918.5
The effect of proportional representation in Switzerland is evident: The ruling liberals and conservatives were joined increasingly by social democrats and the BGB. The modern four-party system that led Switzerland through the 20th century was formed.
The 1919 National Council elections, the first proportional election. Source: Historical Dictionary of Switzerland
Our sister republic across the Atlantic failed to modernise its electoral system. Instead Democrats and Republicans plastered over the general democratic deficit with intraparty democratisation: They introduced primaries that politicians had to win to be able to run as the party’s candidate in the general elections.
This will become important, because the incentives in primaries differ significantly from those in general elections: In primaries, candidates must primarily convince the party base, not the broad population. As Jonathan Rauch wrote in the Atlantic in 20166: “Primary races now tend to be dominated by highly motivated extremists and interest groups, with the perverse result of leaving moderates and broader, less well-organized constituencies underrepresented.”
Sort and add money
Now two developments add to this shift towards primaries.
The “Great Sorting”
Evidence that it is happening
Over the past few decades, voting districts have become much more clearly affiliated with one of the parties, resulting in many uncontested, one-party districts. This is evident at all levels of government and in all elections.
For easy comparison, I collected the results of US presidential elections by county since 1960. First, let’s note how US political geography has become inert from 2000 onward. Whereas before county allegiances were dynamic, elections are now set in a familiar pattern. Counties change hands or “swing” between the parties far less often.
Also, if with a bit of background knowledge you disregard the landslide wins of Richard Nixon in 1972 and Ronald Reagan in 1984, you notice that there are many more dark red or dark blue districts nowadays. That’s because the percentages have grown more extreme: districts vote either decidedly red or blue. This hints at them having become more ideologically homogenous. In other words: In more and more districts, the election is a foregone conclusion.
This is also true for the elections for the House of Representatives: In the majority of seats, one party has an over 10% advantage. This means one of the parties holds the seat relatively securely with a solid lead.
How this drives unreason
This “sorting” increases the importance of primary elections, which shifts the selection of politicians and the incentives that act upon them. The politically relevant audience for the majority of politicians in Washington is not primarily the centre of the population, but those highly motivated activists who dominate the primaries. These activist groups can credibly threaten to oust them in the next primary race if they don’t toe their line.
This arrangement is extremely vulnerable to being undermined. The prime example is, of course, how Trump hijacked the Republican Party’s primaries in 2016: “According to the Pew Research Center, in the first 12 presidential-primary contests of 2016, only 17 percent of eligible voters participated in Republican primaries, and only 12 percent in Democratic primaries. In other words, Donald Trump seized the lead in the primary process by winning a mere plurality of a mere fraction of the electorate.”7
Reasons why it is happening
A mini-overview of the key developments that end in the “great sorting”.
- As a starting point, keep in mind: The US Civil War (1861-1865) was fought because the slaveholders in the South wanted to secede from the North to preserve slavery. The war ended with the victory of the Union troops under the leadership of Abraham Lincoln - a Republican. The Democrats were then still the party of the South, supporting slavery.
- In the decades after the war, the Republicans largely abandoned their goal of reforming the South. Instead, they became a business-friendly economic party.
- With Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal coalition in the context of the Great Depression from 1929, the Democrats began to become more popular in the North and among ethnic minorities. Under John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, the Democrats then supported some demands of the civil rights movement led by Martin Luther King. This did not go down well with their conservative white voters in the South, and resistance formed in the so-called “Dixiecrats”.
- The Republicans “in the New Deal party systems tended to draw their support from the more affluent, so-called WASPs outside of the South, and voters from rural and eventually suburban areas as those communities came into existence.”8 Richard Nixon then pulled off the “Southern Strategy” to attract the discontented white working class in the south, most of whom were Evangelicals. “With Reagan as the party’s presidential nominee and eventual leader and public face for at least twelve years, the party attempted to fully meld its establishment wing—represented by the affluent, the business community, WASPs (elements that could perhaps be grouped together as country club Republicans), and rural and suburban voters in the North—with its newfound support among White southerners, evangelical Protestants and other religious conservatives, and working-class Americans (both within and outside of unions)“8
- By the late 20th century, this realignment was largely complete. The Democratic Party was identified with liberal to progressive policies focusing on social justice, civil rights, and expanded state intervention in the economy. The Republican Party was associated with conservative values emphasizing limited government intervention, free market economy, and traditional social norms.
The sorting is a fairly recent phenomenon beginning in the 1990s that seems to be mainly a consequence of how the positions of the two parties evolved in the decades prior. After Democrats had launched the New Deal and embraced the civil rights movement, Republicans from Richard Nixon onwards reacted with the “Southern strategy” to appeal to disaffected white voters in the South (who tend to be evangelicals). The result is that both parties had much clearer ideological profiles.
”However, according to Green, Palmquist and Schickler (2002) few southern Democrats shifted their party identification to the Republican Party. Instead over time, generational replacement occurred where new voters identified with the Republican Party as the older Democratic identifiers passed away.”9
A second factor that might be at play is that people tended to physically move to neighbourhoods based on criteria that correlate with political preferences (e.g. conservatives seeking the country-side, progressives seeking cities). However, according to Corey & Pearson-Merkowitz, the evidence suggests this factor to be a secondary and markedly lesser importance.9
Some authors suggest, a similar sorting process happened with regards to ethnicity. But I’m not convinced the data supports that. Under Bush Jr. (“compassionate conservatism”) and Obama Republicans sure tried to make up grounds with Hispanics and Asian voters as the US is becoming ever more diverse.
”We need to campaign among Hispanic, black, Asian, and gay Americans and demonstrate we care about them, too. We must recruit more candidates who come from minority communities.” Republican National Committee 201310
In this vain, many read Trump as being a repudiation of this strategy.
Be that as it may, it bears noting that, on average, not very much has shifted since at least the 1990s if we break up party support by ethnicity.
Source: Pew Research
Unbridled “independent” Money
Until the 1960s, party elites had significant influence over the process and usually got their preferred candidates through despite primaries. Then, through a series of often well-intentioned reforms, they increasingly lost influence. For example, regulating party financing led to donors injecting their finances into the campaign via private and often anonymous channels.
The “Citizen United” ruling of 2010 took this to the extreme: Corporations and lobby groups are officially allowed to spend as much money on election advertising as they want - as long as they do so without coordinating with the candidates. This led to a veritable explosion of opaque “outside money”11 in US election campaigns from 2012 onwards, as shown by the statistics from opensecrets.org.
Statistics from opensecrets.org
The shift towards primaries has also impacted where activists and lobby groups deploy their resources: increasingly in the primaries, and increasingly concentrated on one of the parties. They monitor politicians’ behaviour with the latent threat of supporting a more suitable rival in the next primaries. As David Karol explains:
“To secure the favour and support of these ‘intense demanders,’ candidates [in the primaries] must make political commitments, which increases the gap between the parties. These positions prompt activists and groups to align with one party or the other. The concentration of groups with divergent preferences in competing parties, in turn, increases the pressure for polarisation.” David Karol12
Some examples of such groups:
- Among Republicans, the religious right has become very influential (groups like the Moral Majority, Christian Coalition of America, Focus on the Family).
- The oil and gas industry is increasingly aligning with Republicans, environmental groups with Democrats.
- The gun lobby around the NRA and GOA
What’s the intended audience?
Overall, voter bases are more sorted, party structures weaker, and primaries more important. This combination explains why the US Senate is less polarised. Senate campaigns are conducted across an entire state and less frequently.
It also explains why Democrats remain(ed) the more reasonable party. “[T]he evidence clearly shows that behavioural changes are largely driven by Republicans,” as Michael Barber and Nolan McCarty wrote in 201313. “[A shift] far to the right is enthusiastically received by Republican voters, more so than a far-left shift by Democratic voters.”14
This is probably rooted in the fact that the electorate of the Democrats is also more diverse in the primaries. Candidates must already appeal to various voter groups. On the Democratic side, there may therefore be no single force capable of pushing the primaries in one direction nationwide.
This is as far as I have come. I hope I have captured the most important factors. I might expand the analysis to include the fragmentation of the media landscape since Cable News, social media, etc.
In summary, I would say after this research: When I see completely irrational Republican politicians again, who in a mafia-like letter threaten the employees of the International Criminal Court and their families, I wonder what their intended audience is.
Copy of the letter at Politico.*
Because when Ted Cruz, the senator mentioned at the beginning, pointlessly talked for 21 hours in the Senate, it might have looked ridiculous to us outsiders. But with his Republican base it was so popular that the organisation “Americans for Limited Government” named him Person of the Year 2013.15 So if you think of Cruz as representing his base, the sad thing is that the ridiculous behaviour starts to make sense.
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Footnotes
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Usually done to obstruct and thus prevent a vote (a “filibuster”). However, Cruz’s speech was time-limited, so it couldn’t even delay the vote. It was a symbolic gesture. ↩
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Among national institutions, those that have less freedom to make decisions fare better: The US Supreme Court is most trusted, then the president, and last but not least the actual representation of the people: the Congress. ↩
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Heywood, Andrew. Politics. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. 209. ↩
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https://history.house.gov/Institution/Party-Divisions/Party-Divisions/ ↩
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His article received much attention in the 2016 election year. ↩
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Ibid. Rauch 2016 ↩
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Brewer, M. D. & Powell, R. J. ‘The Evolution of the Republican Party Coalition, 1968-2020’ in Polarization and Political Party Factions in the 2020 Election. Edited by Jennifer C. Lucas, Tauna S. Sisco, and Christopher J. Galdieri. Lexington Books, 2022. ↩ ↩2
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Lang, Corey, and Shanna Pearson-Merkowitz. ‘Partisan Sorting in the United States, 1972–2012: New Evidence from a Dynamic Analysis’. Political Geography 48 (September 2015): 119–29. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2014.09.015. They’re citing Green, D., B. Palmquist & E. Schickler. (2004). Partisan Hearts and Minds. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. ↩ ↩2
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Zitiert in Albert, Zachary, Brian K. Arbour, Kevin K. Banda, Todd L. Belt, Robert G. Boatright, Mark D. Brewer, Christopher Chapp, et al. Polarization and Political Party Factions in the 2020 Election. Edited by Jennifer C. Lucas, Tauna S. Sisco, and Christopher J. Galdieri. Lexington Books, 2022. Loc. 4637. ↩
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The term “outside money” refers to political expenditures made by groups or individuals independent of the candidates and parties, and not coordinated with them. ↩
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Karol, David. ‘Party Activists, Interest Groups, and Polarization in American Politics’. In Thurber, James A., and Antoine Yoshinaka, eds. American Gridlock: The Sources, Character, and Impact of Political Polarization. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016. p. 69. ↩
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https://www.brookings.edu/articles/lessons-from-the-2022-primaries-what-do-they-tell-us-about-americas-political-parties-and-the-midterm-elections/ ↩
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https://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/lawmaker-news/194072-ted-cruz-2013-person-of-the-year/ ↩