Voters Don't Vote On Issues
Group and partisan identity has long driven voter decision-making, not a careful consideration of the issues.
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It’s been six-day since New York Democrats went to the polls to pick their nominee for mayor, and we still don’t know the winner. But that isn’t stopping political journalists from drawing broad and occasionally dubious interpretations from the results.
Over the weekend in the New York Times, Lisa Lerer looked at the incomplete results from last Tuesday’s vote - and the frontrunner status of Brooklyn Borough President, Eric Adams - and concludes that there may be a growing divide between white progressives and minority voters:
In a contest that centered on crime and public safety, Eric Adams, who emerged as the leading Democrat, focused much of his message on denouncing progressive slogans and policies that he said threatened the lives of “Black and brown babies” and were being pushed by “a lot of young, white, affluent people.” …. Black and brown voters in Brooklyn and the Bronx flocked to his candidacy, awarding Mr. Adams with sizable leading margins in neighborhoods from Eastchester to East New York.
… His appeal adds evidence to an emerging trend in Democratic politics: a disconnect between progressive activists and the rank-and-file Black and Latino voters who they say have the most to gain from their agenda. As liberal activists orient their policies to combat white supremacy and call for racial justice, progressives are finding that many voters of color seem to think about the issues quite a bit differently.
At the outset, it’s important to note that there is copious polling data and political science research that shows voters of color tend to be more moderate in their views, particularly on cultural issues. So a disconnect between white, Black, and Latino voters is not new. Indeed, this ideological divide is one reason conservatives have long believed that they could potentially peel away minority voters from Democrats. Perhaps the best example of this phenomenon came in 2004 when George W. Bush overperformed among Black and Hispanic voters, in part, because of his public support for a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage.
In 2016 and 2020, President Trump made inroads among Black and Hispanic voters. Indeed, as Lerer points out, he had stronger gains among both groups than white voters without a college degree. Since both Adams and Trump ran on a platform of law and order and getting tough with criminals, one might conclude that these situations are analogous. But this is the kind of comparison that gets political journalists in trouble.
Partisanship, Not Policy
It’s certainly possible that Adams's success in New York is a direct result of his tough-on-crime issue stance. But several other explanations need to be considered. Adams has been a public figure in New York politics for decades. He won four terms in the New York State Senate and was twice elected Brooklyn Borough President. His control of the Brooklyn political machine was a huge factor in his success in the borough.
Moreover, Adams is Black, and his strongest support came from the Black working class. As I wrote the other day, New Yorkers cast their primary votes primarily along tribal or group identity lines. Asian-Americans voted for Andrew Yang, affluent whites voted for Kathryn Garcia, and working-class Black and Hispanic voters went for Adams. Maya Wiley is the candidate who most clearly assembled a cross-racial coalition of middle-class and affluent Black voters as well as younger white liberals/hipsters.
There’s also another explanation that we have to consider: voters rarely vote on issues or policy preferences. The best book to read on this topic is Larry Bartels and Christopher Aachen’s “Democracy For Realists.” The authors conclude that the overwhelming motivation for voter choice is “group and partisan loyalties.” Voters have very little understanding of policy issues, struggle to identify policies as being liberal or conservatives, and tend to backfill their support for specific policies based on the stated position of the candidate they prefer.
The classic example of this is the 2016 election and GOP support for Donald Trump. For years, polls had shown that Republicans generally supported free trade, wanted to cut government spending, including social insurance programs, and prized cultural and social values above nearly all else. In 2016 they overwhelmingly voted for an anti-free trader, self-declared protector of big government programs like Social Security and Medicare, who had been divorced three times, appeared on the cover of Playboy magazine, and had previously been pro-choice. While once Republicans allegedly demanded that their party nominee be tough on Russia and committed to America’s alliances, they threw their lot behind a candidate and president who wanted to pull the US out of NATO and consistently sucked up to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The other excellent book to read on this topic is “Identity Crisis” by John Sides, Lynn Vavreck, and Michael Tesler, which highlights the disproportionate role that racial and ethnic identity played in the 2016 election and Trump’s victory.
To the extent that Trump won over Black and Latino voters - even as he presided over the most racist presidential administration in modern American history - it was more a function of personality than policy. In 2016, there was a notable gap between Trump’s support among Black and Hispanic women and men. He did better with the latter, suggesting that male voters responded more positively to this authoritarian rhetoric and more negatively to the Democrats’ female candidate. In 2020, after a significant investment in voter outreach, particularly among Hispanic voters in Florida and Texas, Trump did slightly better with these voters - but still only won 12% of Black voters and 32% of Latinos. As in 2016, a clear gender gap was visible. It remains to be seen if this shift was a result of minority voters being won over by GOP positioning on issues or is merely a function of Trump holding a certain appeal to these voters. But based on what we know about issue-oriented voting versus group identity or personality-based voting, it seems far more likely that it’s the latter rather than the former.
Then there is one more factor to consider. Latino voters may be following a political path trod by Italian, Irish, and Polish-American voters in aspiring to be seen less as an ethnic minority and more as part of the white majority. So once again, the issue is less one of policy positions and more of group identity.
Beware of the Narrative
The final obvious problem with Lerer’s argument is that New York City is overwhelmingly Democratic, and it’s simply impossible to compare it to the broader national electorate. Even if one accepts the argument that Adams won because of his tough anti-crime rhetoric, the implications are less significant than they seem. Does this mean Black voters are going to abandon the Democratic Party in 2022 for a Republican candidate who imitates Adams messaging? Of course not. Even if there is a divide between white liberals and black voters on crime, both groups will overwhelmingly support Democratic congressional candidates in 2022. After all, Black voters are the most loyal voting bloc in the Democratic Party’s electoral coalition. White liberals, in an era of rising GOP authoritarianism, are highly unlikely to abandon the Democratic Party either. It would be political malpractice to conclude that, if it worked in New York, Adams's anti-crime messaging would work elsewhere, particularly if spouted by a white Republican politician.
This gets to the final problem with taking an issue-oriented approach to voter decisions. National politics has in the Trump era become a zero-sum game in which voters from both parties view the other with deep suspicion. In an era of polarization, issues and policy outcomes matter even less.
I understand that it’s difficult for political journalists to take their eye off the issue ball - since that drives a considerable amount of political coverage. I also get that it feels almost unseemly to cover politics through the prism of group identity, but that’s long been the reality in American politics - and, if anything, it’s becoming more ingrained.
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Musical Interlude
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