tag:theconversation.com,2011:/nz/topics/us-politics-1015/articlesUS politics – The Conversation2024-03-08T03:10:46Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2250832024-03-08T03:10:46Z2024-03-08T03:10:46ZAlbanese’s ratings surge in YouGov poll; Tasmanian poll suggests difficult to form government<p>A <a href="https://au.yougov.com/politics/articles/48861-86-of-australians-support-the-right-to-disconnect">national YouGov poll</a>, conducted February 24 to March 5 from a sample of 1,539, gave Labor a 52–48 lead, unchanged since an early February YouGov poll. Primary votes were 37% Coalition (up one), 32% Labor (steady), 15% Greens (up two), 6% One Nation (down two) and 10% for all Others (down one).</p>
<p>Anthony Albanese’s net approval jumped ten points to -6, with 50% dissatisfied and 44% satisfied. Peter Dutton’s net approval was down two points to -10. For the first time since the Voice referendum, Albanese’s net approval is higher than Dutton’s. Albanese led Dutton by 48–34 as preferred PM (45–38 in February).</p>
<p>By 86–14, respondents supported Australians having a right to disconnect from work outside outside of hours. Dutton has said he would overturn Labor’s right to disconnect legislation if elected. </p>
<p>On this pledge, 35% said they were less likely to vote for the Coalition, 17% more likely and 48% no difference. These “more likely/less likely” to support a party given X questions usually exaggerate the issue’s salience.</p>
<p>In another encouraging national poll for Labor, the <a href="https://www.roymorgan.com/findings/9476-federal-voting-intention-march-4-2024">Morgan poll</a> gave them a 53.5–46.5 lead, a 3.5-point gain for Labor since last week. Primary votes were 36.5% Coalition (down 1.5), 34% Labor (up 2.5), 13.5% Greens (up 1.5), 3.5% One Nation (down 1.5) and 12.5% for all Others (down one). This poll was conducted February 26 to March 3 from a sample of 1,679.</p>
<p>The large majority of both the YouGov and Morgan polls’ fieldwork was before the Dunkley byelection. If this byelection had an effect on voting intentions, it won’t be part of these polls.</p>
<h2>Dunkley byelection near-final result</h2>
<p>With almost all votes counted in the federal March 2 <a href="https://tallyroom.aec.gov.au/HouseDivisionPage-29778-210.htm">Dunkley byelection</a>, Labor won by 52.7–47.3, a 3.6% swing to the Liberals since the 2022 election. Primary votes were 41.1% Labor (up 0.8%), 39.3% Liberals (up 6.8%), 6.3% Greens (down 4.0%), 4.7% for independent Darren Bergwerf (up 0.9%) and 3.1% Animal Justice (up 1.0%).</p>
<p>The primary votes of both major parties, but especially the Liberals, benefited from the absence of the UAP and One Nation, who had a combined 7.9% in 2022. The Greens’ result was poor. </p>
<p>The swing to the Liberals was below the 6.1% <a href="https://theconversation.com/labor-holds-dunkley-but-slumps-in-two-national-polls-liberals-lead-in-tasmania-224363">average swing</a> against the government in a government-held seat at a byelection. Owing to the loss of the sitting MP’s personal vote, government-held seats swing much more than opposition-held seats.</p>
<p>An early February <a href="https://australiainstitute.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Polling-Dunkley-Byelection-and-Stage-3.pdf">uComms poll</a> for The Australia Institute had given Labor a 52–48 lead in Dunkley. A mid-February <a href="https://au.yougov.com/politics/articles/48747-dunkley-seat-poll-shows-liberals-lead-51-49-in-upcoming-by-election">YouGov poll</a> had given the Liberals a 51–49 lead.</p>
<h2>Tasmanian Redbridge poll: difficult to form a government</h2>
<p>The Tasmanian state election is on March 23. A <a href="https://www.afr.com/politics/tas-libs-labor-sniffing-around-lambie-in-search-for-majority-20240304-p5f9q8">Redbridge poll</a> for The Financial Review, conducted February 16–28 from a sample of 753, gave the Liberals 33% of the vote, Labor 29%, the Greens 14%, the Jacqui Lambie Network 10% and independents 14%.</p>
<p>Tasmania uses the Hare Clark proportional representation system, with 35 total lower house seats elected in five seven-member electorates. A quota for election is one-eighth of the vote or 12.5%.</p>
<p>Analyst <a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2024/03/redbridge-says-its-multi-party-mess-as.html">Kevin Bonham’s seat estimate</a> from the Redbridge poll is 13–14 Liberals, 10–12 Labor, 4–5 Greens, 2–3 JLN and 2–6 independents. While the Liberals would be the largest party, it would be difficult for either major party to reach the 18 votes needed for a majority.</p>
<p>There were <a href="https://theconversation.com/labor-holds-dunkley-but-slumps-in-two-national-polls-liberals-lead-in-tasmania-224363">two polls</a> taken in the first week of the election campaign that had the Liberals much better placed to form a minority government.</p>
<h2>NSW Resolve poll: Coalition support surges</h2>
<p>A NSW <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/politics/nsw/nsw-labor-trailing-coalition-for-first-time-in-two-years-20240301-p5f90u.html">state Resolve poll</a> for The Sydney Morning Herald, presumably conducted with the federal Resolve polls in December and February from a sample of 1,035, gave the Coalition 38% of the primary vote (up six since November), Labor 34% (down two), the Greens 12% (down one), independents 12% (steady) and others 5% (down two).</p>
<p>Resolve doesn’t give a two party estimate until close to elections. The SMH article says “Labor is trailing the Coalition”, but the likely effect of preferences would give Labor about a 51.5–48.5 lead according to <a href="https://www.pollbludger.net/2024/03/06/resolve-strategic-labor-34-coalition-38-greens-12-in-nsw/">The Poll Bludger</a>. Resolve’s polls have usually been much better for Labor than other polls, but the <a href="https://theconversation.com/labor-steady-in-newspoll-but-down-in-resolve-its-tied-in-queensland-223853">February federal Resolve</a> poll had a slump for Labor.</p>
<p>Labor Premier Chris Minns had a 35–16 lead over the Liberals’ Mark Speakman as preferred premier (35–13 in November).</p>
<h2>NSW Secularists’ national YouGov poll</h2>
<p>The Secular Association of New South Wales has sent me details of a national YouGov poll conducted for them. This poll was conducted February 15–21 from a sample of 1,087.</p>
<p>By 55–45, respondents said they were not aware that their state has its own constitution separate from the federal constitution. Those who said they were aware of their state’s constitution were asked if they had seen or read it. Just 13% said they had read their state’s constitution, which is 6% of the overall sample.</p>
<p>For the third and final question, voters were told that Australia has no formal recognition of separation of government and religion, then asked if they would approve or disapprove of a constitutional amendment to formally separate government and religion in their state.</p>
<p>Voters approved of this proposition nationally by 51–20. Smaller subsamples in the eastern seaboard states had approve leading by 48–21 in NSW, 48–22 in Victoria and 50–21 in Queensland. The history of referendums suggests caution, as often big poll leads for a proposal collapse before referendum day.</p>
<h2>US Super Tuesday confirms it’s Trump vs Biden</h2>
<p>I covered the March 5 United States Super Tuesday primaries for <a href="https://www.pollbludger.net/2024/03/06/us-super-tuesday-primaries-live/">The Poll Bludger</a>. Donald Trump had big wins, and will win the Republican nomination after Nikki Haley withdrew. Joe Biden also dominated the Democratic primaries. In national general election polls, Trump is usually ahead by low single-digit margins.</p>
<p>I also covered the February 29 United Kingdom Rochdale byelection for <a href="https://www.pollbludger.net/2024/03/01/uk-rochdale-by-election-live/">The Poll Bludger</a>. George Galloway, who has attacked Labour from the left for a long time, won after Labour’s candidate was disendorsed but still appeared on the ballot paper as the disendorsement was after the close of nominations.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/225083/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>I have done paid work in the past for the NSW Secularists.</span></em></p>Two new polls also have Labor ahead of the Coalition on a two-party preferred measure.Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2238032024-02-23T16:56:55Z2024-02-23T16:56:55ZJoe Biden has raised more than Trump so far – here’s how US election fundraising is working out<p>Americans spend mind-blowing amounts of money on their elections. According to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) in the 2016 presidential election cycle the candidates spent a total of US$1.6 billion (£1.2 billion). This rose to US$4.1 billion in the <a href="https://www.fec.gov/">2020 cycle</a>, and it is likely to be much higher in the current election campaign.</p>
<p>Donations to presidential campaign funds come from individuals, political parties and <a href="https://www.fec.gov/press/resources-journalists/political-action-committees-pacs/">political action committees</a> (Pacs). The latter pool contributions from supporters to promote or oppose candidates, as well as raising money in the first place. They are legally independent from the campaign funds raised by candidates and parties, but they act in concert with them, for example, by funding ads which support the policies and positions taken by their candidates.</p>
<p>Political <a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/citizens-united-explained?ref=foreverwars.ghost.io">campaigns in the US</a> are very expensive because they run on for a long time and involve costly advertising. As soon as a new president is elected, preparations begin for the midterm congressional elections two years later, as well as the next round of presidential primaries.</p>
<p>The FEC updates the figures on money raised and spent on the 2024 presidential election campaign on a continuous basis. At the time of writing the 2024 presidential campaign has already raised a total of just over US$397 million by all the candidates, and spent just under US$294 million since January 2021. The Republicans have raised US$225 million and the Democrats $103 million.</p>
<p>As regards spending, the Republicans have spent US$191 million and the Democrats US$48 million on the 2024 election campaign so far. These sums do not include the money raised by congressional and state-level campaigns, but just relate to presidential hopefuls.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/us-election-haleys-supporters-believe-radically-different-things-to-trump-so-where-do-they-go-next-222674">US election: Haley's supporters believe radically different things to Trump. So where do they go next?</a>
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<p>The big discrepancy between the two parties in spending is because Joe Biden has no significant rivals for the Democratic party nomination, but the Republicans started out with nine candidates certified by the Republican National Committee. Spending by these hopefuls adds to the total raised.</p>
<p>Around 18% of the population gave money to a candidate or a party in the presidential election contest of 2020, according to the <a href="https://electionstudies.org/%20data-center/2020-time-series-study/">American National Election Study</a>. It is likely these small donations from individuals are largely motivated by their attachment to a party or a candidate.</p>
<p>Donations from corporations to Pacs supporting the candidates often reflect a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1996/06/16/pacs-appear-to-hedge-bets/e303d897-02e1-4baf-a27c-7bf201311af4/">strategy of “hedging”</a>, or giving money to both sides in order not to upset the winner if they back the loser. For example, the OpenSecrets website which tracks money in US politics, shows that Exxon Mobile gave 58% of its political donations to the Republicans and <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/exxon-mobil/recipients?toprecipscycle=2024&id=d000000129&candscycle=2020">42% to the Democrats</a> (in 2020).</p>
<h2>Costly challenges to Trump</h2>
<p>Donald Trump is facing a number of different challenges to his fundraising. By mid February he had raised less money <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/7340c372-2015-4855-aea2-c1d3aa4ac229">than the president</a>, and there are some signs that January’s fundraising was particularly strong. </p>
<p>The FEC data shows that <a href="https://www.fec.gov/data/candidates/president/presidential-map/">Biden has raised around US$92</a> million so far in this year’s campaign, whereas Donald Trump’s total is just under US$85.3 million. This represents the Biden and Trump totals out of the money spent by all presidential candidates up to this point.</p>
<p>In the 2020 election, Trump’s voting support was unsurprisingly strongest in the Republican-supporting states, <a href="https://eu.usatoday.com/story/money/columnist/2018/10/21/midterms-poorest-states-have-republican-legislatures/1694273002/">which tend to be poorer</a> than Democratic-supporting states. This means that he is likely to get less money from individual donations than Biden. </p>
<p>The gap between incomes in “red” (Republican) and “blue” (Democrat) states has been growing over time, so this problem is likely to get worse as <a href="https://gppreview.com/2020/02/21/growing-divide-red-states-vs-blue-states/">the election approaches</a>.</p>
<p>Another problem for him is that so-called “dark money” donations from rich individuals in 2020 overwhelmingly favoured the Democrats rather than the Republicans. Dark money refers to anonymous donations from the very wealthy via organisations described as “super Pacs”. In 2020 these donations exceeded US$1 billion, so they <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2021/03/one-billion-dark-money-2020-electioncycle/">are really important</a>.</p>
<p>According to OpenSecrets, Biden received US$174 million of dark money compared with <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2021/03/one-billion-dark-money-2020-electioncycle/">only US$25 million for Trump</a>. This premium for Biden may be even larger than in 2020 if, as seems likely, Trump gets the Republican nomination.</p>
<p>One interesting development is that Haley has been receiving significant sums from rich donors in her challenge to Trump for the <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-02-05/wealthy-donors-continue-to-pour-money-into-haley-s-longshot-bid?leadSource=uverify%20wall">Republican nomination</a>. Even though her bid is a long shot, these donors clearly prefer her to Trump.</p>
<p>Finally, Trump is facing US$83 million in fines following a guilty verdict from a New York jury in a sexual assault case against <a href="https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/politics%20/2024/01/29/donald-trump-awaits-verdict-fraud-trial/72398435007/">columnist E. Jean Carroll</a>. In a second case relating to his business empire in New York, the judge has ruled that <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/5d710932-526a-4205-8fc4-f2ba86c5c148?emailId=e5e68cb0-0621-49bb-8798-232992289602&segmentId=3d08be62-315f-7330-5bbd-af33dc531acb">fraud was committed </a> and fined him a total of US$355 million.</p>
<p>The FEC is keeping a close eye on campaign finance, so he will be well advised to resist the temptation to use <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/articles/markets/042716/what-happens-campaign-funds-after-elections.asp">campaign funds to pay off</a> these fines, since this would be illegal. </p>
<p>Overall, this means that the ex-president is likely to be outspent by a large margin by Biden’s campaign. But does this make a difference to the election outcome?</p>
<p>Recent research confirms consistent findings that campaign spending in US elections has a significant impact on support for candidates, although it tends to mobilise people to vote rather than to <a href="https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/708646">switch support between candidates</a>.</p>
<p>This means that the more the Democrats outspend the Republicans in the 2024 campaign the greater the chance that Joe Biden will beat Donald Trump, or vice versa.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223803/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Whiteley has received funding from the British Academy and the ESRC</span></em></p>Research shows that US campaign spending in elections tends to mobilise people to vote rather than to switch support.Paul Whiteley, Professor, Department of Government, University of EssexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2238132024-02-18T05:35:31Z2024-02-18T05:35:31ZDonald Trump faces half a billion dollars of debt and several court cases. But that may not stop him from becoming president again<p>The verdicts keep coming. </p>
<p>On Friday US time, the three-month hearing focused on Donald Trump’s business dealings in New York came to an end. Trump was ordered to pay back more than $US350 million (A$537 million), plus interest. He and two of his associates are banned from directing any business in New York for three years. His two sons, Donald Jr and Eric Trump, have also been handed two-year bans, and ordered to pay US$4 million (A$6.1 million) each. </p>
<p>In his judgement, New York Judge Arthur Engoron gave <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/feb/16/trump-verdict-judge-new-york-fraud-case">his own insight</a> into the Trump phenomenon, describing what he saw as a “complete lack of contrition and remorse” that “borders on pathological”. </p>
<p>While Engoron was referring specifically to business fraud in New York, the judge’s observation might also apply to Trumpism writ large. </p>
<p>Coverage of the case and its stunning end has consistently focused on Trump’s celebrity – after all, he built his national profile on the back of his supposed business acumen, trading on his long stint as host of the popular television show The Apprentice. </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/should-donald-trump-be-disqualified-from-state-ballots-in-presidential-election-heres-how-the-us-supreme-court-might-rule-221209">Should Donald Trump be disqualified from state ballots in presidential election? Here's how the US Supreme Court might rule</a>
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<p>The results of this civil case certainly seem to poke holes in the image of Trump as a consummate businessman. Combined with the money he owes as the result of his loss of a <a href="https://theconversation.com/does-trump-actually-have-to-pay-83-3-million-to-e-jean-carroll-not-immediately-at-least-222574">second civil defamation trial</a> brought by E. Jean Carroll, Trump is now in upwards of half a billion dollars of debt. It’s not clear <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/feb/17/donald-trump-legal-fees-how-will-he-pay">where this money will come from</a>, or what will happen to Trump’s existing New York businesses. </p>
<p>This has led some commentators to argue this most recent case represents a “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/feb/17/donald-trump-legal-fees-how-will-he-pay">stunning</a>”, “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/feb/16/donald-trump-financial-fraud-case">devastating</a>” and “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/feb/17/trump-civil-fraud-trial-analysis">shocking blow</a>” to the image of Trump as a successful real estate mogul better placed than anyone to run the world’s largest and most important economy. </p>
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<h2>The pathology of Trumpism</h2>
<p>It is certainly possible to argue Trump’s reputation as the embodiment of rugged American entrepreneurship played an important role in his successful bid for the presidency in 2016. At least some of his support was drawn from the sense that a political outsider and ruthless businessman would shatter the stale consensus of establishment politics. </p>
<p>But if it were possible to make that argument eight years ago, it is less convincing now. </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/does-trump-actually-have-to-pay-83-3-million-to-e-jean-carroll-not-immediately-at-least-222574">Does Trump actually have to pay $83.3 million to E. Jean Carroll? Not immediately, at least</a>
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<p>Trump’s celebrity profile was, of course, critical to his campaign. His rise to political prominence, though, came not so much as a result of his reputation as a successful businessman, but on the back of his unabashed peddling of racist conspiracy theories about <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/01/my-president-was-black/508793/">the first Black president</a>. </p>
<p>Trump’s ability to tap into a particularly American form of <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-wokeness-has-become-the-latest-battlefront-for-white-conservatives-in-america-207122">racial revanchism</a> – his political acumen in marrying conspiracy, racism, and political grievance in an increasingly unequal society – is what brought him to power. It is what sustains him still. </p>
<p>The pathology of Trumpism revolves around his politics, not his personal economics. It at least partly explains why this latest case, plus the 91 separate felony charges in <a href="https://www.politico.com/interactives/2023/trump-criminal-investigations-cases-tracker-list/">four criminal cases</a>, are unlikely to affect Trump’s political support, particularly with his base in the Republican Party. </p>
<p>That base is too far down the road Trump began mapping out when he staked his political reputation on the argument that a Black man could not possibly be qualified for the presidency of the United States. Even a half a billion-dollar hole punched through his business reputation will not change that. </p>
<h2>Nothing, or everything, might change</h2>
<p>That does not mean, however, that continued support for Trump is inevitable. </p>
<p>In another New York courtroom this week, a judge ruled that Trump’s first criminal trial will begin in just over a month. On March 25, for the first time in American history, a former president will <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68309680">face criminal charges in court</a>. </p>
<p>In what will likely become the first of four possibly consecutive criminal trials, Trump will face a potential six-week hearing on his efforts to cover up politically damaging information about his relationships with two women in advance of the 2016 presidential election. Dubbed the “<a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-16/date-for-first-ever-criminal-trial-of-a-former-us-president/103474454">hush money</a>” case, this trial represents more than the sordid dealings of an alleged serial adulterer; it represents, arguably, the beginning of a pattern of deliberate election interference that began even before Trump took office. </p>
<p>If it goes ahead as planned, a late March trial date will likely mean these hearings will barely be over before the next set begins. The <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-trumps-prosecution-for-keeping-secret-documents-is-lawful-constitutional-precedented-nonpartisan-and-merited-207970">classified documents case</a>, centering on Trump’s alleged illegal removal of highly classified documents from the White House, is scheduled to begin in Florida in late May. Scheduling for the other two cases, focused on on Trump’s role in the January 6 insurrection and election interference in the state of Georgia, remains unclear. </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/donald-trumps-stroll-to-victory-in-iowa-was-a-foregone-conclusion-this-doesnt-make-it-any-less-shocking-221207">Donald Trump's stroll to victory in Iowa was a foregone conclusion. This doesn't make it any less shocking</a>
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<p>None of this has ever happened before. There is really no telling what it will mean for Trump, his campaign, or American democracy more broadly. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/polling-disaster-terrify-team-trump-criminal-1234959962/">Polling suggests</a> that a criminal conviction may dent Trump’s national support. It is certainly possible such a conviction (or convictions), combined with eye-watering levels of debt, and the sheer logistics of conducting a national campaign amid multiple criminal trials, will have an impact. </p>
<p>But the pathology of Trumpism has so far proven resistant to what should be crushing blows. </p>
<p>The verdicts will keep coming. Trump may well, too.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223813/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Emma Shortis is Senior Researcher in International and Security Affairs at independent think tank The Australia Institute.</span></em></p>It’s difficult to know to what extent the massive repayment a New York judge has handed down to Donald Trump might affect his campaign. But his die-hard supporters are likely to be unfazed.Emma Shortis, Adjunct Senior Fellow, School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, RMIT UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2235022024-02-15T12:56:12Z2024-02-15T12:56:12ZUS Senate passes US$95 billion aid package for Ukraine – what this tells us about Republican support for Trump<p>After months of wrangling, the US Senate has finally <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2024/02/12/politics/senate-foreign-aid-bill-ukraine/index.html">passed</a> Joe Biden’s US$95 billion (£75 billion) foreign aid package. Ukraine is the destination for almost two-thirds of the aid, with US$14 billion set aside to assist Israel’s war against Hamas, and US$10 billion destined for humanitarian aid in conflict areas, such as Gaza.</p>
<p>The bill passed the Senate by 70 votes to 29, with 22 Republicans joining the Democrat majority. But two Democrats and Bernie Sanders, the independent senator for Vermont, voted against the bill because of its support of Israel.</p>
<p>The split in the Senate illustrates the divisions among both parties on the subject.</p>
<p>Republican senators originally <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/feb/07/us-senate-vote-bipartisan-border-bill">voted against</a> a much larger bill (US$118 billion). They demanded that any foreign aid package must be dependent on increased funding for security on the US southern border with Mexico, and declared the proposed bill was insufficient to address concerns there.</p>
<p>But when former president Donald Trump <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2024/01/27/trump-mike-johnson-border-00138223">came out against the bill</a>, even with the financial support for border control measures, Republicans were divided. Trump called the bill a “horrible, open borders betrayal of America,” and vowed that he would “fight it all the way”.</p>
<p>Republican support for the bill was led by Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell. McConnell has always been supportive of Ukraine, claiming it is in the US interest to support Ukraine. After passing the bill, <a href="https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2024/feb/11/mitch-mcconnell-fires-back-gop-critics-ukraine-aid/">McConnell argued:</a> “We equip our friends to face our shared adversaries so we’re less likely to have to spend American lives to defeat them.”</p>
<p>McConnell’s advocacy was enough to get the bill through the Senate, although his position as leader has been severely weakened by the number of GOP senators who defied him on the aid package.</p>
<p>McConnell’s support for Ukraine puts him in direct opposition to Trump. Last year, <a href="https://www.wsj.com/video/watch-trump-says-as-president-hed-settle-ukraine-war-within-24-hours/0BCA9F18-D3BF-43DA-9220-C13587EAEDF2">Trump said</a> he could end the war in Ukraine in just one day if he was reelected, indicating he would push the US towards a more isolationist position.</p>
<p>The former president doubled down on this with a statement at a rally in South Carolina on February 11, where <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/republicans-gop-trump-nato-remarks-b2494597.html">he declared</a> he would refuse to support Nato members who failed to pay their way, and that he would encourage invading nations “to do whatever the hell they want”.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/jGP1hJJNstI?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>This is not a new position for Trump, who has regularly <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/14/us/politics/nato-president-trump.html">talked about</a> pulling US support for Nato. But, as with his position on the Ukraine aid package, not all Republicans support his views. </p>
<p>Senator Josh Hawley, a staunch supporter of the former president, said that Trump was right to criticise those nations that did not pay 2% of their GDP towards the upkeep of Nato. But <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/republicans-gop-trump-nato-remarks-b2494597.html">he added</a> that the US should live up to its commitments and that if Russia “invaded a Nato country, we’d have to defend them”.</p>
<p>Unsurprisingly, Utah’s Republican Senator Mitt Romney, a long-time Trump critic, <a href="https://www.romney.senate.gov/romney-if-your-position-is-being-cheered-by-vladimir-putin-its-time-to-reconsider-your-position/">said</a> on the Senate floor: “If we fail to help Ukraine, we will abandon our word and our commitment, proving to our friends a view that America cannot be trusted.”</p>
<p>It is too early to know whether – and to what extent – Trump is losing the support of some of the Republican party. But there definitely appears to be a division along foreign policy between the former president and some Senate Republicans. </p>
<p>What is clear is that the majority of those opposed to abandoning Ukraine – and who supported the bill through the Senate – are made up primarily of national security hawks and former veterans.</p>
<h2>Now for the House</h2>
<p>Even though the bill has passed the Democrat-controlled Senate, it will have an extremely tough time in getting through the GOP-controlled House of Representatives. McConnell has already reached out to the House speaker, Mike Johnson, to ensure that it will get a fair hearing, but there are questions about whether the bill will even reach the floor. </p>
<p>In an <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2024/02/13/mcconnell-johnson-ukraine-aid-senate-00141201">interview</a> with US politics website Politico, McConnell asked Johnson to “allow the House to work its will on the issue of Ukraine aid”.</p>
<p>House Republicans have <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/bd3b8f97-cb00-4723-866e-8c94900680c3">called</a> the bill a “waste of time” and “dead on arrival” in the lower chamber. House support for the war in the Ukraine has fallen, especially as Republicans have begun to <a href="https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2024/02/07/house-oversight-republican-letter-ukraine-aid-border/72497628007/">scrutinise</a> the details of US assistance to Kyiv.</p>
<p>Johnson has declared that the bill will not even get a reading without sufficient provisions for security on the US southern border. “National security begins with border security,” <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4466433-discharge-petition-ukraine-aid/">he said</a>. “We have said that all along. That has been my comment since late October, it is my comment today.”</p>
<p>Johnson’s refusal to get the bill on the floor of the House is understandable. House Republicans that oppose the bill believe that if it does get a reading then there is enough of a majority among moderates in both parties for it to pass. Republican representative Andy Biggs, a member of the Trump-supporting <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_Caucus">Freedom Caucus</a>, <a href="https://x.com/AnthonyAdragna/status/1757415224875929742?s=20">told</a> one talk radio host: “If it were to get to the floor, it would pass.” </p>
<p>This is a not a sign that Trump’s influence on House Republicans is dwindling. But it shows there is still just enough bipartisan support for Ukraine for bills such as this to pass Congress.</p>
<p>Johnson is now at the centre of what will be a parliamentary issue. If he refuses to allow the bill to be read, then it may make it onto the floor through a <a href="https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R45920">“discharge petition”</a> brought about by a bipartisan majority. </p>
<p>This is a mechanism by which matters can be brought before the House without the sponsorship of the majority leadership. It would undermine Johnson’s position as leader of the House and deeply divide the Republicans in an election year.</p>
<p>The Senate passing the bill is a small victory for the pro-Ukraine lobby – but there could be many twists and turns before it gets voted on in the House, if it does at all.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223502/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dafydd Townley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>There’s no guarantee that the bill will even make it onto the floor of the US House of Representatives.Dafydd Townley, Teaching Fellow in International Security, University of PortsmouthLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2225582024-02-12T13:22:26Z2024-02-12T13:22:26ZAre you seeing news reports of voting problems? 4 essential reads on election disinformation<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573137/original/file-20240202-21-f3bec9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5871%2C3908&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A voter emerges from a voting booth in New Hampshire in January 2024.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/Election2024NewHampshire/972c19ed86d54978a681a700a4bfc1f5/photo">AP Photo/David Goldman</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In certain circles, the 2020 presidential election isn’t over – and that seems to be at least a little bit true. In recent weeks, official reviews of election records and processes from the 2020 presidential election have reported findings that might be used to spread rumors about voting integrity.</p>
<p>For instance, election officials in Virginia’s Prince William County <a href="https://26d73768-aba6-4644-905b-6ea5efbfc5d6.filesusr.com/ugd/d8ec42_4838ad7c950247ae9cf010d85b4654c1.pdf">announced on Jan. 11, 2024</a>, that <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/4409576-virginia-county-misreported-2020-votes/">4,000 votes from the 2020 presidential election had been miscounted</a>. None of them changed the results. Those miscounts gave Donald Trump 2,327 more votes than he actually got, and Joe Biden 1,648 votes fewer. Errors in counting turned up in other races, too, with both parties’ candidates for U.S. Senate being given fewer votes than they actually received, and a Republican who won a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives actually won by a slightly larger margin than previously reported.</p>
<p>An audit of South Carolina’s 2020 voting records <a href="https://scdailygazette.com/2024/01/17/auditors-find-no-fraud-in-sc-election-process-but-make-some-clean-up-suggestions/">released in mid-January</a> <a href="https://scdailygazette.com/2024/01/17/auditors-find-no-fraud-in-sc-election-process-but-make-some-clean-up-suggestions/">found no fraud</a> and no indication any election results could have been different with the errors that were identified. But the report did recommend election officials cross-check lists of registered voters with other state lists more frequently than they have done in the past. Death reports and prison inmate rolls can help them determine who should remain eligible to voter and who should be removed from voting lists, the report said.</p>
<p>The Conversation U.S. has published several articles about the systems protecting election integrity. Here are four examples from our archives. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/368026/original/file-20201106-23-1m7dosw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A Trump campaign poll watcher films the counting of ballots at the Allegheny County, Pa., elections warehouse" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/368026/original/file-20201106-23-1m7dosw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/368026/original/file-20201106-23-1m7dosw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368026/original/file-20201106-23-1m7dosw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368026/original/file-20201106-23-1m7dosw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368026/original/file-20201106-23-1m7dosw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368026/original/file-20201106-23-1m7dosw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368026/original/file-20201106-23-1m7dosw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Trump campaign poll watcher films the counting of ballots at the Allegheny County, Penn., elections warehouse in 2020 in Pittsburgh.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/trump-campaign-poll-watcher-films-the-counting-of-ballots-news-photo/1229491574?adppopup=true">Jeff Swensen/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>1. Changing numbers are evidence of transparency, not fraud</h2>
<p>The news reports of election audits came, originally, from election officials themselves, who specified they were below the small margins that would have triggered recounts. The reports also offered explanations for what had happened and how to fix it in the future – and included statements that at least some of the problems had already been fixed for upcoming elections.</p>
<p>That’s an example of what <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=NYzBHVcAAAAJ">Kristin Kanthak</a>, a political scientist at the University of Pittsburgh, was talking about when she explained that election results that change over time aren’t inherently a problem:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-votes-are-counted-in-pennsylvania-changing-numbers-are-a-sign-of-transparency-not-fraud-during-an-ongoing-process-149685">(T)his doesn’t mean the system is ‘rigged.’</a> Actually, it means the system is transparent to a fault,” she wrote.</p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-votes-are-counted-in-pennsylvania-changing-numbers-are-a-sign-of-transparency-not-fraud-during-an-ongoing-process-149685">How votes are counted in Pennsylvania: Changing numbers are a sign of transparency, not fraud, during an ongoing process</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>2. Easier voting is not a threat to election integrity</h2>
<p>Erecting obstacles to voting will not prevent the problems that do exist in the election system, for the simple reason that the flaws are not a result of easier voting methods, such as early voting and voting by mail.</p>
<p>Grinnell College political scientist <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=rx12P2YAAAAJ">Douglas R. Hess</a> observed that the COVID-19 pandemic was a massive test of whether a secure election could be held with a lot of <a href="https://theconversation.com/making-it-easier-to-vote-does-not-threaten-election-integrity-157007">accommodations that made voting easier</a>, and safer from the spread of disease.</p>
<p>As he wrote,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“(E)arly voting and voting by mail are targeted for restrictions in many states, even though both reforms are popular with the public, worked securely in 2020 and have been expanded in many states for years without increases in fraud. Likewise, the collection of absentee ballots – a necessity for some voters – can be implemented securely.”</p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/making-it-easier-to-vote-does-not-threaten-election-integrity-157007">Making it easier to vote does not threaten election integrity</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>3. It’s possible for election workers to be both partisan and fair-minded</h2>
<p>For many years, elections have been run by people who were members of one political party or the other but behaved in good faith to run fair elections, wrote <a href="https://search.asu.edu/profile/2408574">Thom Reilly</a>, a scholar at Arizona State University’s School of Public Affairs.</p>
<p>But both the facts and the rhetoric have changed, he explained, noting that a significant share of the electorate is not a member of either party – so the people who supervise elections, who are typically party members, are “<a href="https://theconversation.com/good-faith-and-the-honor-of-partisan-election-officials-used-to-be-enough-to-ensure-trust-in-voting-results-but-not-anymore-189510">an increasingly partisan set of officials</a>.”</p>
<p>Even so, many of them work hard to conduct fair elections. Yet, he wrote,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“<a href="https://theconversation.com/good-faith-and-the-honor-of-partisan-election-officials-used-to-be-enough-to-ensure-trust-in-voting-results-but-not-anymore-189510">(W)idespread misinformation and disinformation</a> on election administration is hobbling the ability of election officials to do their job and has created fertile ground for mistrust.”</p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/good-faith-and-the-honor-of-partisan-election-officials-used-to-be-enough-to-ensure-trust-in-voting-results-but-not-anymore-189510">Good faith and the honor of partisan election officials used to be enough to ensure trust in voting results – but not anymore</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/488374/original/file-20221005-12-kkkvga.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman with gray hair helps a man with gray hair cast a ballot at a voting machine." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/488374/original/file-20221005-12-kkkvga.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/488374/original/file-20221005-12-kkkvga.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488374/original/file-20221005-12-kkkvga.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488374/original/file-20221005-12-kkkvga.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488374/original/file-20221005-12-kkkvga.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488374/original/file-20221005-12-kkkvga.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488374/original/file-20221005-12-kkkvga.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A poll worker helps a voter cast a ballot in the Kansas primary election at Merriam Christian Church on Aug. 2, 2022, in Merriam, Kan.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/poll-worker-helps-a-voter-cast-their-ballot-in-the-kansas-news-photo/1412514591?phrase=election%20worker&adppopup=true">Kyle Rivas/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>4. Beware those who aim to confuse or mislead</h2>
<p>Political disinformation efforts are particularly intense around elections, warn scholars of information warfare <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=C6KSF5gAAAAJ&hl=en">Kate Starbird</a> and
<a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=db5ZPlkAAAAJ&hl=en">Jevin West</a> at the University of Washington and <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=udIHaZAAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">Renee DiResta</a> at Stanford University.</p>
<p>Situations to watch out for are those in which “<a href="https://theconversation.com/5-types-of-misinformation-to-watch-out-for-while-ballots-are-being-counted-and-after-149509">lack of understanding and certainty</a> can fuel doubt, fan misinformation and provide opportunities for those seeking to delegitimize the results,” they wrote.</p>
<p>Specifically, look out for:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“<a href="https://theconversation.com/5-types-of-misinformation-to-watch-out-for-while-ballots-are-being-counted-and-after-149509">Politically motivated individuals</a> (who) are likely to cherry-pick and assemble these pieces of digital "evidence” to fit narratives that seek to undermine trust in the results. Much of this evidence is likely to be derived from real events, though taken out of context and exaggerated.“</p>
</blockquote>
<p>They provide a reminder to keep your wits about you and be sure to double-check any claims before believing or sharing them.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/5-types-of-misinformation-to-watch-out-for-while-ballots-are-being-counted-and-after-149509">5 types of misinformation to watch out for while ballots are being counted – and after</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversation’s archives.</em></p>
<p><em><strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/election-2024-disinformation-151606">This article is part of Disinformation 2024:</a></strong> a series examining the science, technology and politics of deception in elections.</em></p>
<p><em>You may also be interested in:</em></p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/ai-disinformation-is-a-threat-to-elections-learning-to-spot-russian-chinese-and-iranian-meddling-in-other-countries-can-help-the-us-prepare-for-2024-214358">AI disinformation is a threat to elections − learning to spot Russian, Chinese and Iranian meddling in other countries can help the US prepare for 2024</a></p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/how-ai-could-take-over-elections-and-undermine-democracy-206051">How AI could take over elections – and undermine democracy</a></p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/events-that-never-happened-could-influence-the-2024-presidential-election-a-cybersecurity-researcher-explains-situation-deepfakes-206034">Events that never happened could influence the 2024 presidential election – a cybersecurity researcher explains situation deepfakes</a></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222558/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Scholars discuss aspects of protecting election integrity in the face of efforts to cast aspersions on voting results.Jeff Inglis, Politics + Society Editor, The Conversation USLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2226872024-02-07T13:10:10Z2024-02-07T13:10:10ZSuper Bowl party foods can deliver political bite – choose wisely<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573873/original/file-20240206-26-r38qeg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=44%2C8%2C5946%2C3979&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">If you are what you eat, what does that mean for your politics?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/super-bowl-or-football-theme-food-table-scene-royalty-free-image/1455050837">jenifoto/iStock/Getty Images Plus</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Conservative outrage over the presence of a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/30/us/politics/taylor-swift-travis-kelce-trump.html">female pop star at professional football games</a> is a sign of how many parts of American life and culture have taken on a partisan political flavor. </p>
<p>Partisanship doesn’t just apply to opinions about the dating lives of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. Food, too, is another aspect of the latest set of not-quite-political conflicts – including beverage brands and main courses. What you serve at your Super Bowl party, or what the host serves at the event you attend, can now be interpreted, or twisted, through a partisan lens.</p>
<p>Our <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=dCficcgAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">public</a>-<a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=da4Qi64AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">opinion</a> research shows that <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-power-of-partisanship-9780197623794?lang=en&cc=us">almost nothing today is free of partisanship</a> – whether the item in question has anything to do with government action, political ideology or public policy, or not. At times, the issues that erupt into political skirmishes are the result of fanciful conspiratorial thinking, blatant misinformation or just the personal preferences of political leaders.</p>
<p>We have found that these developments, in which polarization invades parts of Americans’ lives that really aren’t political, deepen existing divides in society. These conflicts also make it harder to have fun in mixed political company, and harder to steer clear of accidentally offending someone at your Super Bowl party.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573819/original/file-20240206-22-o7l407.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A sign reads 'Bud Light' with the logo of Super Bowl LVIII." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573819/original/file-20240206-22-o7l407.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573819/original/file-20240206-22-o7l407.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573819/original/file-20240206-22-o7l407.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573819/original/file-20240206-22-o7l407.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573819/original/file-20240206-22-o7l407.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573819/original/file-20240206-22-o7l407.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573819/original/file-20240206-22-o7l407.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">It’s an official sponsor of the Super Bowl, but Bud Light has been part of political controversy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/inbev-bud-light-beer-signage-is-displayed-at-the-911-taco-news-photo/1973661925">Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>An eye on Bud Light</h2>
<p>Bud Light has long been one of the <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/07/rise-and-fall-bud-light-boycott/674752/">nation’s most popular beers</a>. Politics has changed that.</p>
<p>In April 2023, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/article/bud-light-boycott.html">transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney</a> posted a video to Instagram promoting a Bud Light contest. The anti-trans backlash was swift, with calls for boycotts of the beer coming from Republicans, including <a href="https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/3992837-trump-weighs-in-on-bud-light-controversy-time-to-beat-the-radical-left-at-their-own-game/">former President Donald Trump</a>, <a href="https://www.vox.com/money/2023/4/12/23680135/bud-light-boycott-dylan-mulvaney-travis-tritt-trans">U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee</a> and <a href="https://www.houstonchronicle.com/food-culture/article/bud-light-boycott-dan-crenshaw-karbach-houston-17888207.php">U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw of Texas</a>. </p>
<p>By June 2023, Bud Light was <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/bud-light-dethroned-top-selling-beer-sales-modelo-america-boycott-1804728">no longer the nation’s best-selling beer</a>, falling behind Modelo Especial. The company that makes Bud Light, Anheuser-Busch, saw a 10% drop in revenue in the second quarter of 2023, which it <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/article/bud-light-boycott.html">attributed primarily to the conservative objections</a> to a trans person being associated with the brand. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573826/original/file-20240206-17-yz9iwa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A ladle holds some chili above a simmering pot full of food." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573826/original/file-20240206-17-yz9iwa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573826/original/file-20240206-17-yz9iwa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573826/original/file-20240206-17-yz9iwa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573826/original/file-20240206-17-yz9iwa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573826/original/file-20240206-17-yz9iwa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573826/original/file-20240206-17-yz9iwa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573826/original/file-20240206-17-yz9iwa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Would you like this dish less if you knew Barack Obama liked it?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/steak-chili-with-black-beans-royalty-free-image/1835909830">LauriPatterson/E+ via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Making the nonpolitical political</h2>
<p>In our book, “<a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-power-of-partisanship-9780197623794?lang=en&cc=us">The Power of Partisanship</a>,” we document that partisanship – psychological attachments to one of the two major political parties – in America has drastically increased since the 1950s.</p>
<p>We have found that more Americans identify as strong partisans than ever. We have also found that people’s political preferences are increasingly driven by negative emotions about the other party.</p>
<p>As a result of this increased partisanship, political leaders have more power than ever to introduce new issues and ideas into the public discussion, and use them divisively – even topics that have nothing to do with politics. And leaders’ views affect those of the public.</p>
<p>We found that this partisan phenomenon extends to food. For instance, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2017/02/23/trump-meatloaf-mania-moos-pkg-erin.cnn">Donald Trump likes meatloaf</a> and <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/obamas-chili-recipe_n_89826">Barack Obama likes chili</a>. We surveyed people and asked them about their political views and their food preferences. Some of them we told of Trump’s and Obama’s preferences, and some we did not.</p>
<p>Democrats whom we told that Trump likes meatloaf rated that dish significantly lower than Democrats whom we had not told of his preference. Likewise, Republicans we told about Obama’s preference for chili rated it less favorably than Republicans from whom we kept that information.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573829/original/file-20240206-29-wvuls8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A sliced meatloaf on a platter." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573829/original/file-20240206-29-wvuls8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573829/original/file-20240206-29-wvuls8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573829/original/file-20240206-29-wvuls8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573829/original/file-20240206-29-wvuls8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573829/original/file-20240206-29-wvuls8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573829/original/file-20240206-29-wvuls8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573829/original/file-20240206-29-wvuls8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Would you like this meal less if you knew Donald Trump liked it?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/homemade-savory-spiced-meatloaf-royalty-free-image/830989066">bhofack2/iStock/Getty Images Plus</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Menu planning</h2>
<p>So, when it comes to planning your menu, our research offers some advice.</p>
<p>For a party of Democrats, chili – possibly with an <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/03/arugula-rocks-come-at-me-spinach/585571/">arugula salad</a> on the side – is a safe bet. But meatloaf would be a better choice for a party of Republicans. You could reinforce those choices by accompanying the dishes with photos of the politicians with their favorite dishes.</p>
<p>Other foods also divide Americans. Consider <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/546704-rand-paul-calls-for-republicans-to-boycott-coca-cola/">steering clear of Coca-Cola if you are having Republicans over</a>: The company criticized Georgia’s 2021 law that shortened early voting and made it more difficult to vote by mail.</p>
<p>If you order takeout, some <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/5/29/18644354/chick-fil-a-anti-gay-donations-homophobia-dan-cathy">Democrats might be reluctant to eat Chick-fil-A</a> because of company leaders’ past opposition to LGBTQ rights and marriage equality. But more recently, it’s <a href="https://www.vox.com/politics/2023/5/31/23742373/chick-fil-a-boycott-controversy-conservative-backlash">Republicans who have criticized</a> the fast-food chain for hiring an executive focused on diversity, equity and inclusion – and for shifting the company’s donations <a href="https://www.today.com/food/essay/gay-chick-fil-a-customers-rcna91009">to be less political</a>.</p>
<p>In general, we recommend doing a quick online search to make sure you are up on your social network’s preferences of the day. That’s the best way, though not guaranteed, to avoid serving up something that has recently become politicized by partisan media or party elites. </p>
<p>You might not be up for that much work. Or perhaps you are one of the few Americans left with friends who <a href="http://www.wpsanet.org/papers/docs/Butters_Avoid.pdf">identify with both political parties</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573832/original/file-20240206-18-uc0i46.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A foil pan of a dish covered in cheese." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573832/original/file-20240206-18-uc0i46.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573832/original/file-20240206-18-uc0i46.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573832/original/file-20240206-18-uc0i46.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573832/original/file-20240206-18-uc0i46.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573832/original/file-20240206-18-uc0i46.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573832/original/file-20240206-18-uc0i46.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573832/original/file-20240206-18-uc0i46.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A safe bet: People of all partisan stripes like lasagna.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/lasagna-convenience-meal-royalty-free-image/178828120">JoeGough/iStock/Getty Images Plus</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In that case, based on the research in our book, we suggest serving salmon or lasagna. Both are foods that appear to be resistant to partisan cues and are well-liked by members of both parties. Or maybe just throw a potluck, hope for the best, and you may even learn something new about your guests’ political views. Perhaps your guests will rise above partisanship and just enjoy the event.</p>
<p>The old advice to avoid talking about politics and religion in mixed company is evolving. For Americans, almost anything can be political now – from what’s on the table to what’s in the dresser or closet, and even what music we’re listening to.</p>
<p>When elites take positions, partisans follow their leaders. That means every cultural gathering, from the Thanksgiving table to the Super Bowl couch, can be invaded by political conflict. We don’t know about you, but we just want to watch the game.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222687/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shanna Pearson-Merkowitz is a fellow at the Brown Policy Lab and has received funding for research projects from the USDA, the Russell Sage Foundation, and other organizations. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joshua J. Dyck does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Polarization invades parts of Americans’ lives that really aren’t political, dividing society more deeply. That includes decisions about whether or not they like meatloaf or chili.Joshua J. Dyck, Professor & Chair of Political Science; Director of the Center for Public Opinion, UMass LowellShanna Pearson-Merkowitz, Professor of Public Policy and Saul L. Stern Professor of Civic Engagement, University of MarylandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2213552024-01-18T16:49:32Z2024-01-18T16:49:32ZThe maths of rightwing populism: easy answers + confidence = reassuring certainty<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/570085/original/file-20240118-17-no0zv8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=149%2C77%2C3426%2C1820&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock/Pictrider</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Rightwing populists appear to be enjoying a <a href="https://theconversation.com/iowa-was-different-this-time-even-if-the-outcome-was-as-predicted-221094">surge</a> across the <a href="https://theconversation.com/far-right-poised-to-score-big-at-next-european-elections-214702">western world</a>. For those who don’t support these parties, their appeal can be baffling and unsettling. They appear to play on people’s fears and offer somewhat trivial answers to difficult issues.</p>
<p>But the mathematics of human inference and cognition can help us understand what makes this a winning formula.</p>
<p>Because politics largely boils down to communication, the mathematics of communication theory can help us understand why voters are drawn to parties that use simple, loud messaging in their campaigning – as well as how they get away with using highly questionable messaging. Traditionally, this is the theory that enables us to listen to radio broadcasts and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Claude-Shannon#ref666143">make telephone calls</a>. But American mathematician <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norbert_Wiener">Norbert Wiener</a> went so far as to <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/153954.The_Human_Use_of_Human_Beings">argue</a> that social phenomena can only be understood via the theory of communication.</p>
<p>Wiener tried to explain different aspects of society by evoking a concept in science known as the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/second-law-of-thermodynamics">second law of thermodynamics</a>. In essence, this law says that over time, order will turn into disorder, or, in the present context, reliable information will be overwhelmed by confusion, uncertainties and noise. In mathematics, the degree of disorder is often measured by a quantity called <a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/entropy-physics">entropy</a>, so the second law can be rephrased by saying that over time, and on average, entropy will increase.</p>
<p>One of Wiener’s arguments is that as technologies for communication advance, people will circulate more and more inessential “noisy” information (think Twitter, Instagram and so on), which will overshadow facts and important ideas. This is becoming more pronounced with AI-generated disinformation. </p>
<p>The effect of the second law is significant in predicting the future form of society over a period of decades. But <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-43403-4">another aspect</a> of communication theory also comes into play in the more immediate term.</p>
<p>When we analyse information about a topic of interest, we will reach a conclusion that leaves us, on average, with the smallest uncertainty about that topic. In other words, our thought process attempts to minimise entropy. This means, for instance, when two people with opposing views on a topic are presented with an article on that subject, they will often take away different interpretations of the same article, with each confirming the validity of their own initial view. The reason is simple: interpreting the article as questioning one’s opinion will inevitably raise uncertainty.</p>
<p>In psychology, this effect is known as <a href="https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/confirmation-bias">confirmation bias</a>. It is often interpreted as an irrational or illogical trait of our behaviour, but we now understand the science behind it by borrowing concepts from communication theory. I call this a “<a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.797904/full">tenacious Bayesian</a>” behaviour because it follows from the <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/bayes-theorem/">Bayes theorem</a> of probability theory, which tells us how we should update our perspectives of the world as we digest noisy or uncertain information.</p>
<p>A corollary of this is that if someone has a strong belief in one scenario which happens to represent a false reality, then even if factual information is in circulation, it will take a long time for that person to change their belief. This is because a conversion from one certainty to another typically (but not always) requires a path that traverses uncertainties we instinctively try to avoid.</p>
<h2>Polarised society</h2>
<p>When the tenacious Bayesian effect is combined with Wiener’s second law, we can understand how society becomes polarised. The second law says there will be a lot of diverging information and noise around us, creating confusion and uncertainty. We are drawn to information that offers greater certainty, even if it is flawed. </p>
<p>For a binary issue, the greatest uncertainty happens when the two alternatives seem equally likely – and are therefore difficult to choose between. But for an individual person who believes in one of the two alternatives, the path of least uncertainty is to hold steady on that belief. So in a world in which any information can easily be disseminated far and wide but in which people are also immovable, society can easily be polarised.</p>
<h2>Where are the leftwing populists?</h2>
<p>If a society is maximally polarised, then we should find populists surging on both the left and right of the political spectrum. And yet that is not the case at the moment. The right is more dominant. The reason for this is, in part, that the left is not well-positioned to offer certainty. Why? Historically, socialism has rarely been implemented in running a country – not even the Soviet Union or China managed to implement it. </p>
<p>At least for now, the left (or centrists, for that matter) also seem a lot more cautious about knowingly offering unrealistic answers to complex problems. In contrast, the right offers (often false) certainty with confidence. It is not difficult to see that in a noisy environment, the loudest are heard the most. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-have-authoritarianism-and-libertarianism-merged-a-political-psychologist-on-the-vulnerability-of-the-modern-self-218949">Why have authoritarianism and libertarianism merged? A political psychologist on 'the vulnerability of the modern self'</a>
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<p>Today’s politics plays out against a backdrop of uncertainties that include wars in Ukraine and Gaza with little prospect of exit strategies in sight; the continued cost of living crisis; energy, food and water insecurity; migration; and so on. Above all, the impact of the climate crisis.</p>
<p>The answer to this uncertainty, according to rightwing populists, is to blame everything on outsiders. Remove migrants and all problems will be solved – and all uncertainties eradicated. True or false, the message is simple and clear. </p>
<p>In conveying this message, it is important to instil in the public an exaggerated fear of the impact of migration, so their message will give people a false sense of certainty. What if there are no outsiders? Then create one. Use the culture war to label the “experts” (judges, scholars, etc.) as the enemy of the people.</p>
<p>For populists to thrive, society needs to be divided so that people can feel certain about where they belong – and so that those on the opposing side of the argument can be ignored. </p>
<p>The problem, of course, is that there are rarely simple solutions to complex issues. Indeed, a political party campaigning for a tough migration policy but weak climate measures is arguably enabling mass migration on a scale unseen in modern history, because climate change will make <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/srccl/">many parts of the world uninhabitable</a>.</p>
<p>Wiener was already arguing in 1950 that we will pay the price for our actions at a time when it is most inconvenient to do so. Whatever needs to be done to solve complex societal issues, those who wish to implement what they believe are the right measures need to be aware that they have to win an election to do that – and that voters respond to simple and positive messages that will reduce the uncertainties hanging over their thoughts.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/221355/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dorje C Brody receives funding from the UK Engineering and Physical Science Research Council (EP/X019926/1).</span></em></p>In an uncertain world our natural instinct is to seek out answers that reassure, even when they don’t make sense.Dorje C. Brody, Professor of Mathematics, University of SurreyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2194492023-12-29T11:44:39Z2023-12-29T11:44:39ZWhy Russia and China have been added to Republicans’ new ‘axis of evil’<p>Former US president George W Bush’s concept of an “axis of evil”, introduced in his 2002 <a href="https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2002/01/20020129-11.html">State of the Union</a> address, came to define the flawed foreign policy decisions of his years in power.</p>
<p>He used it to legitimise both the invasion of Iraq and the ensuing <a href="https://2001-2009.state.gov/s/ct/rls/wh/6947.htm">“war on terror”</a>. Bush’s axis of evil included Iraq, Iran and North Korea. They were bound together as long-standing US adversaries, rendered as actively seeking weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and who, he argued, collectively posed a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/onpolitics/transcripts/sou012902.htm">“grave and growing danger”</a> as antagonist regimes capable of attacking the US and its allies.</p>
<p>Rolling into 2024, with a <a href="https://fpc.org.uk/2024-us-presidential-elections-a-fork-in-the-road-for-the-future-of-american-foreign-policy/">US presidential election</a> on one side, and continuing geopolitical volatility from Ukraine to east Asia on the other, Republicans, in particular, have recently <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/11/29/axis-of-evil-russia-china-iran-north-korea-bush-era/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=FP%20This%20Week%20-%2012052023&utm_content=B&utm_term=fp_this_week#cookie_message_anchor">revived the term</a> to explain concurrently the machinations of China, Russia, Iran and North Korea.</p>
<h2>Clear and present danger?</h2>
<p>The new “axis” however, operates on different principles, and its links to US policy are more tenuous.</p>
<p>First, the distinction between original axis countries, including long-standing US adversaries North Korea and Iran, and new additions <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/05/china-beijing-biden-us-foreign-policy">China</a> and Russia. </p>
<p>During the cold war, Russia and China were of great concern to the US. But during the Bush era, neither was regarded as constituting either the remote or proximate threat of that first axis. Grouping the four suggests that some in Washington feel that both China and Russia pose a significant enough challenge to both US and global systems to add them to a renewed axis of evil, rather than categorising them separately as individual belligerents.</p>
<p>Second, the perceived threat to the US arising from associations between each of the four members is uneven. <a href="https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/the-persian-russian-connection">Russia’s connections with Iran</a> are long-standing and have been, mostly, tolerated by the US. </p>
<p>These links only become unpalatable, and worthy of including in an axis, when nations step over a particular line. Iran did so by helping Hamas plan <a href="https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/iran-israel-hamas-strike-planning-bbe07b25#:%7E:text=DUBAI%E2%80%94Iranian%20security%20officials%20helped,another%20Iran%2Dbacked%20militant%20group.">the October 7 attack</a> in Israel. </p>
<p>Russia has been added to the axis list – after undertaking expansionist adventures so significant (by invading Ukraine) that it cannot be ignored. So for both Iran and Russia, magnitude of ambitions counts. </p>
<p>Neither Russia’s invasion of <a href="https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/the-2008-russo-georgian-war-putins-green-light/">Georgia in 2008</a> nor <a href="https://www.history.co.uk/articles/putin-s-gamble-russia-s-2014-invasion-of-crimea">Crimea</a> in 2014 saw it consigned to a newfound axis of evil. It merely consolidated its status as a potential Eurasian rogue state. </p>
<p>It appears to be the risk of concerted collaboration between two or more axis members, and the combined threat that they represent that worries Washington. For example, former governor of South Carolina and presidential candidate Nikki Haley argued that <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/11/29/axis-of-evil-russia-china-iran-north-korea-bush-era/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=FP%20This%20Week%20-%2012052023&utm_content=B&utm_term=fp_this_week">“a win for Russia is a win for China”</a>.</p>
<p>Third, the complexities of what the four have in common with each other remain unclear. What currently binds China and Russia together is their expansionist intent. But this differs from the historic willingness to stir up regional volatility exhibited by <a href="https://geopoliticalfutures.com/predictable-volatility-iran-north-korea/">Iran and North Korea</a>. </p>
<p>China stands opposed to such sabre-rattling from North Korea, while simultaneously undertaking plenty of its own regional expansion.</p>
<p>More interesting perhaps are the immense natural resources wielded by <a href="https://www.chathamhouse.org/2022/02/huge-impact-fortress-economics-russia-and-china">Russia and China</a>, and to a lesser extent Iran. Russia and China make up enormous sections of Eurasia in terms of landmass, population and trading links binding their economies. </p>
<p>Does this suggest that the size, finances and natural resources <a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/3754480-20-years-later-the-axis-of-evil-is-bigger-bolder-and-more-evil/">of the new axis</a> and its friends may allow it to become a semi-insulated trade and economic block? Probably not, but only while Russia’s current expansionist efforts remain at a standstill. </p>
<p>A post-conflict situation in Europe (assuming an end to the Ukraine war) will ultimately reset the sanctions regime against Russia, and – depending on Beijing’s peace-maker intentions – could facilitate warmer east-west relations.</p>
<h2>Why revive the axis?</h2>
<p>There are both drawbacks and benefits to resurrecting the idea of an “axis”. For supporters of the approach, the new axis provides policymakers with a <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9780203073629-7/theories-truisms-tools-international-relations-kjell-goldmann">convenient who’s who of adversaries</a>. Assuming all four present a similar danger to the US, it gives a likely challenger for the presidency the chance to point at President Joe Biden’s foreign policy shortcomings.</p>
<p>While, unlike in Bush’s era, military interventions are probably not on the agenda, a more regionally targeted protectionist approach to <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/11/29/axis-of-evil-russia-china-iran-north-korea-bush-era/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=FP%20This%20Week%20-%2012052023&utm_content=B&utm_term=fp_this_week">“not try to do business with them”</a> is more probable.</p>
<p>There is little of real value for US foreign policy in taking this approach. This uneven grab basket of anti-American villainy is reductivist at best, and cartoonish at worst. It suggests equivalences of power whether there are none, imagined ideological symmetry, and coordination incapable of surviving the short-term twists of four separate foreign policies. </p>
<p>The revival of the “axis” appears to be largely coming from Republicans, currently in charge of Congress, rather than the White House. But much may change in 2024 if they take over the presidency.</p>
<p>Like the original axis, the new grouping conflates power and ambition across states, muddies domestic objectives with regional support between two or more of the members, and suggests the need for a new global fistfight to defend democracy.</p>
<p>Rather than superficial attempts at suggesting basic enmity across four disparate nations, more important for the US ought to be a concern about Russia, China, Iran and North Korea’s long-standing preference for authoritarianism, and the ominous implications for their neighbouring states and regions. Alignment and agreements come and go. Entrenched authoritarianism, however, is hell to shift.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/219449/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Amelia Hadfield does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>So far, the revival of the ‘axis’ appears to be largely coming from Republicans, rather than the White House.Amelia Hadfield, Head of Department of Politics, University of SurreyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2189442023-11-30T17:03:54Z2023-11-30T17:03:54ZHenry Kissinger was a global – and deeply flawed – foreign policy heavyweight<p>Declarations of the end of an era are made only in exceptional circumstances. Henry <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-67574495">Kissinger’s death</a> is one of them. </p>
<p>Kissinger was born into a Jewish family in Germany, and fled to the US in 1938 after the Nazis seized power. He rose to one of the highest offices in the US government, and became the <a href="https://history.state.gov/departmenthistory/people/kissinger-henry-a">first person to serve</a> as both secretary of state and national security adviser. </p>
<p>The 1973 <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1973/summary/">Nobel Peace prize</a>, which Kissinger shared with his North Vietnamese counterpart <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1973/tho/facts/">Le Duc Tho</a>, recognised his contribution to the negotiations that ended the Vietnam war. </p>
<p>Kissinger advised a dozen US presidents, from Richard Nixon to Joe Biden. For advocates of realpolitik – a quintessentially pragmatic, utilitarian approach to foreign affairs – Kissinger was both author and master. </p>
<p>Across many years, his viewpoint remained largely unchanged: national security is the centrepiece of sovereignty, as both a means, and end in itself. From this perspective, Kissinger’s transformative diplomatic involvement in seminal events in the 20th century, and iconic insights in the 21st have shaped swathes of western geopolitics. </p>
<p>His fierce ambition was a key part of his vision, namely to rework the bipolar structure of the cold war, bent on establishing both US power, and arguably his own role in it. </p>
<p>Kissinger had no qualms backing the military dictatorship behind <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/indonesia-invades-east-timor">Indonesia’s invasion of East Timor</a> in the 1970s. He supported the CIA in overthrowing president <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/24483554">Salvador Allende of Chile</a> in 1970, advocated sustained bombing in <a href="https://www.vietnamwar50th.com/1965_stemming_the_tide/Operation-ROLLING-THUNDER-Begins-the-Sustained-Bombing-of-North-Vietnam/">areas of North Vietnam</a>, and encouraged the wiretapping of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1982/04/14/article-accuses-haig-kissinger-on-wiretaps/7b504a95-48d5-480e-8521-a63dd4150f33/">journalists</a> critical of his Vietnam policy. He prioritised security over human rights, and commercial control over self-determination. </p>
<p>None of this was surprising. Kissinger’s entire approach to foreign policy was unsentimental at best, and brutish at worst. Peace, and the power to conclude a peace, could only be hewn coarsely from the unforgiving fibre of state relations, he believed. </p>
<p>To his critics, Kissinger’s actions in Vietnam, Chile, Indonesia and beyond significantly challenged his legacy of negotiation and diplomacy, and – in the eyes of some – were tantamount to war crimes.</p>
<h2>Peacemaker or polariser?</h2>
<p>Kissinger’s legacy will remain a mixed one. It incorporated truly ground-breaking efforts in opening up talks between <a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/nixon-china-week-changedwhat">the US with China</a> and the Soviet Union, alongside visibly polarising outcomes for US foreign policy in its relations with South America and south-east Asia. </p>
<p>As secretary of state to presidents Richard Nixon and <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/presidents/gerald-r-ford/">Gerald Ford</a>, Kissinger’s geopolitical achievements established him as an elder statesman of the Republican Party. This rested on a trinity of endeavours: pulling the US out of the Vietnam War, establishing a host of new diplomatic connections between the US and China, and cultivating the first stages of détente (improved relations) with the Soviet Union. </p>
<p>Vietnam remains the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/11/nobel-peace-prize-henry-kissinger-vietnam">most contentious of these areas</a>, with accusations that Kissinger blithely applied <a href="https://theconversation.com/henry-kissingers-bombing-campaign-likely-killed-hundreds-of-thousands-of-cambodians-and-set-path-for-the-ravages-of-the-khmer-rouge-209353">bombing and destruction in Cambodia</a> to extract the US from the Vietnam war. The peace was fragile and hostilities <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-11-30/henry-kissinger-vietnam-war-legacy/103172192">continued for years</a> afterwards without the Americans.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/henry-kissingers-bombing-campaign-likely-killed-hundreds-of-thousands-of-cambodians-and-set-path-for-the-ravages-of-the-khmer-rouge-209353">Henry Kissinger's bombing campaign likely killed hundreds of thousands of Cambodians − and set path for the ravages of the Khmer Rouge</a>
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<h2>Nixon and China</h2>
<p>Kissinger’s reputation is on sturdier grounds with the grand strategy to permanently open relations between the US and both <a href="https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB66/">China</a> and the Soviet Union. This facilitated a reduction in east-west tensions that materially benefited the US. It also saw Kissinger effectively playing the two communist powers against each other. </p>
<p>Concentrated through the lens of the cold war, the majority of Kissinger’s interactions were based on an approach that balanced caution with aggression, and pragmatism with the acquisition of power. </p>
<p>This was sometimes directly, but often through the use of proxy wars, including Vietnam and the 1973 Yom Kippur War between Israel and Arab states, which descended into a power play with the Soviets, as did the 1971 India-Pakistan war. The image of Kissinger entirely comfortable with the high-stakes poker game between superpowers is an arresting one. </p>
<p>Post-cold war geopolitics did not diminish Kissinger’s overall approach. He counselled generations of US decision-makers to remember the virtues of allying with smaller states as well as superpowers for reasons of power and commerce, and a commitment to retain lethal force in the <a href="https://www.nixonlibrary.gov/sites/default/files/virtuallibrary/releases/jun12/jun12/jun12_declass16.pdf">US foreign policy toolbox</a>.</p>
<p>For scholars of international relations, Kissinger’s numerous books, from the iconic <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/781183">Diplomacy</a> and <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2010474.Nuclear_Weapons_And_Foreign_Policy?ref=nav_sb_ss_5_16">Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy</a>, to <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58652519-leadership?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=VLyaF3eBNd&rank=1">Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy</a> are an inventory of hard-headed views on the unrelenting demands of classic and modern statecraft and the challenges of crafting not just foreign policy, but grand strategy.</p>
<p>They are also a masterclass in European history, with a powerful message regarding sovereignty and the supreme role of the national interests in foreign policy, regionally and globally. </p>
<p>Kissinger’s relentless dedication to realpolitik as the fiercest approach to managing international affairs is at odds with the many elements of his personality. Nowhere is this more evident than in his writing, with “characteristics ranging from brilliance and wit to sensitivity, melancholy, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/96110#:%7E:text=Stanley%20Karnow%27s%20Vietnam%3B%20A%20History,when%20the%20book%20was%20published.">abrasiveness and savagery”</a>.</p>
<p>Kissinger’s final impact is on the hardware and software of global diplomacy: guns versus ideas. A pragmatic, even cynical approach tackling the imbalance of power between states impelled Kissinger to promote seemingly paradoxical approaches: ground-breaking diplomatic approaches to ensure peace, easily reconciled with a ruthless reliance on military power. </p>
<p>This, in turn, gave his counterparts little option other than to cooperate, which they generally did, from the North Vietnamese to Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, to China’s prime minister <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Zhou-Enlai">Zhou Enlai</a>. </p>
<p>In his later years, seemingly immune to his foreign policy bungles, Kissinger’s celebrity diplomat status remained undimmed, somehow confirming the sense that international relations routinely transcends domestic politics, and in doing so, remains both a high stakes game, and a distinctive area of practice. His passion for foreign affairs never dimmed, commenting on the October 7 Hamas attack just a <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/1c73cfff-c2f4-4ad7-9c7a-dd5db70b883d?emailId=565a3f42-873d-4f06-9d23-3683c23efd61&segmentId=22011ee7-896a-8c4c-22a0-7603348b7f22">few weeks before his death</a>.</p>
<p>For every one of Kissinger’s brilliant moves, there was a bungling countermove. Students of foreign policy need therefore to consider both Kissinger’s scholarship and his practice. </p>
<p>They should look through examples of his work in which one side seizes upon anything resembling a diplomatic opportunity, and commandeers its potential to produce a win, and then calls that a victory. Such victories however could be fleeting and left behind tensions that frequently came home to roost.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218944/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Amelia Hadfield does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>For every one of Kissinger’s brilliant moves, there was a bungling countermove.Amelia Hadfield, Head of Department of Politics, University of SurreyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2189172023-11-30T05:02:58Z2023-11-30T05:02:58ZHenry Kissinger has died. The titan of US foreign policy changed the world, for better or worse<p>Henry Kissinger was the ultimate champion of the United States’ foreign policy battles. </p>
<p>The former US secretary of state <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-11-30/henry-kissinger-dies-aged-100/103171512">died</a> on November 29 2023 after living for a century.</p>
<p>The magnitude of his influence on the geopolitics of the free world cannot be overstated. </p>
<p>From world war two, when he was an enlisted soldier in the US Army, to the end of the cold war, and even into the 21st century, he had a significant, sustained impact on global affairs.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/kissinger-at-100-his-legacy-might-be-mixed-but-his-importance-has-been-enormous-206470">Kissinger at 100: his legacy might be mixed but his importance has been enormous</a>
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<h2>From Germany to the US and back again</h2>
<p>Born in Germany in 1923, he came to the United States at age 15 as a refugee. He learned English as a teenager and his heavy German accent stayed with him until his death.</p>
<p>He attended George Washington High School in New York City before being drafted into the army and serving in his native Germany. Working in the intelligence corps, he identified Gestapo officers and worked to rid the country of Nazis. He won a <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/30/henry-kissinger-nobel-prize-winning-warmonger">Bronze Star</a>. </p>
<p>Kissinger returned to the US and studied at Harvard before joining the university’s faculty. He advised moderate Republican New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller – a presidential aspirant – and became a world authority on nuclear weapons strategy. </p>
<p>When Rockefeller’s chief rival Richard Nixon prevailed in the 1968 primaries, Kissinger quickly switched to Nixon’s team. </p>
<h2>A powerful role in the White House</h2>
<p>In the Nixon White House, he became national security advisor and later simultaneously held the office of secretary of state. No one has held both roles at the same time since.</p>
<p>For Nixon, Kissinger’s diplomacy arranged the <a href="https://www.history.com/news/henry-kissinger-vietnam-war-legacy">end of the Vietnam war</a> and the pivot to China: two related and crucial events in the resolution of the cold war. </p>
<p>He won the <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1973/summary/">1973 Nobel Peace Prize</a> for his Vietnam diplomacy, but was also condemned by the left as a war criminal for perceived US excesses during the conflict, including the <a href="https://theconversation.com/henry-kissingers-bombing-campaign-likely-killed-hundreds-of-thousands-of-cambodians-and-set-path-for-the-ravages-of-the-khmer-rouge-209353">bombing campaign in Cambodia</a>, which likely killed hundreds of thousands of people.</p>
<p>That criticism <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/henry-kissinger-dies_n_6376933ae4b0afce046cb44f">survives him</a>.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/nixon-mao-meeting-four-lessons-from-50-years-of-us-china-relations-176485">pivot to China</a> not only rearranged the global chessboard, but it also almost immediately changed the global conversation from the US defeat in Vietnam to a reinvigorated anti-Soviet alliance.</p>
<p>After Nixon was compelled to resign by the Watergate scandal, Kissinger served as secretary of state under Nixon’s successor, Gerald Ford.</p>
<p>During that brief, two-year administration, Kissinger’s stature and experience overshadowed the beleaguered Ford. Ford gladly handed over US foreign policy to Kissinger so he could focus on politics and running for election to the office for which the people had never selected him.</p>
<p>During the turbulent 1970s, Kissinger also achieved a kind of cult status. </p>
<p>Not classically attractive, his comfort with global power gave him a charisma that was noticed by Hollywood actresses and other celebrities. His romantic life was the topic of many <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/may/27/henry-kissinger-100-war-us-international-reputation">gossip columns</a>. He’s even <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1998/02/05/uncovering-the-sex-lives-of-politicians/3bb26a91-03ec-4a14-8958-f6ac0d95b260/">quoted</a> as saying “power is the ultimate aphrodisiac”.</p>
<p>His legacy in US foreign policy continued to grow after the Ford administration. He advised corporations, politicians and many other global leaders, often behind closed doors but also in public, testifying before congress well into his 90s. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-nobel-peace-prize-offers-no-guarantee-its-winners-actually-create-peace-or-make-it-last-213340">The Nobel Peace Prize offers no guarantee its winners actually create peace, or make it last</a>
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<h2>Criticism and condemnation</h2>
<p>Criticism of Kissinger was and is harsh. Rolling Stone magazine’s <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/henry-kissinger-war-criminal-dead-1234804748/">obituary of Kissinger</a> is headlined “War Criminal Beloved by America’s Ruling Class, Finally Dies”. </p>
<p>His association with US foreign policy during the divisive Vietnam years is a near-obsession for some critics, who cannot forgive his role in what they see as a corrupt Nixon administration carrying out terrible acts of war against the innocent people of Vietnam. </p>
<p>Kissinger’s critics see him as the ultimate personification of <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-tortured-and-deadly-legacy-kissinger-and-realpolitik-in-us-foreign-policy-192977">US realpolitik</a> – willing to do anything for personal power or to advance his country’s goals on the world stage. </p>
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<span class="caption">Former US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, leaves behind a controversial legacy.</span>
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<p>But in my opinion, this interpretation is wrong.</p>
<p>Niall Ferguson’s <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Kissinger.html?id=H_ujBwAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y">2011 biography</a>, Kissinger, tells a very different story. In more than 1,000 pages, Ferguson details the impact that world war two had on the young Kissinger. </p>
<p>First fleeing from, then returning to fight against, an immoral regime showed the future US secretary of state that global power must be well-managed and ultimately used to advance the causes of democracy and individual freedom.</p>
<p>Whether he was advising Nixon on Vietnam war policy to set up plausible peace negotiations, or arranging the details of the opening to China to put the Soviet Union in checkmate, Kissinger’s eye was always on preserving and advancing the liberal humanitarian values of the West – and against the forces of totalitarianism and hatred. </p>
<p>The way he saw it, the only way to do this was to work for the primacy of the United States and its allies. </p>
<p>No one did more to advance this goal than Henry Kissinger. For that he will be both lionised and condemned.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-tortured-and-deadly-legacy-kissinger-and-realpolitik-in-us-foreign-policy-192977">A tortured and deadly legacy: Kissinger and realpolitik in US foreign policy</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218917/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lester Munson works for BGR Group, a Washington DC consultancy, Johns Hopkins University and the U.S. Studies Centre. He is affiliated with George Mason University and the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC.</span></em></p>Former US secretary of state, Henry Kissinger has died, aged 100. His legacy, including his involvement in the Vietnam war, is long, complicated and divisive.Lester Munson, Non-resident fellow, United States Studies Centre, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2145412023-11-21T13:22:50Z2023-11-21T13:22:50ZShows like ‘Scandal’ and ‘Madam Secretary’ inspire women to become involved in politics in real life<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560036/original/file-20231116-29-xjji4m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Netflix's show 'The Diplomat' is one of the few with strong female leads in politics.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/hollywood-ca-a-billboard-for-a-netflix-streaming-show-the-news-photo/1252546201?adppopup=true">Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images </a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Hillary Clinton famously did not win the 2016 election and become the first female U.S. president. Yet Clinton’s presidential campaign still resonated with many women who have said it made them more likely to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1065912915605904">get involved in politics</a>. </p>
<p>When women run for office, it can inspire other women and girls to become more politically active. Clinton, Vice President Kamala Harris, presidential candidate Nikki Haley and other high-profile female politicians have <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12351">motivated women to follow in their footsteps</a> and consider running for office.</p>
<p>It turns out that same sort of inspiration can happen when a female politician is not actually real, but instead is a character on a fictional TV show.</p>
<p>I am a <a href="https://www.cla.purdue.edu/directory/profiles/jennifer-hoewe.html">scholar of political communication and media psychology</a>. <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=J4fMerkAAAAJ&hl=en">My research</a> shows that when women watch a female lead character on a fictional political TV show, it can increase their interest in participating in politics and their belief that they can make a difference in the electoral process and results.</p>
<h2>American women’s political engagement</h2>
<p>Women run for office in the U.S. and serve in political positions less often than men. Only <a href="https://cawp.rutgers.edu/facts/current-numbers">28% of Congress and 24% of state governors are women</a>. The U.S. <a href="https://www.weforum.org/publications/gender-gap-2020-report-100-years-pay-equality/digest">ranks 86th among 152 countries</a> when it comes to the number of women who serve in political office – and how long they hold those positions, according to the World Economic Forum.</p>
<p>With the <a href="https://cawp.rutgers.edu/facts/voters/gender-differences-voter-turnout#GGN">exception of voting</a>, women are less likely than men to <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/it-still-takes-a-candidate/7BEAE647EF1B86EC62521AAFC159020B#fndtn-information">participate in political activities</a>. Compared with men, women often have <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S1743923X08000469">less confidence in their abilities to understand politics</a>.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2508.2006.00402.x">role model effect</a> documents that women and girls become more encouraged to participate in politics when they see other women run for political office.</p>
<p>And my research team found that this role model effect can translate into fictional TV content as well.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560039/original/file-20231116-23-rnrzil.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Women in white drop a ballot in a voting box." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560039/original/file-20231116-23-rnrzil.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560039/original/file-20231116-23-rnrzil.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560039/original/file-20231116-23-rnrzil.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560039/original/file-20231116-23-rnrzil.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560039/original/file-20231116-23-rnrzil.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560039/original/file-20231116-23-rnrzil.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560039/original/file-20231116-23-rnrzil.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">When women see strong female lead characters in political TV shows, it can inspire them to vote or find other ways to get involved in politics.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/woman-dressed-as-a-suffragette-casts-her-ballot-for-the-news-photo/1047626118?adppopup=true">Scott Olson/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Connecting with TV characters</h2>
<p>The fictional characters <a href="https://thegoodwife.fandom.com/wiki/Alicia_Florrick">Alicia Florrick</a>, <a href="https://scandal.fandom.com/wiki/Olivia_Pope">Olivia Pope</a> and <a href="https://madam-secretary.fandom.com/wiki/Elizabeth_McCord">Elizabeth McCord</a> are examples of women whose political power exists only on TV.</p>
<p>Alicia Florrick, played by Julianna Margulies, worked as a Chicago-based lawyer before she eventually ran for Illinois state attorney general in CBS’s drama “The Good Wife,” which aired from 2009 until 2016.</p>
<p>Olivia Pope, played by Kerry Washington, worked as a high-profile political fixer and consultant on ABC’s political thriller series “Scandal,” which started in 2012 and ended in 2018.</p>
<p>Elizabeth McCord, played by Téa Leoni, regularly overcame political obstacles as U.S. secretary of state – and later as the first female U.S. president – on the CBS drama “Madam Secretary,” which ran from 2014 to 2019. </p>
<p>Each of these shows includes a woman lead character in a nonstereotypical role – a leader successfully tackling political problems.</p>
<p>When people watch these TV shows, they can feel a strong bond with their characters, a connection researchers call <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/hcre.12063">parasocial relationships</a>. Viewers even use their attachments to TV characters <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/ppm0000358">to satisfy their need to feel connected</a> with other people.</p>
<p>Sometimes, connecting with fictional characters – and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1207/S1532785XMEP0704_2">seeing strong, female characters</a> – can even spark viewers to become more involved in politics.</p>
<h2>Inspiring political engagement</h2>
<p>Two studies that I co-authored show how viewers’ connections with TV show characters influence their political engagement.</p>
<p>Political engagement can mean a range of things, including how closely someone follows news about the government and elections. Political engagement can also be someone feeling that they can make a difference in an election and that they have a say in what the government does. Political engagement can also include circulating a petition, attending a political rally or speech and, of course, voting.</p>
<p>We found that viewers formed strong bonds with these fictional women, and these connections persisted even after the credits rolled at the end of each episode.</p>
<p>In our <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/08838151.2019.1570782">first study</a> on this topic in 2019, we surveyed people who watched one or more of three shows: “Madam Secretary,” “The Good Wife” and “Scandal.” When compared with individuals who watched less often, viewers who regularly watched one of these shows, who were mostly women, had particularly strong connections with that show’s lead female character. These bonds with the fictional character translated into viewers saying they had a growing interest in politics, feelings of making a difference in the election process and greater intentions to participate in politics. </p>
<p>In our <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/08838151.2020.1849703">second study</a> from 2020, we collected data from people who were much less familiar with these shows. Participants in an experiment viewed a leading female character in “Madam Secretary,” or a leading male character in another show, with either a political- or family-focused plotline.</p>
<p>When compared with the other experimental conditions, participants who self-identified as more feminine, primarily women, experienced greater connections with the female lead character when she was shown in a plotline that addressed a political problem. That then increased their interest in politics, feelings of political self-efficacy and plans for political participation.</p>
<p>Importantly, our study concluded that merely seeing women as lead characters on TV is not enough to prompt women and girls to become more involved in politics. Instead, these women characters must be shown as a political leader. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560040/original/file-20231116-17-2wrgwu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman walks past a billboard in front of a bus stop in a city. The billboard is for the show 'The Good Wife,' and shows a middle aged woman in a red dress looking directly at a camera." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560040/original/file-20231116-17-2wrgwu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560040/original/file-20231116-17-2wrgwu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=878&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560040/original/file-20231116-17-2wrgwu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=878&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560040/original/file-20231116-17-2wrgwu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=878&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560040/original/file-20231116-17-2wrgwu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1103&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560040/original/file-20231116-17-2wrgwu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1103&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560040/original/file-20231116-17-2wrgwu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1103&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A woman walks past a billboard promoting CBS’s ‘The Good Wife’ in 2009, shortly after the show’s release.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/woman-walks-past-a-billboard-promoting-cbss-the-good-wife-news-photo/93117421?adppopup=true">George Rose/Getty Images</a></span>
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</figure>
<h2>More than just entertainment</h2>
<p>Fictional television can influence viewers’ <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1532673X16651615">political attitudes</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.2006.00017.x">policy preferences</a>. Political TV shows, in particular, can be both <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/ppm0000091">fun and thought-provoking</a> for viewers.</p>
<p>Given the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/15205436.2016.1212243">limited amount of nonstereotypical TV content featuring women</a>, political TV shows with female lead characters may be particularly influential. Shows like “Madam Secretary,” “Scandal,” “The Good Wife” and, more recently, Netflix’s political drama <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt17491088/">“The Diplomat”</a> all feature strong female characters with high-profile careers in politics, entertaining millions of viewers.</p>
<p>But these shows do more than just entertain their audiences. The power of a woman character leading a political TV show extends beyond viewership to real-world political engagement.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/214541/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jennifer Hoewe does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Watching a woman character star in a fictional political TV drama can spark viewers, particularly women, to vote, campaign for a politician or find other ways to become involved in politics.Jennifer Hoewe, Associate professor, Purdue UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2175392023-11-20T18:59:52Z2023-11-20T18:59:52ZDisinformation campaigns are undermining democracy. Here’s how we can fight back<p>Misinformation is debated everywhere and has justifiably sparked concerns. It can polarise the public, reduce health-protective behaviours such as mask wearing and vaccination, and erode trust in science. Much of misinformation is spread not by accident but as <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate2875">part of organised political campaigns</a>, in which case we refer to it as disinformation. </p>
<p>But there is a more fundamental, subversive damage arising from misinformation and disinformation that is discussed less often.</p>
<p>It undermines democracy itself. In a recent <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352250X23001562">paper published in Current Opinion in Psychology</a>, we highlight two important aspects of democracy that disinformation works to erode.</p>
<h2>The integrity of elections</h2>
<p>The first of the two aspects is confidence in how power is distributed – the integrity of elections in particular.</p>
<p>In the United States, recent polls have shown nearly 70% of Republicans <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/03/politics/cnn-poll-republicans-think-2020-election-illegitimate/index.html">question the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election</a>. This is a direct result of <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/donald-trump-and-the-lie/A438DF5A45FE78CB2BC887859EFAB587">disinformation from Donald Trump</a>, the loser of that election. </p>
<p>Democracy depends on the people knowing that power will be transferred peacefully <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3273111">if an incumbent loses an election</a>. The “big lie” that the 2020 US election was stolen undermines that confidence.</p>
<h2>Depending on reliable information</h2>
<p>The second important aspect of democracy is this – it depends on reliable information about the evidence for various policy options.</p>
<p>One reason we trust democracy as a system of governance is the idea that it can deliver “better” decisions and outcomes than autocracy, because the “wisdom of crowds” <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/tops.12610">outperforms any one individual</a>. But the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08913811.2018.1575007">benefits of this wisdom vanish</a> if people are pervasively disinformed. </p>
<p>Disinformation about climate change is a well-documented example. The fossil fuel industry understood the environmental consequences of burning fossil fuels <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0349-9">at least as early as the 1960s</a>. Yet they spent decades funding organisations that <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate2875">denied the reality of climate change</a>. This disinformation campaign has delayed climate mitigation by several decades – a case of public policy being thwarted by false information.</p>
<p>We’ve seen a similar misinformation trajectory in the COVID-19 pandemic, although it happened in just a few years rather than decades. Misinformation about COVID varied from claims that 5G towers rather than a virus <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1329878X20946113">caused the disease</a>, to casting doubt on the <a href="https://www.cmaj.ca/content/195/15/E552">effectiveness of lockdowns</a> or the <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01644-3">safety of vaccines</a>.</p>
<p>The viral surge of misinformation led to the World Health Organisation introducing a new term – <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S014067362030461X">infodemic</a> – to describe the abundance of low-quality information and conspiracy theories.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/its-almost-like-grooming-how-anti-vaxxers-conspiracy-theorists-and-the-far-right-came-together-over-covid-168383">'It's almost like grooming': how anti-vaxxers, conspiracy theorists, and the far-right came together over COVID</a>
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<h2>A common denominator of misinformation</h2>
<p>Strikingly, some of the same political operatives involved in denying climate change have also used their rhetorical playbook <a href="https://www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminstitute/news/organisers-of-anti-lockdown-declaration-have-track-record-of-promoting-denial-of-health-and-environmental-risks/">to promote COVID disinformation</a>. What do these two issues have in common?</p>
<p>One common denominator is suspicion of government solutions to societal problems. Whether it’s setting a price on carbon to mitigate climate change, or social distancing to slow the spread of COVID, contrarians fear the policies they consider to be <a href="http://refhub.elsevier.com/S2352-250X(23)00156-2/sref46">an attack on personal liberties</a>.</p>
<p>An ecosystem of conservative and free-market think tanks exists to deny any science that, if acted on, has the potential to infringe on “liberty” through regulations.</p>
<p>There is another common attribute that ties together all organised disinformation campaigns – whether about elections, climate change or vaccines. It’s the use of personal attacks to compromise people’s integrity and credibility.</p>
<p>Election workers in the US <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2023/08/30/politics/rudy-giuliani-georgia-election-workers/index.html">were falsely accused</a> of committing fraud by those who fraudulently claimed the election had been “stolen” from Trump.</p>
<p>Climate scientists have been subject to <a href="https://jspp.psychopen.eu/index.php/jspp/article/view/4965">harassment campaigns</a>, ranging from hate mail to vexatious complaints and freedom-of-information requests. Public health officials such as Anthony Fauci have been <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s42738-021-00073-2">prominent targets of far-right attacks</a>.</p>
<h2>The new frontier in attacks on scientists</h2>
<p>It is perhaps unsurprising there is now a new frontier in the attacks on scientists and others who seek to uphold the evidence-based integrity of democracy. It involves attacks and allegations of bias against misinformation researchers. </p>
<p>Such attacks are largely <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/10/30/jim-jordans-conspiratorial-quest-for-power">driven by Republican politicians</a>, in particular those who have endorsed Trump’s baseless claims about the 2020 election.</p>
<p>The misinformers are seeking to neutralise research focused on their own conduct by borrowing from the climate denial and anti-vaccination playbook. Their campaign has had a chilling effect <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/09/25/gop-legal-attacks-create-chilling-effect-misinformation-research/">on research into misinformation</a>.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/inoculate-yourself-against-election-misinformation-campaigns-3-essential-reads-193582">Inoculate yourself against election misinformation campaigns – 3 essential reads</a>
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<h2>How do we move on from here?</h2>
<p>Psychological research has contributed to <a href="https://econtent.hogrefe.com/doi/10.1027/1016-9040/a000493">legislative efforts by the European Union</a>, such as the Digital Services Act or Code of Practice, which seek to make democracies more resilient against misinformation and disinformation. </p>
<p>Research has also investigated how to boost the public’s resistance to misinformation. One such method is <a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abo6254">inoculation</a>, which rests on the idea people can be protected against being misled if they learn about the rhetorical techniques used to mislead them. </p>
<p>In a recent inoculation campaign involving brief educational videos shown to 38 million citizens in Eastern Europe, <a href="https://safety.google/intl/en_uk/stories/defanging-disinformation-in-CEE/">people’s ability to recognise misleading rhetoric</a> about Ukrainian refugees was frequently improved.</p>
<p>It remains to be seen whether these initiatives and research findings will be put to use in places like the US, where one side of politics appears more threatened by research into misinformation than by the risks to democracy arising from misinformation itself.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>We’d like to acknowledge our colleagues Ullrich Ecker, Naomi Oreskes, Jon Roozenbeek and Sander van der Linden who coauthored the journal article on which this article is based.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/217539/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephan Lewandowsky receives financial support from the European Research Council, the Humboldt Foundation, the Volkswagen Foundation and the European Commission. He also receives funding from Jigsaw (a technology incubator created by Google) and from UK Research and Innovation. He also interacts frequently with the European Commission's Joint Research Centre in an advisory capacity and through scientific collaborations.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Cook does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>When people are pervasively disinformed, the very foundations of democracy can end up on shaky ground.Stephan Lewandowsky, Chair of Cognitive Psychology, University of BristolJohn Cook, Senior Research Fellow, Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2171872023-11-12T23:20:53Z2023-11-12T23:20:53ZLabor still far ahead in Resolve poll, in contrast to other recent polls<p>A <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal/voters-cut-support-for-labor-as-cost-of-living-concerns-mount-20231109-p5eius.html?btis=">federal Resolve poll</a> for Nine newspapers, conducted November 1–5 from a sample of 1,602, gave Labor 35% of the primary vote (down two since October), the Coalition 30% (down one), the Greens 13% (up one), One Nation 7% (steady), the UAP 2% (steady), independents 9% (steady) and others 4% (up two).</p>
<p>Resolve does not give a two party estimate until close to elections, but an estimate based on applying 2022 election preference flows gives Labor a 57–43 lead, unchanged since October. While this poll was published today, it was taken over a week ago, before the November 7 <a href="https://www.rba.gov.au/media-releases/2023/mr-23-30.html">interest rate rise</a>.</p>
<p>Resolve’s polls since the 2022 election have been far better for Labor than other polls. Other recent federal polls have been <a href="https://theconversation.com/albanese-and-labor-slump-to-worst-position-in-newspoll-since-2022-election-216819">last week’s</a> Newspoll and Redbridge poll that gave Labor respectively a 52–48 and a 53.5–46.5 lead, a 52–48 Labor lead in Morgan and a 48–46 Labor lead in a late <a href="https://essentialreport.com.au/reports/federal-political-insights">October Essential</a> poll including undecided voters.</p>
<p>While Resolve’s voting intentions are much better for Labor than other recent polls, their leaders’ ratings are not. On Anthony Albanese, 46% thought he was doing a poor job and 39% a good job, for a net approval of -6, down seven points since October. Albanese’s net approval was +27 after the May budget.</p>
<p>Dutton’s net approval improved 11 points since October to -4, his best net approval since the election and the first time in any poll Dutton has had a better net approval than Albanese. Albanese led Dutton as preferred PM by 40–27, a narrowing from 47–25 previously.</p>
<p>The Liberals extended their lead over Labor on economic management from 35–33 to 34–27. On keeping the cost of living low, the Liberals reversed a 31–27 Labor lead in October to take a 29–24 lead. These are the Liberals’ best results on these issues since the election. With 52% naming cost of living as the highest priority for their vote, this issue matters. </p>
<p>Voters are pessimistic about the economic outlook. In the next three months, 50% expect the economy to get worse and just 8% improve. In the next year, it’s 41% get worse and 23% improve.</p>
<p>By 60–19, voters said their income had not kept up with inflation over the past year. By 64–8, they expected inflation to get worse in the near future. By 65–9, they did not think interest rate rises are coming to an end.</p>
<h2>Morgan poll and additional questions from other polls</h2>
<p>In last week’s <a href="https://www.roymorgan.com/">Morgan federal poll</a>, conducted October 30 to November 5 from a <a href="https://www.roymorgan.com/findings/9531-roy-morgan-update-november-8-2023">sample</a> of 1,371, Labor led by 52–48, a one-point gain for the Coalition since the previous week. Primary votes were 35% Coalition, 31.5% Labor, 13.5% Greens and 20% for all Others.</p>
<p>Voters in last week’s <a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/cut-spending-taxes-to-curb-inflation-and-ease-living-expenses-says-newspoll/news-story/71f2a81154c9bfc77749a5a748bfbf0d">Newspoll</a> were also asked whether they approved or disapproved of five measures to help with cost of living.</p>
<p>Subsidising energy bills was most supported at 84% approve, followed by subsidising fuel prices (81%), cutting government spending (77%), giving tax cuts to individuals (73%) and giving cash payments to low-income families (56%).</p>
<p>In <a href="https://redbridgegroup.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Vote-intention-Nov-2023.pdf">additional questions</a> from Redbridge, by 50–36 voters thought the Albanese government was not focused on the right priorities. By 50–30, they thought the Coalition was not ready for government.</p>
<p>Essential had questions on the Melbourne Cup that were released on Cup Day November 7 in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/nov/07/melbourne-cup-2023-horse-race-field-broadcast-horses-australia-interest-day">The Guardian</a> from the previous <a href="https://essentialreport.com.au/reports/31-october-2023">national Essential poll</a> in late October.</p>
<p>On interest in the Cup, 11% said they had high interest (down four since 2022), 24% moderate interest (down seven), 27% low interest (up three) and 35% no interest (up seven). On betting, 13% regularly bet on horses and the Cup (down five) and 26% rarely bet on horses but make an exception for the Cup (down three).</p>
<p>On attitudes to the Melbourne Cup, 65% said it is a unique part of Australia’s national identity (down seven), 48% said it promotes unhealthy gambling behaviour (up three) and 36% said it normalises animal cruelty (up two).</p>
<h2>US off-year elections</h2>
<p>While the United States presidential election is in November 2024, there were some state elections on November 7. I covered the results for <a href="https://www.pollbludger.net/2023/11/07/us-off-year-elections-live-2/">The Poll Bludger</a>. Democrats performed well in the headline races, holding the Kentucky governorship and gaining control of the Virginia legislature, while Ohio passed two referendums supported by Democrats.</p>
<p>However, the legislative elections were mediocre for Democrats, as they did worse than Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election. US polls show Biden struggling against Donald Trump, and these elections should not change our opinion of 2024.</p>
<h2>NSW Resolve poll: drop for both major parties’ primary votes</h2>
<p>A New South Wales <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/nsw/nsw-labor-slides-as-greens-independents-make-ground-20231109-p5eiuo.html">state Resolve poll</a> for The Sydney Morning Herald, conducted with the federal October and November Resolve polls from a sample of 1,100, gave Labor 36% of the primary vote (down two since September), the Coalition 32% (down four), the Greens 13% (up four), independents 12% (down one) and others 7% (up three).</p>
<p>No two-party estimate was provided, but <a href="https://www.pollbludger.net/2023/11/12/resolve-strategic-labor-36-coalition-32-greens-13-in-new-south-wales/">The Poll Bludger</a> estimated a 56.5–43.5 Labor lead, a 2.5-point gain for Labor <a href="https://theconversation.com/support-for-both-the-voice-and-labor-drop-in-latest-essential-poll-213350">since September</a>. Labor Premier Chris Minns held a 35–13 lead over the Liberals’ Mark Speakman as preferred premier (41–14 in September).</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/217187/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adrian Beaumont does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Labor still leads on two-party preferred, but is feeling the strain as cost of living pressures take hold.Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2158422023-11-09T17:25:52Z2023-11-09T17:25:52ZTrade unions in the UK and US have become more powerful despite political interference and falling memberships<p>In September 2023, Joe Biden became the first sitting US president to <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-us-canada-66917039">join strikers</a> on a picket line. He told car workers that they “deserve a significant raise and other benefits”.</p>
<p>Even more surprisingly perhaps, those same workers – in a dispute with three of America’s biggest car manufacturers – were later <a href="https://apnews.com/article/labor-union-auto-workers-trump-strike-dfcb805fd4e749b13aaf827e1463da73">praised by Donald Trump</a>. Meanwhile in the UK, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has pledged to <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/sir-keir-starmer-pledges-to-repeal-any-new-anti-strike-laws-in-first-big-speech-of-the-year-as-rail-union-warns-legislation-could-lead-to-longer-strife-12780233">repeal anti-strike laws</a>, and “unequivocally” <a href="https://labourlist.org/2022/10/starmer-tells-tuc-congress-i-support-the-right-to-strike-unequivocally/">support the right to strike</a>. </p>
<p>It seems that ongoing – and largely successful – strike action in both the UK and the US has forced political leaders to take trade unions more seriously than they have for decades. </p>
<p>There is a shifting balance of power towards the unions, with employers increasingly agreeing settlements in the strikers’ favour. In the UK, key workers in sectors such as <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-66822398">education</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/sep/18/doctors-strike-to-disrupt-care-unlike-anything-seen-before-warn-nhs-officials">healthcare</a> and <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/train-strikes-full-list-of-dates-and-lines-affected-as-rail-and-tube-action-announced-12969794">transport</a> continue to strike in pursuit of better pay and conditions – no doubt encouraged by the successes they have seen elsewhere. </p>
<p>For example, in October last year, striking barristers <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-63198892">received a 15% pay rise</a>, while London bus drivers ended their industrial action after accepting a pay deal <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/long-running-london-bus-drivers-dispute-ends-after-18-pay-deal-12810250">worth 18%</a> in February 2023. Then in July, Royal Mail workers concluded a three-year dispute <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-66170432">after receiving a 10% rise </a>.</p>
<p>In the US, a well-publicised strike which stopped production of popular TV shows and films <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/25/business/wga-writers-strike-deal-explained.html">ended in success</a> for the Writers Guild of America, bolstering <a href="https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2023-11-06/actors-strike-sag-aftra-amptp-negotiations">action</a> by striking actors who have now agreed a <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-67364587">“tentative” deal</a> with Hollywood studios. </p>
<h2>Low numbers and high barriers</h2>
<p>That successful strike action is taking place at such a size and scale is remarkable considering the various hurdles still being faced by unions in both countries. </p>
<p>UK unions, once powerful enough to <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10.1080/13619468808580954">bring down a government</a> (as when Edward Heath succumbed to the National Union of Mineworkers in 1974), have faced an <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/irj.12349">increasingly restrictive environment</a>. This culminated in <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-consecutive-conservative-governments-destroyed-union-rights-a-timeline-of-the-uks-anti-strike-laws-since-the-1970s-198178">2016 legislation</a> which established high legal barriers for strike action, such as requiring a 50% turnout, or placing tight restrictions on where and how pickets can be conducted. </p>
<p>In the US, striking rights are weaker still, with the balance of power overwhelmingly favouring employers. Every single state (except for Montana) is an “at will” state, meaning that an employer can effectively dismiss an employee at any time, for any reason (if the decision is not illegal, such as being discriminatory). </p>
<p>Membership levels also paint a depressing picture for trade unions. In the UK, just <a href="https://www.cipd.org/uk/knowledge/factsheets/trade-unions-factsheet/#membershiplevels">22.3% of workers</a> were part of a union in 2022. In the US, the proportion is 10.1%, and <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/398303/approval-labor-unions-highest-point-1965.aspx">84% of households</a> do not include a single union member. </p>
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<p>For younger workers, with no memory or experience of what unions have achieved in the past, the numbers are even lower. Only <a href="https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/union2.pdf">4.4%</a> of US workers aged 16 to 24 are members of a union, and in the UK it’s just <a href="https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1158789/Trade_Union_Membership_UK_1995-2022_Statistical_Bulletin.pdf">3.7%</a>. </p>
<p>Lower levels of union membership results in <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1024258916673533">less bargaining power</a>, and therefore a weakening of employment rights and <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/000368499324615">job security</a> – which again makes the recent levels of industrial action a surprise. </p>
<h2>Striking a blow</h2>
<p>Falling membership also has a direct impact on the number of working days lost to industrial action, with substantial declines in recent decades. The US saw a peak of 52.8 million <a href="https://www.bls.gov/web/wkstp/annual-listing.htm">lost working days</a> in 1970, and a low of 200,000 in 2014. </p>
<p>In the UK, 29.5 million <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/timeseries/bbfw/lms">working days lost</a> in 1979 went down to as little as 170,000 in 2015. </p>
<p>But this vital metric of successful unionisation is also changing, with the number of days lost rising to <a href="https://www.bls.gov/web/wkstp/annual-listing.htm">2.2 million</a> in the US, and <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/timeseries/bbfw/lms">2.5 million</a> in the UK in 2022. </p>
<p>This suggests unions are becoming much more effective at galvanising the members they do have. An increase in the number of lost working days implies that workers’ feel like they can take industrial action, and that such action will actually make a difference. </p>
<p>This snowball effect will only embolden unions further, and aggrieved workers will feel more confident about standing up to their employers. </p>
<p>The fact that workers seem to be feeling empowered despite low numbers and an increase in the barriers to strike action, begs an important question about what is behind the current resurgence.</p>
<p>It may be down to the cost-of-living crisis spurring strained workers to demand <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/tv-shows/focus/20230201-uk-workers-on-strike-to-demand-higher-pay-amid-cost-of-living-crisis">above-inflation pay rises</a>. Or it may be thanks to unemployment levels being at their <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/08/03/strikes-2023-summer-unions/">lowest in nearly 50 years</a>, providing substantial bargaining power and leverage. </p>
<p>Many employers would struggle to find replacement workers at the moment, especially highly skilled ones, like those in the car industry. Unions know this, and therefore feel more comfortable agitating for better terms and conditions. </p>
<p>Responding to the unions’ apparent new levels of confidence, the UK government recently <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/strike-laws-to-be-passed-to-protect-vital-public-services-over-christmas">introduced legislation</a> designed to force some strikers back to work. Meanwhile Labour, which receives substantial funding from unions, is seeking to walk a tightrope of pleasing both workers and employers as it seeks a broad electoral coalition. </p>
<p>Both parties need to accept that trade unionism is experiencing a revival few thought possible – and one that shows no signs of stopping.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/215842/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Steven Daniels is a member of the University and College Union (UCU).</span></em></p>The picket lines have brought surprising levels of success.Steven Daniels, Lecturer in Law and Politics, Edge Hill UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2170242023-11-06T13:34:51Z2023-11-06T13:34:51ZWhy are US politicians so old? And why do they want to stay in office?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557470/original/file-20231103-25-kk1rtg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C8%2C2908%2C2397&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Donald Trump, left, and Joe Biden, both photographed on Nov. 2, 2023, are two of the three oldest men ever to serve as president.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Trump: Brandon Bell/Getty Images; Biden: AP Photo/Evan Vucci</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>When former President Bill Clinton showed up at the White House in early 2023, he was there to join President Joe Biden to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/watch-live-biden-and-bill-clinton-speak-on-30th-anniversary-of-family-and-medical-leave-act">Family and Medical Leave Act</a>. It was hard to avoid the fact that it had been three decades since Clinton was in office – yet at 77, he’s somehow three years younger than Biden.</p>
<p>Biden, now 81 years old, is the <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/20/politics/joe-biden-80th-birthday/index.html">first octogenarian to occupy the Oval Office</a> – and his main rival, former President Donald Trump, is 77. A Monmouth University poll taken in October 2023 showed that roughly three-quarters of voters think Biden is <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4233885-more-in-new-poll-likely-to-see-biden-as-too-old-than-trump/">too old for office</a>, and nearly half of voters think Trump is too old to serve. </p>
<p>My former boss, President George H.W. Bush, happily chose not to challenge Clinton again in the 1996 election. If he had run and won, he would have been 72 at the 1997 inauguration. Instead, he <a href="https://millercenter.org/president/bush/life-after-the-presidency">enjoyed a great second act</a> filled with humanitarian causes, skydiving and grandchildren. Bush’s post-presidential life, and <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/506330/americans-outlook-retirement-worsened.aspx">American ideals of retirement</a> in general, raise the question of why these two men, Biden and Trump – who are more than a decade and a half beyond the <a href="https://www.fool.com/research/average-retirement-age/">average American retirement age</a> – are stepping forward again for <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/05/a-broken-office/556883/">one of the hardest jobs in the world</a>.</p>
<h2>A trend toward older people</h2>
<p>Trump and Biden are two of the three oldest men to ever serve as president. For 140 years, William Henry Harrison held the <a href="https://thehill.com/changing-america/enrichment/arts-culture/3744771-here-are-the-oldest-us-presidents-to-ever-hold-office/">record</a> as the oldest person ever elected president, until Ronald Reagan came along. Harrison was a relatively spry 68 when he took office in 1841, and Reagan was 69 at his first inauguration in 1981. </p>
<p>When Reagan left office at age 77, he was the oldest person ever to have served as president. Trump left office at age 74, making him the third-oldest to hold the office, behind Reagan and Biden.</p>
<p>According to the Census Bureau, the <a href="https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2023/population-estimates-characteristics.html">median age in America</a> is 38.9 years old. But with the <a href="https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R47470">average ages in the House and Senate</a> at 58 and 64, respectively, a word often used to describe the nation’s governing class is “gerontocracy.” </p>
<p><a href="https://www.teenvogue.com/story/what-is-a-gerontocracy">Teen Vogue</a>, which recently published a story explaining the word to younger voters, defines the term as “government by the elderly.” Gerontocracies are more common among religious leadership such as <a href="https://www.ncronline.org/blogs/francis-chronicles/no-church-old-men-cardinals-called-be-grandfathers-pope-says">the Vatican</a> or <a href="https://today.lorientlejour.com/article/1313938/irans-fossilized-gerontocracy-faces-the-youth-in-the-street.html">the ayatollahs</a> in Iran. They were also common in communist ruling committees such as the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/soviet-gerontocracy-collapse-cautionary-tale-united-states-2022-9">Soviet Politburo</a> during the Cold War. In democracies, elderly leaders are less common.</p>
<h2>Beyond the White House</h2>
<p>Biden and Trump aren’t the only aging leaders in the U.S. It’s a bipartisan trend: Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, is 72, and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican, is 81. Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley was just reelected and has turned 90, with no plans to retire. Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders is 81 and hasn’t mentioned retirement at all.</p>
<p>In the House, California Democrat and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, at age 83, just announced she’s running for reelection for her <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-house-speaker-pelosi-seek-re-election-reversing-earlier-plan-2022-01-25/">19th full term in office</a>. Bill Pascrell Jr., a New Jersey Democrat, and Eleanor Holmes Norton, a Democrat who serves as the nonvoting delegate from Washington, D.C., are both 86. Kentucky Republican Harold Rogers and California Democrat Maxine Waters are both 85. Maryland Democrat Steny Hoyer is 84. The <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/08/us/politics/oldest-members-of-congress.html">list goes on</a>, and none of these politicians has indicated they’re retiring. </p>
<p>A local pharmacist on Capitol Hill made headlines a few years ago when he revealed that he was <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/10/11/16458142/congress-alzheimers-pharmacist">filling Alzheimer’s medication prescriptions</a> for members of Congress. Every one of the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/08/us/politics/oldest-members-of-congress.html">20 oldest members of Congress</a> is at least 80, and this is the <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/data-graphics/118th-congress-age-third-oldest-1789-rcna64117">third-oldest House and Senate since 1789</a>.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557487/original/file-20231103-15-7lxry0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man stands at a lectern with other people around him." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557487/original/file-20231103-15-7lxry0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557487/original/file-20231103-15-7lxry0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557487/original/file-20231103-15-7lxry0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557487/original/file-20231103-15-7lxry0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557487/original/file-20231103-15-7lxry0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557487/original/file-20231103-15-7lxry0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557487/original/file-20231103-15-7lxry0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">In July 2023, Sen. Mitch McConnell appeared to freeze while speaking with the media, raising questions about his age and health.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/sen-john-barrasso-reaches-out-to-help-senate-minority-news-photo/1556768368">Drew Angerer/Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>Delayed retirement</h2>
<p>What’s going on here? </p>
<p>Most baby boomers who delay retirement do so because they <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/032216/are-we-baby-boomer-retirement-crisis.asp">can’t afford</a> to stop working, due to inflation or lack of savings. But all of these political leaders have plenty of money in the bank – <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2020/04/majority-of-lawmakers-millionaires/">many are millionaires</a>. If they retired, they would enjoy <a href="https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/RL/RL30631">government pensions</a> and <a href="https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/RL/RL30064">health care benefits</a> in addition to Medicare. So for them, it’s not likely financial.</p>
<p>One theory is that it’s denial. No one likes to be reminded of their own mortality. I know people who equate retirement with death, often because of others they know who have passed away just after stepping down — which may explain why both <a href="https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/senator-dianne-feinstein-death/h_ad846d97416acf1e8bbaf2373d6205ab">Sen. Dianne Feinstein</a> and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/ruth-bader-ginsburg-dies/2020/09/18/3cedc314-fa08-11ea-a275-1a2c2d36e1f1_story.html">Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg</a> stayed so long on the job, dying while still in office at age 90 and 87, respectively.</p>
<p>For others, it’s identity-driven. Many of the senior leaders I’ve seen have worked so hard for so long that their entire identity is tied to their jobs. Plus, years of hard work means they don’t have hobbies to enjoy in their remaining years. </p>
<p>Another theory is ego. Some lawmakers think they’re indispensable – that they’re the only ones who can possibly do the job. They’re not exactly humble.</p>
<p>In the political world, their interest is often about power as well. These are the types who think: Why wouldn’t I want to keep casting deciding votes in a closely divided House or Senate, or keep giving speeches and flying around on Air Force One as president, or telling myself I’m saving democracy? </p>
<p>It’s easy to see why so few of them want to walk away.</p>
<h2>Age limits?</h2>
<p>There have been calls to impose age limits for federal elected office. After all, <a href="https://www.justice.gov/jmd/page/file/1446196/download">federal law enforcement officers</a> have mandatory retirement at 57. So do <a href="https://www.nps.gov/aboutus/become-a-law-enforcement-ranger.htm">national park rangers</a>. Yet the most stressful job in the world has no upper age limit.</p>
<p>For those who think mandatory retirement is ageist and arbitrary, there are other options: Republican candidate Nikki Haley has called for <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/3859468-haley-calls-for-mental-competency-tests-for-politicians-over-75/">compulsory mental competency tests</a> for elected leaders who are 75 and older, though she has said <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/time-competency-test-politicians-heres-why">passing wouldn’t be a required qualification for office</a>, and failing wouldn’t be cause for removal. A September 2023 poll shows <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4192393-mental-competency-tests-for-politicians-over-75-see-overwhelming-support-in-new-poll/">huge majorities of Americans support competency testing</a>. That way, the public would know who was sharp and who was not. Sounds like a fine idea to me.</p>
<p>So does having the generosity to step aside and think of others. And having the wisdom to realize that life is short and about more than just going to work. And having the grace to do what John F. Kennedy, the nation’s second-youngest president, once said: to <a href="https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/president-john-f-kennedys-inaugural-address">pass the torch to a new generation of Americans</a>.</p>
<p>My colleague professor Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/feb/19/us-congress-presidency-gerontocracy">puts it well</a>: “I’m 70, so I have great sympathy for these people: 80 is looking a lot younger than it used to, as far as I’m concerned. But no, it’s ridiculous. We’ve got to get back to electing people in their 50s and early 60s.” And the <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4233885-more-in-new-poll-likely-to-see-biden-as-too-old-than-trump/">polling shows</a> that most Americans would say, “Amen, brother.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/217024/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mary Kate Cary does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Many years beyond the average American retirement age, politicians vie for power and influence. Their constituents tend to prefer they step back and pass the torch to younger people.Mary Kate Cary, Adjunct Professor of Politics and Director of Think Again, University of VirginiaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2168092023-11-03T21:14:23Z2023-11-03T21:14:23ZIt’s not just about facts: Democrats and Republicans have sharply different attitudes about removing misinformation from social media<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557492/original/file-20231103-28-dk0wt0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C10%2C7217%2C4808&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Your political leanings go a long way to determine whether you think it's a good or bad idea to take down misinformation.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/man-reading-fake-news-on-laptop-royalty-free-image/1441611425">Johner Images via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Misinformation is a key <a href="https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Global_Risks_Report_2023.pdf">global threat</a>, but Democrats and Republicans disagree about how to address the problem. In particular, Democrats and Republicans diverge sharply on removing misinformation from social media.</p>
<p>Only three weeks after the Biden administration announced the Disinformation Governance Board in April 2022, the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/05/18/disinformation-board-dhs-nina-jankowicz/">effort to develop best practices for countering disinformation was halted</a> because of Republican concerns about its mission. Why do Democrats and Republicans have such different attitudes about content moderation?</p>
<p>My colleagues <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=5EIL7zMAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate">Jennifer Pan</a> and <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=KfipOeoAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate">Margaret E. Roberts</a> and <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=3flEE1wAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate">I</a> found in a study published in the journal Science Advances that Democrats and Republicans not only disagree about what is true or false, they also <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adg6799">differ in their internalized preferences</a> for content moderation. Internalized preferences may be related to people’s moral values, identities or other psychological factors, or people internalizing the preferences of party elites. </p>
<p>And though people are sometimes strategic about wanting misinformation that counters their political views removed, internalized preferences are a much larger factor in the differing attitudes toward content moderation. </p>
<h2>Internalized preferences or partisan bias?</h2>
<p>In our study, we found that Democrats are about twice as likely as Republicans to want to remove misinformation, while Republicans are about twice as likely as Democrats to consider removal of misinformation as censorship. Democrats’ attitudes might depend somewhat on whether the content aligns with their own political views, but this seems to be due, at least in part, to different perceptions of accuracy.</p>
<p>Previous research showed that Democrats and Republicans <a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2210666120">have different views</a> about content moderation of misinformation. One of the most prominent explanations is the “fact gap”: the difference in what Democrats and Republicans believe is true or false. For example, a study found that both Democrats and Republicans were more likely to believe news headlines <a href="https://doi.org/10.1257/jep.31.2.211">that were aligned with their own political views</a>.</p>
<p>But it is unlikely that the fact gap alone can explain the huge differences in content moderation attitudes. That’s why we set out to study two other factors that might lead Democrats and Republicans to have different attitudes: preference gap and party promotion. A preference gap is a difference in internalized preferences about whether, and what, content should be removed. Party promotion is a person making content moderation decisions based on whether the content aligns with their partisan views. </p>
<p>We asked 1,120 U.S. survey respondents who identified as either Democrat or Republican about their opinions on a set of political headlines that we identified as misinformation based on a bipartisan fact check. Each respondent saw one headline that was aligned with their own political views and one headline that was misaligned. After each headline, the respondent answered whether they would want the social media company to remove the headline, whether they would consider it censorship if the social media platform removed the headline, whether they would report the headline as harmful, and how accurate the headline was.</p>
<h2>Deep-seated differences</h2>
<p>When we compared how Democrats and Republicans would deal with headlines overall, we found strong evidence for a preference gap. Overall, 69% of Democrats said misinformation headlines in our study should be removed, but only 34% of Republicans said the same; 49% of Democrats considered the misinformation headlines harmful, but only 27% of Republicans said the same; and 65% of Republicans considered headline removal to be censorship, but only 29% of Democrats said the same.</p>
<p>Even in cases where Democrats and Republicans agreed that the same headlines were inaccurate, Democrats were nearly twice as likely as Republicans to want to remove the content, while Republicans were nearly twice as likely as Democrats to consider removal censorship. </p>
<p><iframe id="GJnyn" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/GJnyn/1/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>We didn’t test explicitly why Democrats and Republicans have such different internalized preferences, but there are at least two possible reasons. First, Democrats and Republicans might differ in factors like their <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/a0015141">moral values</a> or <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2020.104031">identities</a>. Second, Democrats and Republicans might internalize what the elites in their parties signal. For example, Republican elites have recently framed content moderation as a <a href="https://www.rubio.senate.gov/rubio-introduces-sec-230-legislation-to-crack-down-on-big-tech-algorithms-and-protect-free-speech/">free speech</a> and <a href="https://www.flgov.com/2021/05/24/governor-ron-desantis-signs-bill-to-stop-the-censorship-of-floridians-by-big-tech/">censorship</a> issue. Republicans might use these elites’ preferences to inform their own.</p>
<p>When we zoomed in on headlines that are either aligned or misaligned for Democrats, we found a party promotion effect: Democrats were less favorable to content moderation when misinformation aligned with their own views. Democrats were 11% less likely to want the social media company to remove headlines that aligned with their own political views. They were 13% less likely to report headlines that aligned with their own views as harmful. We didn’t find a similar effect for Republicans. </p>
<p>Our study shows that party promotion may be partly due to different perceptions of accuracy of the headlines. When we looked only at Democrats who agreed with our statement that the headlines were false, the party promotion effect was reduced to 7%.</p>
<h2>Implications for social media platforms</h2>
<p>We find it encouraging that the effect of party promotion is much smaller than the effect of internalized preferences, especially when accounting for accuracy perceptions. However, given the huge partisan differences in content moderation preferences, we believe that social media companies should look beyond the fact gap when designing content moderation policies that aim for bipartisan support.</p>
<p>Future research could explore whether getting Democrats and Republicans to agree on <a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4005326">moderation processes</a> – rather than moderation of individual pieces of content – could reduce disagreement. Also, other types of content moderation such as downweighting, which involves platforms reducing the virality of certain content, might prove to be less contentious. Finally, if the preference gap – the differences in deep-seated preferences between Democrats and Republicans – is rooted in value differences, platforms could try to use <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/spc3.12501">different moral framings</a> to appeal to people on both sides of the partisan divide.</p>
<p>For now, Democrats and Republicans are likely to continue to disagree over whether removing misinformation from social media improves public discourse or amounts to censorship.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/216809/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ruth Elisabeth Appel has been supported by an SAP Stanford Graduate Fellowship in Science and Engineering, a Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society PhD Research Fellowship and a Stanford Impact Labs Summer Collaborative Research Fellowship. She has interned at Google in 2020 and attended an event where food was paid for by Meta.</span></em></p>One person’s content moderation is another’s censorship when it comes to Democrats’ and Republicans’ views on handling misinformation.Ruth Elisabeth Appel, Ph.D. Candidate in Communication, Stanford UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2158502023-10-18T11:22:53Z2023-10-18T11:22:53ZBiden’s Middle East trip has messages for both global and domestic audiences<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/554537/original/file-20231018-15-5inc0y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=89%2C224%2C5901%2C3763&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">President Biden meeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on arriving in Tel Aviv on Oct. 18.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/BidenIsraelPalestinians/a064192aa42449e697f8a41bd2b318eb/photo?Query=biden%20israel&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=1416&currentItemNo=3">AP Photo/Evan Vucci</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>U.S. President Joe Biden’s decision to travel to an active war zone and the scene of an unfolding humanitarian crisis spoke volumes, even before his arrival.</p>
<p>The White House <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/10/16/statement-from-press-secretary-karine-jean-pierre-on-president-bidens-travel-to-israel-and-jordan/">has stated</a> that Biden’s purpose is to “demonstrate his steadfast support for Israel” after Hamas’ “brutal terrorist attack” on Oct. 7, 2023. But Israel wasn’t meant to be his only stop. </p>
<p>The president was also scheduled to travel to Amman, Jordan, to meet with Jordanian King Abdullah II, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. However, <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/biden-jordan-meeting-arab-leaders-cancelled/">the meeting was canceled</a> with Biden already en route to Israel.</p>
<p>The trip is a bold but risky move, a carefully orchestrated display of Biden’s belief that the United States should take an active leadership role in global affairs. It is a strategy Biden has used before, most notably in his <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/02/20/world/russia-ukraine-war#heres-how-bidens-visit-to-kyiv-unfolded">February 2023 surprise visit to Ukraine</a>. </p>
<p>As a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Wrt5_qIAAAAJ&hl=en">scholar of U.S. presidential rhetoric and political communication</a>, I have spent the past decade studying how chief executives use their international travels to reach audiences at home and abroad. I see clear parallels between Biden’s trip and similar actions by other presidents to extend American influence on the world stage.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/554392/original/file-20231017-29-n9owns.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Roosevelt sits in the cab of a large steam shovel" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/554392/original/file-20231017-29-n9owns.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/554392/original/file-20231017-29-n9owns.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=743&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554392/original/file-20231017-29-n9owns.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=743&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554392/original/file-20231017-29-n9owns.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=743&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554392/original/file-20231017-29-n9owns.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=934&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554392/original/file-20231017-29-n9owns.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=934&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554392/original/file-20231017-29-n9owns.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=934&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">President Theodore Roosevelt, center, is seated on a steam shovel in the Panama Canal Zone during the first trip abroad by a U.S. chief executive, in November 1906.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0f/Roosevelt_and_the_Canal.JPG">New York Times photo archive/Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A paramount duty</h2>
<p>Prior to 1906, no U.S. president had ever traveled abroad while in office. A <a href="https://kansaspress.ku.edu/9780700615803/">long-standing tradition</a> held that the U.S. had left the trappings of monarchy behind, and that it was much more appropriate for chief executives to travel domestically, where Americans lived and worked.</p>
<p>President Theodore Roosevelt, who had an expansive view of presidential power, bemoaned what he called <a href="https://www.whitehousehistory.org/off-for-the-ditch">this “ironclad custom</a>” and ultimately bucked it. In November 1906, Roosevelt visited the Panama Canal Zone and <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/tr-panama/">posed at the controls of a giant steam shovel</a> to shore up public support for constructing the canal. Beyond pushing this megaproject forward, the trip enabled Roosevelt to see and be seen on the international stage.</p>
<p>Other presidents followed suit as the U.S. began to take a more active role in global affairs. Just before Woodrow Wilson departed for the 1919 Paris Peace Conference at Versailles, where world leaders convened to set the terms for peace after World War I, <a href="https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/sixth-annual-message-6">he stated in his annual message to Congress</a> that it was his “paramount duty to go” and participate in negotiations that were of “transcendent importance both to us and to the rest of the world.” </p>
<p>During World War II, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt embraced this idea of bearing a moral responsibility to speak to, and for, both U.S. citizens and a global audience. Images of FDR seated between British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Josef Stalin at <a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/96522736/">Tehran</a> and <a href="https://www.loc.gov/resource/cph.3a10098/">Yalta</a> symbolized global leadership – a robust vision that endured after the U.S. president’s untimely death.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/554402/original/file-20231017-23-wzhcci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Three world leaders seated side on the porch of a building" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/554402/original/file-20231017-23-wzhcci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/554402/original/file-20231017-23-wzhcci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554402/original/file-20231017-23-wzhcci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554402/original/file-20231017-23-wzhcci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554402/original/file-20231017-23-wzhcci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=610&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554402/original/file-20231017-23-wzhcci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=610&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554402/original/file-20231017-23-wzhcci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=610&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Soviet leader Josef Stalin, U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill on the portico of the Russian Embassy in Tehran, Iran, during their conference, Nov. 28-Dec. 1, 1943.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/resource/cph.3a33351/">Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Embodying US foreign policy</h2>
<p>Going global quickly became <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/W/bo186006093.html">a deliberate rhetorical strategy during the Cold War</a>, as presidents from Harry Truman to Ronald Reagan used trips abroad to symbolize American commitment to important places and regions. By choosing to visit certain destinations, presidents made clear that these places were important to the U.S. </p>
<p>This is exactly what Biden no doubt hopes to accomplish through his visit to Israel. When he <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2023/10/10/remarks-by-president-biden-on-the-terrorist-attacks-in-israel-2/">condemned the Hamas attack on Israel</a> as “an act of sheer evil,” he also declared: “We stand with Israel.” Traveling to an <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/biden-travel-israel-wednesday-war-hamas-rcna120729">active war zone</a> embodies this pledge far more clearly than words alone.</p>
<p>And this is how Israelis have interpreted the visit. Tzachi Hanegbi, the leader of Israel’s National Security Council, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/10/17/israel-hamas-war-news-gaza/#link-CDUZASQRRFDMZBBPHUASW47B4I">described the visit</a> as “a bear hug, a large rapid bear hug to the Israelis in the south, to all Israelis, and to every Jew.”</p>
<h2>Addressing both sides</h2>
<p>But Biden must also acknowledge the very real plight of Palestinians who are trapped <a href="https://theconversation.com/decades-of-underfunding-blockade-have-weakened-gazas-health-system-the-siege-has-pushed-it-into-abject-crisis-215679">in dire conditions</a> in Gaza as Israel prepares for a ground invasion. This is no doubt the reason his team sought a face-to-face meeting with Abbas. </p>
<p>I expect that Biden will demonstrate U.S. support for Israel while also drawing a clear distinction between Hamas and the Palestinian people. And Biden will likely draw on his <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2023/09/20/remarks-by-president-biden-and-prime-minister-benjamin-netanyahu-of-israel-before-bilateral-meeting-new-york-ny/">friendship of many years</a> with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to urge moderation in Israel’s military response.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/wXhf2aYzGbw?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">President Joe Biden’s trip will embody U.S. commitment to Israel while giving the president an opportunity to moderate its actions.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>The home audience</h2>
<p>Biden’s trip also has important meaning for U.S. electoral politics. A former <a href="https://wsp.wharton.upenn.edu/book_author/joe-biden/">chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee</a>, Biden has long maintained that the U.S. must take an active role in the world. In the 2020 presidential campaign, he argued that Donald Trump’s policy of “America First” had <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/biden-transition-updates/2020/11/10/933556440/biden-tells-world-leaders-its-not-america-alone-anymore">left “America alone</a>” by undercutting relationships with critical U.S. allies.</p>
<p>For Jewish voters, the president’s visit offers tangible evidence of an enduring U.S. commitment to Israel, especially after some far-left Democratic lawmakers <a href="https://www.axios.com/2023/10/11/squad-democrats-israel-hamas-tensions">refused to criticize</a> the Hamas attack. And Biden’s willingness to <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2023/10/10/remarks-by-president-biden-on-the-terrorist-attacks-in-israel-2/">condemn Hamas</a> as a “terrorist organization” may also speak to Republican voters, who are <a href="https://www.cfr.org/blog/partisan-gap-support-israel-seems-permanent">much more likely</a> to back Israel. </p>
<p>Defining an appropriate role for the U.S. in world affairs is certain to be an important issue in the 2024 presidential election, especially with active conflicts in Ukraine and now in the Middle East. Biden has consistently called for U.S. engagement abroad – not only in words, but by showing up in places like Kiev and Tel Aviv.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/215850/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Allison M. Prasch does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Until 1906, no US president had ever traveled abroad in office. Then Teddy Roosevelt demonstrated the power of showing up.Allison M. Prasch, Associate Professor of Rhetoric, Politics and Culture, University of Wisconsin-MadisonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2134332023-09-28T05:39:02Z2023-09-28T05:39:02ZIn fractious debate, GOP candidates find common ground on cause of inflation woes and need for school choice<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550803/original/file-20230928-19-kzxcm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C2634%2C1825&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy debate the finer points.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/republican-presidential-candidates-florida-gov-ron-desantis-news-photo/1705132466?adppopup=true">Justin Sullivan/Getty Images.</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>It was a night in which even “<a href="https://www.reaganfoundation.org/education/virtual-learning-hub/the-great-communicator/">the great communicator</a>” himself may have struggled to be heard.</em></p>
<p><em>At the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California on Sept. 27, 2023, seven Republican candidates looking to become the leading challenger to the absent GOP front-runner Donald Trump <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/09/27/1201848640/second-republican-debate-california">interrupted, cross-talked and bickered</a> – often to the exasperation of the presidential debate moderators.</em></p>
<p><em>And yet, between the heated exchanges, important economic and business issues were discussed – from national debt and government shutdowns to labor disputes and even school choice. One thing the candidates agreed on: They aren’t fans of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/2023/08/15/what-is-bidenomics-president-biden-s-economic-philosophy-explained/e9ba8398-3b9b-11ee-aefd-40c039a855ba_story.html">Bidenomics</a>.</em></p>
<p><em>Listening in for The Conversation were economists <a href="https://www.gonzaga.edu/school-of-business-administration/faculty/detail/herzogr">Ryan Herzog</a> of Gonzaga University and University of Tennessee’s <a href="https://web.utk.edu/%7Eccarrut1/">Celeste K. Carruthers</a>. Here are their main takeaways from the debate.</em></p>
<h2>Inflation talk assigns blame, falls flat on solutions</h2>
<p><strong>Ryan Herzog, Gonzaga University</strong></p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/official-polls/fox-news-poll-voters-white-house-doing-more-harm-than-good-inflation">most recent Fox News survey</a> showed that 91% of Americans are worried about inflation and 80% about rising housing costs. I tuned into the second GOP debate hoping to hear how the candidates would solve these problems. I was left disappointed. </p>
<p>Not a single candidate mentioned rising housing costs, and few even acknowledged inflation. Given how much the issue has dominated the news, I assumed the candidates would mention it more than the <a href="https://rollcall.com/2023/08/24/transcript-gop-presidential-hopefuls-debate-in-milwaukee">eight times</a> they did in the prior debate. I was wrong. </p>
<p>First, let’s check some inflation facts. Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley claimed that the average household is spending US$7,000 more per year on groceries and gas because of inflation. I believe she also meant to include <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/11/economy/inflation-rate-spending/index.html">housing costs</a>. The latest data shows the annual inflation for food at home – as opposed to restaurant meals – is rising less than 3% per year. While that’s up 24% <a href="https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=19mVB">since the start of the pandemic</a>, it’s far below what you’d need for an increase of nearly $600 per month. </p>
<p>Next, former Vice President Mike Pence said that recent wage gains have not kept up with inflation. But according to the most recent data, average wage growth has actually <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/01/business/economy/wage-growth-inflation.html">outpaced inflation</a>. Indeed, workers in lower-wage industries that are seeing labor shortages, such as the leisure and hospitality sector, have seen <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2023/05/29/low-income-wages-employment-00097135">very substantial pay increases</a>. </p>
<p>Nearly every candidate blamed inflation on <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/government-spending-fuels-inflation-covid-relief-pandemic-debt-federal-reserve-stimulus-powell-biden-stagflation-11645202057">excessive federal spending</a>. Under Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden, the total level of U.S. government debt increased by nearly $8 trillion and $4.5 trillion, <a href="https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=18YJx">respectively</a>. As expected, most candidates proposed cutting government spending and taxes to help struggling families. But it’s unclear whether those policies, taken together, would be effective at lowering inflation.</p>
<p>The candidates also agreed on the need to promote U.S. energy independence – through drilling, fracking and coal – to promote low and stable inflation. But while reducing energy costs would support lower inflation, there was zero discussion of how new technologies like artificial intelligence could be used to fight inflation – for example, by improving productivity. In the end, most candidates resorted to old arguments and avoided debate on 21st-century solutions.</p>
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<h2>School choice is common refrain, but evidence on impact is mixed</h2>
<p><strong>Celeste K. Carruthers, University of Tennessee</strong> </p>
<p>Before a commercial break midway through the debate, moderators teased viewers to return for questions on education in the U.S. It’s understandable that voters would want to hear what candidates have to say on the issue. Younger students have <a href="https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/highlights/ltt/2022/">a long way to go</a> to recover from COVID-era learning losses, and many families are dissatisfied with public education to the point that they are <a href="https://www.urban.org/research/publication/where-kids-went-nonpublic-schooling-and-demographic-change-during-pandemic">leaving public schools</a> for home school and private school options. The education portion of the debate ended up being a short exchange, however, with more focus on immigration, inflation, border security, foreign policy and the opioid epidemic. </p>
<p>One common theme across candidates was at least a brief mention of school choice. School choice describes a variety of different policies that give the parents of pre-K-12 students more options for where they send their kids to school. These options can include charter schools, magnet schools, public schools outside of a student’s school zone or in another district, or even private schools. </p>
<p>Gov. Haley voiced a <a href="https://www.hoover.org/research/school-vouchers-next-great-leap-forward">commonly held view</a> among school choice supporters that providing students with more schooling options improves education by encouraging competition. Gov. DeSantis referenced “universal school choice” in his home state of Florida, which <a href="https://www.the74million.org/article/florida-just-became-the-nations-biggest-school-choice-laboratory/">recently passed legislation</a> that allows any student to apply for several thousand dollars in state funds that can be used toward private school tuition. </p>
<p>Researchers have found that earlier phases of private school vouchers in Florida led to <a href="https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w26758/w26758.pdf">improvements</a> in public school student test scores, absenteeism and suspensions, which supports the idea that competition from private schools can benefit students who opt not to use vouchers and stay in public schools.</p>
<p>Private school vouchers are, however, a contentious topic. Opponents of vouchers and school choice policies more generally argue that they put traditional public schools at a <a href="https://www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-tax/state-policymakers-should-reject-k-12-school-voucher-plans">financial disadvantage</a>. Critics have also noted that some of the early voucher advocates viewed them as a way to <a href="https://www.chalkbeat.org/2017/7/23/21107262/critics-of-vouchers-say-they-re-marred-by-racism-and-exacerbate-segregation-are-they-right">avoid racial integration</a>. </p>
<p>Additionally, school choice can theoretically lead to sorting, where higher-achieving or higher-income students group together, and this can be detrimental to lower-achieving students who are left behind. There is <a href="https://www.doi.org/10.1257/jel.20150679">evidence of sorting like this</a>, particularly in large-scale voucher systems outside the U.S. </p>
<p>Florida’s newly expanded model of school choice is <a href="https://www.the74million.org/article/florida-just-became-the-nations-biggest-school-choice-laboratory/">one of the most comprehensive</a> in the country. <a href="https://www.vox.com/politics/23689496/school-choice-education-savings-accounts-american-federation-children">Several other states</a> have also recently revised their school choice policies, generally extending eligibility for vouchers and education savings accounts beyond needy populations. In time, we can expect the evidence on school choice to grow substantially and perhaps occupy more attention in future debates.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/213433/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>With Donald Trump absent again, Republican presidential hopefuls took potshots at each other but agreed that Bidenomics isn’t cutting it.Ryan Herzog, Associate Professor of Economics, Gonzaga UniversityCeleste K. Carruthers, Professor of Economics, University of TennesseeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2139382023-09-27T19:56:29Z2023-09-27T19:56:29ZGOP shutdown threat is the wrong way to win a budget war − history shows a better strategy for reducing the deficit<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549427/original/file-20230920-19-i4o0j8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=25%2C0%2C5725%2C3837&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Past as prologue: October could bring yet another government shutdown.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/united-states-capitol-building-washington-dc-with-royalty-free-image/1094765660">Jorge Villalba/iStock via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Congress has just days to keep the federal government from grinding to a halt, and a last-minute deal seems increasingly unlikely. The problem is that lawmakers <a href="https://theconversation.com/congress-needs-to-pass-12-funding-bills-in-11-days-to-avert-a-shutdown-heres-why-that-isnt-likely-212520">need to pass a dozen appropriations bills</a> – or a single continuing resolution – by Sept. 30, 2023, in order to keep the government’s lights on. But a key group of House Republicans is refusing to pass anything without steep <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/09/26/inside-spending-cuts-house-republicans-are-fighting/">spending cuts</a>. No bills, no government – at least for <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-happened-during-the-last-government-shutdown-4-essential-reads-169003">a few days or weeks</a>, anyway. </p>
<p>While fiscal discipline has long been the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/09/24/government-shutdown-congress-budget/">rallying cry</a> for shutdown supporters, the tactic isn’t necessarily effective at reducing the government’s deficit. </p>
<p>I’ve been following efforts to shut down the U.S. government for one reason or another for more than 40 years, first from various perches at the Congressional Budget Office, then at the National Governors Association, and now as a <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/raymond-scheppach-19b98536">professor of public policy</a>. History shows that shutdowns are counterproductive – at least as measured by their own defenders’ goals. Fortunately, the past also provides a proven way to reduce the deficit, which I agree is a laudable goal.</p>
<h2>Deficits are too high</h2>
<p>When House Republicans say America’s finances are in bad shape, they do have a point. The deficit, currently estimated at <a href="https://www.cbo.gov/topics/budget/outlook-budget-and-economy">US$1.5 trillion</a>, and debt held by the public, estimated at $25.8 trillion, are both dangerously high.</p>
<p>Why is the status quo so risky? For one thing, large deficits are inflationary and put pressure on the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates. For another, interest on public debt is now estimated to be <a href="https://www.cbo.gov/publication/58848">$663 billion</a> a year, which is slightly over 10% of total spending – a huge fiscal burden.</p>
<p>Finally, and most importantly, at some point individuals and foreign countries may <a href="https://theconversation.com/us-debt-default-could-trigger-dollars-collapse-and-severely-erode-americas-political-and-economic-might-198395">dump U.S. treasury bills</a> and bonds on the market because of a loss in confidence. That would make interest rates spike and could create a major economic collapse.</p>
<p>Because of these risks, members of the House Freedom Caucus have threatened to shut down the federal government on Oct. 1, the beginning of the next fiscal year, if they aren’t able to get big cuts to domestic discretionary spending. </p>
<p>Negotiations are further complicated by some House Republicans’ desires to add riders about the border and culture war issues to the must-pass spending bills, as well as the Biden administration’s request for <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/biden-asks-us-congress-40-billion-including-24-billion-ukraine-2023-08-10/">$24 billion for Ukraine</a>, which not all party members support. </p>
<h2>Fighting the wrong battle</h2>
<p>I would argue that now is the wrong time for Republicans to take a stand on reducing the deficit, for two reasons. </p>
<p>First of all, shutdowns don’t get results. The U.S. has had 21 shutdowns over the past five decades, three of which have been major. These have all caused real harm to the U.S. economy, but they haven’t led to the spending levels Republicans wanted. </p>
<p>What’s more, in each case, the public <a href="https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/government-shutdown-polls/">blamed Republicans</a> for the shutdowns, polls show. Some historians have even suggested that the fallout from the weekslong 1995-96 shutdown contributed to then-speaker <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1998/11/07/us/the-speaker-steps-down-the-career-the-fall-of-gingrich-an-irony-in-an-odd-year.html">Newt Gingrich having to resign</a> in 1998.</p>
<p>Second, the cuts Republicans are seeking aren’t all that significant. The bottom line is that they’re ignoring national defense and mandatory spending, which together represent <a href="https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2023-02/58848-Outlook.pdf">75% of total spending</a>. The current effort aims only to trim domestic discretionary spending, which makes up a small and shrinking slice of the federal-spending pie – less than 15% in 2023.</p>
<p>At the same time, mandatory spending, including entitlements, totals nearly <a href="https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2023-02/58848-Outlook.pdf">$4 trillion annually</a> and is growing rapidly. So, even if Democrats agreed to the domestic discretionary-spending cuts advocated by the House Freedom Caucus, those savings would be overtaken by growth in entitlement spending – primarily Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid – within a year. </p>
<p>What’s more, any serious plan to reduce the federal deficit must consider increasing the <a href="https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-budget/where-do-our-federal-tax-dollars-go">$4.8 trillion of federal revenue</a>. The House Freedom Caucus has expressed no interest in raising taxes. </p>
<p>The bottom line, in my view, is that the shutdown strategy is more about creating drama, publicity and campaign fundraising for certain lawmakers than it is about seriously reducing the deficit. </p>
<h2>How to get results</h2>
<p>While it’s never politically easy to cut entitlements or raise taxes, the reconciliation provision in the <a href="https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/COMPS-10356/pdf/COMPS-10356.pdf">1974 Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act</a> was enacted specifically for this purpose. It allows entitlement cuts and tax increases to be incorporated into the same bill, which cannot be filibustered in the Senate and only needs a majority for passage.</p>
<p>Over the past 40 years, there have been six serious budget negotiations that resulted in deficit reductions. One in 2011, negotiated by then-President Barack Obama and House Majority Leader John Boehner, was likely the <a href="https://manhattan.institute/article/getting-to-yes-a-history-of-why-budget-negotiations-succeed-and-why-they-fail">most successful</a> from a fiscal perspective. When it was finally enacted, it generated $1.95 trillion in deficit reduction over nine years. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550083/original/file-20230925-17-z6u5k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="In a 2011 photograph, Barack Obama and John Boehner are seen in sitting at a table at Cabinet Room of the White House. Boehner has a slight smile; Obama, about to speak, has an expression of satisfaction." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550083/original/file-20230925-17-z6u5k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550083/original/file-20230925-17-z6u5k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550083/original/file-20230925-17-z6u5k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550083/original/file-20230925-17-z6u5k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550083/original/file-20230925-17-z6u5k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=512&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550083/original/file-20230925-17-z6u5k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=512&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550083/original/file-20230925-17-z6u5k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=512&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, House Speaker John Boehner, U.S. President Barack Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid discuss the budget and debt limit during negotiations at the White House on July 11, 2011.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/president-barack-obama-meets-with-house-minority-leader-rep-news-photo/118825556">Roger Wollenberg/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A similarly successful negotiation came <a href="https://media4.manhattan-institute.org/sites/default/files/R-0619BRdl.pdf">in 1997</a> during the Clinton administration. Lawmakers cut national defense spending by $247 billion, nondefense discretionary spending by $273 billion and entitlements by $374 billion, with interest savings of $142 billion. They also reduced taxes by $220 billion, mostly for low-income individuals, which brought the net total to $816 billion in deficit reduction over 10 years. </p>
<p>In addition to those successes, there were four other negotiations in 1993, 1990, 1985 and 1983 that averaged over $400 billion in deficit reduction, albeit over different timelines. </p>
<p>These examples show that budget negotiations without threatening a shutdown can be effective at enacting major deficit-reduction plans into law. The one during the Clinton administration even led to the budget surpluses in the years from 1998 to 2001, the <a href="https://clintonwhitehouse4.archives.gov/WH/New/html/19981028-13004.html">first surpluses since 1969</a>. </p>
<p>History indicates that there are three major requirements for a successful budget negotiation. First, lawmakers must be seriously committed to the goal of deficit reduction. Second, everything needs to be on the table, including revenues, entitlements and national defense. Third, there must be trust among the negotiators. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, I don’t believe any of these requirements can be met today.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/213938/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Raymond Scheppach does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Shutting down the government won’t help reduce the deficit. Here’s what would.Raymond Scheppach, Professor of Public Policy, University of VirginiaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2142832023-09-25T16:07:34Z2023-09-25T16:07:34ZDonald Trump’s truth: why liars might sometimes be considered honest – new research<p>According to fact checkers, Donald Trump made more than <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/01/24/trumps-false-or-misleading-claims-total-30573-over-four-years/">30,000 false or misleading claims</a> during his presidency. That’s around 20 a day. But, according to several opinion polls during his presidency, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/poll-republicans-who-think-trump-untruthful-still-approve-him-n870521">around 75% of Republican voters</a> still considered Trump to be honest. </p>
<p>It seems incredible that a serial liar – whose biggest lie about the 2020 election results led to a violent insurrection and nearly brought American democracy to its knees – is still considered honest by so many people.</p>
<p>We began to tackle this question <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01691-w">in a recent article</a> that examined the political discussions of all members of the US Congress on Twitter between 2011 and 2022. To do this, we analysed nearly 4 million tweets. Our approach was based on the idea that people’s understanding of “honesty” involves two distinct components.</p>
<p>One component can be referred to as “fact-speaking”. This form of speech relies on evidence and emphasises veracity and seeks to communicate the actual state of the world. Most of us probably consider this an important aspect of honesty. By this criterion, Donald Trump cannot be considered honest.</p>
<p>The other component can be referred to as “belief-speaking”. This focuses on the communicator’s apparent sincerity, but pays little attention to factual accuracy. So when Trump claimed that the crowds at his inauguration were the largest ever (they were not), his followers may have considered this claim to be honest because Trump seemed to sincerely believe the claim he was making.</p>
<p>Healthy political debate involves both fact-speaking and belief-speaking. Political ideas often cannot be contested based on facts alone, but also require beliefs and values to be taken into account. </p>
<p>But democratic debate can be derailed if it is entirely based on the expression of belief irrespective of factual accuracy. </p>
<p>One of Trump’s senior advisers, then US counsellor to the president, Kellyanne Conway, coined the phrase “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_facts#:%7E:text=%22Alternative%20facts%22%20was%20a%20phrase,President%20of%20the%20United%20States">alternative facts</a>” in order to back her boss by persisting with the falsehood about the largest inauguration crowd. This allowed viewers to choose whose “facts” to accept.</p>
<p>Within two years Trump’s senior lawyer and adviser Rudy Giuliani was insisting on national TV that “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/aug/23/truth-isnt-truth-so-should-we-expect-lies-from-donald-trump">truth isn’t truth</a>”. He was defending Trump’s feet-dragging over submitting to an interview with special counsel Robert Mueller and the likelihood that Trump’s testimony would conflict with sworn testimony offered by another witness.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">‘Truth isn’t truth’: Rudy Giuliani beggars belief, August 2018.</span></figcaption>
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<p>These are examples of an extreme form of belief-speaking that goes beyond the bounds of conventional democratic debate.</p>
<h2>Whose ‘truth’ are we talking about?</h2>
<p>We wanted to know the extent to which either belief-speaking or fact-speaking have become more prevalent in political speech, in this case in Twitter posts by Republican and Democrat members of the US Congress since 2011. To do this we set up and validated two “dictionaries” that captured those two components of honesty. To capture belief-speaking, we used words such as “feel”, “guess”, “seem”. To capture fact-speaking we used words such as “determine”, “evidence”, “examine”.</p>
<p>Using <a href="https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/introduction-to-word-embeddings-c2ba135dce2f">advanced mathematical analysis</a>, we were able to measure the extent to which each tweet represented belief-speaking and fact-speaking, and how the two trended over time.</p>
<p>The figure below illustrates the results of our analysis with examples of tweets that involve a lot of belief-speaking (top) and fact-speaking (bottom), separately for members of the two parties, red being Republican and blue Democrat.</p>
<p>Our analysis first considered the long-term trend of belief-speaking and fact-speaking. We found that for both parties, both belief-speaking and fact-speaking increased considerably after Trump’s election in 2016. This may reflect the fact that topics concerning misinformation and “fake news” became particularly prominent after 2016 and may have resulted in opposing claims and corrections – involving belief-speaking and fact-speaking, respectively.</p>
<p>When we related the content of tweets to the quality of news sources they linked to, we found a striking asymmetry between the two parties and the honesty components. We used the news ratings agency <a href="https://www.newsguardtech.com/solutions/newsguard/">NewsGuard</a> to ascertain the quality of a domain being shared in a tweet. NewsGuard rates the trustworthiness of news domains on a 100-point scale based on established journalistic criteria, such as differentiating between news and opinion, regularly publishing corrections, and so on, without fact-checking individual items of content.</p>
<p>We find that for both parties, the more a tweet expresses fact-speaking, the more likely it is to point to a trustworthy domain.</p>
<p>By contrast, for belief-speaking we observed little effect on the trustworthiness of sources in tweets by Democratic members of Congress. There was, however, a striking association between belief-speaking and low trustworthiness of sources for Republicans: A 10% increase in belief-speaking was associated with a 12.8-point decrease in the quality of cited sources.</p>
<p>The findings illustrate that misinformation can be linked to a unique conception of honesty that emphasises sincerity over accuracy, and which appears to be used by Republicans – but not Democrats – as a gateway to sharing low-quality information.</p>
<p>Why does this happen? Another aspect of our results hints at an answer. We found that belief-speaking is particularly associated with negative emotions. So if Republican politicians want to use negative emotional language to criticise Democrats, this goal might be more readily achieved by sharing low-quality information because high-quality domains tend to be less derogatory of the main parties.</p>
<p>Finally, we also found that the voting patterns during the 2020 presidential election in their home state were not associated with the quality of news being shared by members of Congress. One interpretation of this result is that politicians do not pay a price at the ballot box for misleading the public. This may be linked to their convincing use of belief-speaking, which large segments of the public consider to be a marker of honesty.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/214283/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephan Lewandowsky acknowledges financial support from the European Research Council (ERC Advanced Grant 101020961 PRODEMINFO), the Humboldt Foundation through a research award, the Volkswagen Foundation (grant "Reclaiming individual autonomy and democratic discourse online: How to rebalance human and algorithmic decision making"), and the European Commission (Horizon 2020 grants 964728 JITSUVAX and 101094752 SoMe4Dem). He also receives funding from Jigsaw (a technology incubator created by Google) and from UK Research and Innovation (through the Centre of Excellence, REPHRAIN, and from EU Horizon replacement funding grant number 10049415). He also interacts frequently with the European Commission's Join Research Centre in an advisory capacity and though scientific collaborations.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jana Lasser receives funding from the European Commission, Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant No. 101026507.</span></em></p>When sincerity counts as honesty, accuracy no longer matters.Stephan Lewandowsky, Chair of Cognitive Psychology, University of BristolJana Lasser, Postdoc Researcher, Graz University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2136532023-09-24T20:01:58Z2023-09-24T20:01:58ZAmerica’s leaders are older than they’ve ever been. Why didn’t the founding fathers foresee this as a problem?<p>The US Congress has had no shortage of viral moments in recent months. Senator Dianne Feinstein seemingly became <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/sen-dianne-feinstein-told-just-say-aye-awkward-senate-committee-moment-rcna96697">confused</a> over how to vote. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/senate-set-return-after-mitch-mcconnells-freeze-episodes/story?id=102907135">experienced</a> two extended “freeze episodes” during press conferences. And several members of Congress <a href="https://www.vox.com/technology/23653884/tiktok-hearing-shou-chew-winners-losers">mistook</a> TikTok for the name of a breath mint (Tic Tac). </p>
<p>The world’s oldest democracy currently has its <a href="https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/aging-congress-boomers/">oldest-ever</a> Congress. President Joe Biden (80 years old) is also the <a href="https://potus.com/presidential-facts/age-at-inauguration/">oldest</a> US president in history. His leading rival in the 2024 presidential race, former President Donald Trump, is not far behind at 77. </p>
<p>Biden and Trump are both older than <a href="https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/popest/2020s-national-detail.html">96%</a> of the US population. Unsurprisingly, they are both facing widespread questions about their ages and cognitive abilities.</p>
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<h2>How did we get to this ‘senior moment’?</h2>
<p>America’s increasingly geriatric political leadership is not a surprising phenomenon. As the authors of the book, <a href="https://press.umich.edu/Books/Y/Youth-without-Representation">Youth Without Representation</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/politicians-are-getting-older-shutting-young-people-out-of-decision-making-around-the-world-197140">pointed out</a> earlier this year, the average age of US members of Congress has <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S026137942200110X">consistently risen</a> over the past 40 years. </p>
<p>Some of this shift can be attributed to actuarial realities: much like the ageing US electorate, American politicians are living longer and fuller lives in old age than they did before, particularly compared to the time of America’s “founding fathers” (many of whom were <a href="https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2013/08/18/Most-US-Founding-Fathers-were-age-40-and-younger/63491376874813/">under the age of 40</a> when the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776).</p>
<p>Some of this may also be attributed to older Americans being far more likely to vote than their younger counterparts. In 2016, for instance, nearly three-quarters of eligible voters over the age of 65 <a href="https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/09/03/america-gerontocracy-problem-politics-old-politicians-trump-biden-sanders-227986/">reported</a> they had voted, compared to less than half of those aged under 30. And those older Americans may prefer electing politicians closer to their age range.</p>
<p>Yet lifespans have increased around the world and the ageing of US politicians still stands out compared to other developed nations. The average age of government leaders in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has actually <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/16/opinion/america-presidents-old-age.html">decreased</a> since 1950 – and today is nearly 25 years younger than Biden.</p>
<p>Florida governor and Republican presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/video/desantis-founding-fathers-would-probably-put-age-limit-on-elected-officials/">said</a> the country’s founding fathers would “probably” implement maximum age limits on elected officials if they “could look at this again”. But this raises the question of why they didn’t do it the first time.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/yes-joe-biden-is-old-and-has-low-approval-ratings-but-this-is-why-hes-still-confident-of-re-election-204529">Yes, Joe Biden is old and has low approval ratings, but this is why he's still confident of re-election</a>
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<h2>What did the founding fathers think about term limits?</h2>
<p>The founding fathers fiercely debated term limits for both presidents and members of Congress and even included them for members of the Continental Congress in the first <a href="https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/articles-of-confederation">Articles of Confederation</a>. However, they ended up not being written into the Constitution. </p>
<p>As much as Americans cherish the idea of the nation being founded on a constitution and laws instead of traditions and monarchy, the founding fathers ultimately did not legislate any term limits. Instead, they largely assumed custom, tradition and <a href="https://guides.loc.gov/federalist-papers/text-51-60#:%7E:text=The%20greater%20the%20proportion%20of,of%20Representatives%20and%20the%20Senate.">democratic elections</a> would dictate the terms of office. </p>
<p>In fact, the first president, George Washington, helped begin the custom of a president not seeking longer than two terms in office. </p>
<p>Mirroring <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lucius-Quinctius-Cincinnatus">Cincinnatus</a>, a Roman leader who became legendary for being given dictatorial control over Rome during a crisis but then voluntarily relinquishing control once the crisis was over, Washington left the presidency after two four-year terms. </p>
<p>For more than a century after that, US presidents adhered to Washington’s convention (which historians <a href="https://www.tamupress.com/book/9781603449915/presidential-term-limits-in-american-history/">contend</a> that Thomas Jefferson, America’s third president, in reality ended up setting) and did not serve a third term in office. </p>
<p>The first to break that tradition was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who won <a href="https://www.history.com/news/fdr-four-term-president-22-amendment">four terms</a> in office, including a third just before the second world war. After he died in office at the age of 63, Congress ratified the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution that limited presidents to two four-year terms.</p>
<p>While US presidents have faced term limits for most of the past century, members of Congress continue to serve as long as they like. (There are currently <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/08/us/politics/oldest-members-of-congress.html">20 members</a> over the age of 80. Feinstein, the oldest at 90, has served six terms as a senator from California.)</p>
<p>Part of the reason for this omission may be that the founding fathers and early American leaders did not expect members of Congress to stay in office as long as they now do. In the years after the Constitution was ratified, members of Congress simply did not seek re-election as frequently. </p>
<p>For example, the average length of service for US senators has more than doubled from about <a href="https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CRPT-104srpt158/html/CRPT-104srpt158.htm">4.8 years</a> back then to <a href="https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R47470">11.2 years</a> today. </p>
<h2>The price of elected office and who can afford it</h2>
<p>Beyond demographics and changing habits of US politicians, one underestimated contributor to America’s increasingly elderly political leadership is that running for political office in America is more expensive than ever. </p>
<p>The 2020 election was not only contentious, but it was also the most expensive in US history. It cost more than <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2021/02/2020-cycle-cost-14p4-billion-doubling-16/">US$14.4 billion</a> (A$22.5 billion) for the presidential and congressional races – more than double what was spent in the 2016 elections. </p>
<p>The 2022 elections also <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2023/02/midterms-spending-spree-cost-of-2022-federal-elections-tops-8-9-billion-a-new-midterm-record/">broke a record</a> for spending in a midterm election at US$8.9 billion (A$13.9 billion).</p>
<p>On an individual level, the <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2023/02/midterms-spending-spree-cost-of-2022-federal-elections-tops-8-9-billion-a-new-midterm-record/">average</a> winner of a House of Representatives race in 1990 spent around US$400,000. By 2022 that had risen to US$2.79 million. The average winner of a Senate race in 1990 spent nearly US$3.9 million, compared to US$26.5 million in 2022.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-do-voters-have-to-pick-a-republican-or-a-democrat-in-the-us-203830">Why do voters have to pick a Republican or a Democrat in the US?</a>
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<p>It should come as no surprise that the ten <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2021/02/2020-cycle-cost-14p4-billion-doubling-16/">most expensive</a> House and Senate races in US history took place in the past five years.</p>
<p>Those with the resources necessary to afford such expensive campaigns are more likely to be older than not. Whether it be independently <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2020/04/majority-of-lawmakers-millionaires/">wealthy</a> business owners or well-established politicians with extensive fundraising networks, the high cost of admission for political office undeniably favours the old.</p>
<p>In an era of extensive polarisation, it can often seem like Americans cannot agree on much. One area of agreement, however, is that their politicians are simply <a href="https://www.scribd.com/document/670200251/cbsnews-20230910-SUN#">too old</a>. </p>
<p>Yet while a majority of Americans may tell pollsters that, most still consistently end up voting for a candidate who is considerably older than them. That will very likely be the case again in the 2024 presidential election. At least one of those probable candidates (Trump or Biden), though, will be barred by term limits from being on the ballot again in 2028.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/213653/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jared Mondschein does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Term limits for presidents were only written into the Constitution after the second world war. And members of Congress can still serve as long as they wish.Jared Mondschein, Director of Research, US Studies Centre, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2119812023-09-15T12:32:33Z2023-09-15T12:32:33ZThe president loves ice cream, and a senator has a new girlfriend – these personal details may seem trivial, but can help reduce political polarization<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/548370/original/file-20230914-21-jykpd2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=582%2C68%2C3532%2C2636&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">President Joe Biden eats an ice cream cone at a Baskin-Robbins in Portland, Ore., in October 2022. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/Biden/c0b94faf3c4243ca812030a8476234a2/photo?Query=Biden%20ice%20cream&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=123&currentItemNo=14">Carolyn Kaster/AP </a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Politicians want to be heard – to land a soundbite on the nightly news, to advertise their legislative accomplishments and to have people know their platform. But when given opportunities to talk to voters, they often share details about their personal lives instead.</p>
<p>Presidential candidate Tim Scott used a September 2023 appearance on Fox News to talk about <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/harris-calls-critics-scared-tim-scott-introduce-girlfriend/story?id=103070885">his dating life</a>, saying that voters would soon meet his girlfriend. On Twitter, Senator Ted Cruz often posts <a href="https://twitter.com/tedcruz/status/1701279302937882844">football clips</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/tedcruz/status/1698107085353861125">selfies at sporting events</a>. </p>
<p>And in July 2023, President Joe Biden, who has <a href="https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2016/12/20/joe-biden-loves-ice-cream-sg-orig.cnn">described himself as an “ice cream guy,”</a> tweeted a picture of himself holding an ice cream cone captioned, “<a href="https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1680615812762091521">In my book, every day is National Ice Cream Day.</a>” </p>
<p>This trend of politicians sharing personal information isn’t new. </p>
<p>One study of <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/ps-political-science-and-politics/article/abs/twitter-style-an-analysis-of-how-house-candidates-used-twitter-in-their-2012-campaigns/2975E5DB5DC41AE4F4977264DDDFE649">campaign tweets</a> found that congressional candidates in 2012 were more likely to tweet about their personal lives than their policy platforms.</p>
<p>Why do politicians share so much from their personal lives on the campaign trail? </p>
<p>I am a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=DgNh6bUAAAAJ&hl=en">scholar of political science,</a> and <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/ps-political-science-and-politics/article/how-political-content-in-us-weekly-can-reduce-polarized-affect-toward-elected-officials/5548A22DCB7E068C9EB74AF17F57BC73">my research</a> shows that when people see elected officials as people and not just politicians, it boosts their popularity. It also reduces party polarization in people’s views of politicians.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/548158/original/file-20230913-23-nw2awe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Ted Cruz holds up a green jersey with his name on it while standing at a podium." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/548158/original/file-20230913-23-nw2awe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/548158/original/file-20230913-23-nw2awe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548158/original/file-20230913-23-nw2awe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548158/original/file-20230913-23-nw2awe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548158/original/file-20230913-23-nw2awe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548158/original/file-20230913-23-nw2awe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548158/original/file-20230913-23-nw2awe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Senator Ted Cruz receives a Philadelphia Eagles jersey at a political rally in Philadelphia in 2018.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/senator-ted-cruz-receives-a-philadelphia-eagles-jersey-news-photo/922467386?adppopup=true">Bastiaan Slabbers/NurPhoto via Getty Images</a></span>
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</figure>
<h2>‘House of Cards’ to hot sauce</h2>
<p>My research was inspired by the weekly column, “<a href="https://www.usmagazine.com/tag/25-things-you-dont-know-about-me/">25 Things You Didn’t Know About Me</a>” published in the celebrity entertainment magazine Us Weekly. While actors, musicians and reality television personalities regularly share facts about themselves or their personal lives in this column, several politicians have been featured over the years. </p>
<p>In 2016, <a href="https://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/ted-cruz-25-things-you-dont-know-about-me-w167243/">then-presidential candidate Cruz</a> shared with the magazine that his first video game was Pong and that he has watched every episode of the Netflix drama series “House of Cards.” When she was running for president in 2016, former Secretary of State <a href="https://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/hillary-clinton-25-things-you-dont-know-about-me-w203125/">Hillary Clinton shared</a> that she loves mystery novels and puts hot sauce on everything. </p>
<p>I was interested in whether these kinds of autobiographical and apolitical details changed how people evaluate elected officials.</p>
<p>As part of my research, I noted five items from the list Cruz provided to Us Weekly in 2016, along with five similar autobiographical details collected from the news that same year about Senator Bernie Sanders. </p>
<p>Details about Cruz included that his favorite movie is “The Princess Bride” and that he was once suspended in high school for skipping class to play foosball. Sanders, meanwhile, has shared in news interviews that he is a fan of the television show “Modern Family” and that he proposed to his wife in the <a href="https://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/in-the-know/266468-sanders-proposed-to-wife-in-friendlys-parking-lot/">parking lot of a Friendly’s restaurant.</a></p>
<p>I then shared these details with a nationally representative sample of 1,000 Americans in a survey conducted just before the 2020 election. Half were asked to just rate the senator, while the other half were given one of these lists of autobiographical details before rating their favorability toward the senator. </p>
<p>I found that those who read autobiographical details gave warmer evaluations of the politicians than those who did not learn these facts. </p>
<p>Even though both Cruz and Sanders are well known and arguably polarizing politicians, members of the public nonetheless shifted their opinions of the senators when they found out a little more about them as people.</p>
<p>I also found that these autobiographical details led to candidate ratings that were less polarized along party lines. </p>
<p>People’s party loyalties typically determine their views of elected officials. People offer positive ratings of politicians who share their partisan loyalties and very negative ratings of those from the opposing party. </p>
<p>But in my research, I found that minor details like Cruz’s penchant for canned soup were especially likely to boost his ratings among Democrats. And Sanders’ love of the <a href="https://theweek.com/speedreads/589630/bernie-sanders-really-into-disco-music-abba-celine-dion">musical group ABBA</a> was especially likely to improve his favorability ratings among Republicans. </p>
<p>We know that people tend to evaluate new information <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3694247">through the lens of their partisan biases</a>. People generally accept new information that reinforces their views, and are skeptical of information that is inconsistent with their prior beliefs. </p>
<p>But when politicians share autobiographical details, people see them as humans – and not just through the lens of their usual partisan biases. When politicians talk about their personal lives, it not only appeals to their supporters, but dampens the negativity people feel toward politicians from the opposing party.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/548161/original/file-20230913-41247-9uynd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Bernie Sanders walks through a crowd of people smiling, standing in front of his wife." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/548161/original/file-20230913-41247-9uynd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/548161/original/file-20230913-41247-9uynd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548161/original/file-20230913-41247-9uynd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548161/original/file-20230913-41247-9uynd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548161/original/file-20230913-41247-9uynd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548161/original/file-20230913-41247-9uynd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548161/original/file-20230913-41247-9uynd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Senator Bernie Sanders has shared personal details about his relationship with his wife, Jane O'Meara Sanders, pictured together in 2020.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/democratic-presidential-candidate-sen-bernie-sanders-shakes-news-photo/1211594134?adppopup=true">Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>What this means for politics</h2>
<p>Even in a time where partisanship drives elections, there is still value in being likable.</p>
<p>For elected officials who want to boost their support among supporters of rival partisans, shifting the focus to personality rather than partisan politics can be a useful strategy. </p>
<p>I think that this approach could also help depolarize politics. </p>
<p>If political campaigns focused more on the candidates rather than replaying familiar partisan divides, views of elected officials would be less polarized along party lines. </p>
<p>It can be tempting to dismiss the political content in late night talk shows or celebrity entertainment magazines as mere fluff and a distraction from serious policy debates. But we also know that <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/F/bo11644533.html">policy issues rarely matter</a> for the votes people cast. Instead, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-polisci-051117-073034">party loyalties determine much of people’s decision-making</a>. In a time of deeply partisan politics, it is useful to find ways to interrupt partisan biases and decrease polarization.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/211981/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jennifer Wolak does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>When politicians talk more about their personal lives and less about politics, it makes people from the opposing side of the political line see them as people and like them more.Jennifer Wolak, Professor of political science, Michigan State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2075842023-09-06T12:25:58Z2023-09-06T12:25:58ZNot religious, not voting? The ‘nones’ are a powerful force in politics – but not yet a coalition<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535164/original/file-20230702-192977-l8drvp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C2117%2C1409&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Politicians all over the spectrum have long tried to appeal to religious voters. What about atheists, agnostics and nothing-in-particulars?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/atheist-checkbox-on-white-paper-with-metal-pen-royalty-free-image/1137047566?phrase=atheist+voter&adppopup=true">Y.Gurevich/iStock via Getty Images Plus</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Nearly 30% of Americans say they <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2021/12/14/about-three-in-ten-u-s-adults-are-now-religiously-unaffiliated/">have no religious affiliation</a>. Today the so-called “nones” represent <a href="https://www.prri.org/spotlight/prri-2022-american-values-atlas-religious-affiliation-updates-and-trends/">about 30% of Democrats and 12% of Republicans</a> – and they are making their voices heard. <a href="https://secular.org/">Organizations lobby</a> on behalf of <a href="https://www.atheists.org/">atheists</a>, agnostics, <a href="https://americanhumanist.org/">secular humanists</a> and other nonreligious people. </p>
<p>As more people leave religious institutions, or never join them in the first place, it’s easy to assume this demographic will command more influence. But as a sociologist <a href="https://www.umb.edu/directory/evanstewart/">who studies politics and religion</a>, I wanted to know whether there was evidence that this religious change could actually make a strong political impact.</p>
<p>There are reasons to be skeptical of unaffiliated Americans’ power at the ballot box. Religious institutions have long been key for mobilizing voters, both <a href="https://kinder.rice.edu/urbanedge/black-church-has-been-getting-souls-polls-more-60-years">on the left</a> and <a href="https://www.oah.org/tah/issues/2018/november/evangelicalism-and-politics/">the right</a>. Religiously unaffiliated people <a href="https://www.prri.org/research/2020-census-of-american-religion/#:%7E:text=While%20more%20than%20one%2Dthird,those%20ages%2065%20and%20older.">tend to be younger</a>, and younger people <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.electstud.2012.12.006">tend to vote less often</a>. What’s more, <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2016/11/09/how-the-faithful-voted-a-preliminary-2016-analysis/">exit polls</a> from <a href="https://www.cnn.com/election/2020/exit-polls/president/national-results">recent elections</a> show the religiously unaffiliated may be a smaller percentage of voters than of the general population. </p>
<p>Most importantly, it’s hard to put the “unaffiliated” in a box. Only a third of them <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2021/12/14/about-three-in-ten-u-s-adults-are-now-religiously-unaffiliated/">identify as atheists or agnostics</a>. While there is a smaller core of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108923347">secular activists</a>, they tend to hold different views from <a href="http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/books/b9789004319301s009">the larger group</a> of people who are religiously unaffiliated, such as being more concerned about the separation of church and state. </p>
<p>By combining all unaffiliated people as “the nones,” researchers and political analysts risk missing key details about this large and diverse constituency.</p>
<h2>Crunching the numbers</h2>
<p>In order to learn more about which parts of religious unaffiliated populations turn out to vote, I used data from the <a href="https://cces.gov.harvard.edu/">Cooperative Election Study</a>, or CES, for presidential elections in 2008, 2012, 2016 and 2020. The CES collects large surveys and then matches individual respondents in those surveys to validated voter turnout records.</p>
<p>These surveys were different from exit polls in some key ways. For example, according to these survey samples, overall validated voter turnout looked higher in many groups, not just the unaffiliated, than exit polls suggested. But because each survey sample had over 100,000 respondents and detailed questions about religious affiliation, they allowed me to find some important differences between smaller groups within the unaffiliated.</p>
<p><iframe id="oK8sa" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/oK8sa/1/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>My findings, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/socrel/srad018">published in June 2023 in the journal Sociology of Religion</a>, were that the unaffiliated are divided in their voter turnout: Some unaffiliated groups are more likely to vote than religiously affiliated respondents, and some are less likely.</p>
<p>People who identified as atheists and agnostics were more likely to vote than religiously affiliated respondents, especially in more recent elections. For example, after controlling for key demographic predictors of voting – like age, education and income – <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/socrel/srad018">I found</a> that atheists and agnostics were each about 30% more likely to have a validated record of voting in the 2020 election than religiously affiliated respondents. </p>
<p>With those same controls, people who identified their religion as simply “nothing in particular,” <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2021/12/14/about-three-in-ten-u-s-adults-are-now-religiously-unaffiliated/">who are about two-thirds of the unaffiliated</a>, were actually less likely to turn out in all four elections. In the 2020 election sample, for example, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/socrel/srad018">I found</a> that around 7 in 10 agnostics and atheists had a validated voter turnout record, versus only about half of the “nothing in particulars.”</p>
<p>Together, these groups’ voting behaviors tend to cancel each other out. Once I controlled for other predictors of voting like age and education, “the nones” as a whole were equally likely to have a turnout record as religiously affiliated respondents.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535350/original/file-20230703-252214-2e0whd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Five people with their backs to the camera vote at small booths in a room with bunting in the colors of the American flag." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535350/original/file-20230703-252214-2e0whd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535350/original/file-20230703-252214-2e0whd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535350/original/file-20230703-252214-2e0whd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535350/original/file-20230703-252214-2e0whd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535350/original/file-20230703-252214-2e0whd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535350/original/file-20230703-252214-2e0whd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535350/original/file-20230703-252214-2e0whd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Religious and nonreligious voting patterns may not be so different after all.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/voters-voting-in-polling-place-royalty-free-image/138711450?phrase=young+voters&adppopup=true">Hill Street Studios/DigitalVision via Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>2024 and beyond</h2>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/after-trump-christian-nationalist-ideas-are-going-mainstream-despite-a-history-of-violence-188055">Concern about growing Christian nationalism</a>, which advocates for fusing national identity and political power with Christian beliefs, has put a spotlight on religion’s role in <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-god-strategy-9780195326413?cc=us&lang=en&">right-wing advocacy</a>. </p>
<p>Yet religion does not line up neatly with one party. The <a href="https://religionnews.com/2023/04/21/christian-nationalists-have-provoked-a-pluralist-resistance/">political left also boasts a diverse coalition of religious groups</a>, and there are many Republican voters for whom religion is not important. </p>
<p>If the percentage of people without a religious affiliation continues to rise, both Republicans and Democrats will have to think more creatively and intentionally about how to appeal to these voters. My research shows that neither party can take the unaffiliated for granted nor treat them as a single, unified group. Instead, politicians and analysts will need to think more specifically about what motivates people to vote, and particularly what policies encourage voting among young adults.</p>
<p>For example, some activist groups talk about “<a href="https://secular.org/grassroots/valuesvoter/#:%7E:text=Secular%20Values%20Voter%20is%20a,values%20for%20which%20they%20stand.">the secular values voter</a>:” someone who is increasingly motivated to vote by concern about separation of church and state. I did find evidence that the average atheist or agnostic is about 30% more likely to turn out than the average religiously affiliated voter, lending some support to the secular values voter story. At the same time, that description does not fit <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108923347">all the “nones</a>.”</p>
<p>Instead of focusing on America’s declining religious affiliation, it may be more helpful to focus on the country’s <a href="https://www.interfaithamerica.org/">increasing religious diversity</a>, especially because many unaffiliated people still report having religious and spiritual beliefs and practices. Faith communities have historically been important sites for political organizing. Today, though, motivating and empowering voters might mean looking across a broader set of community institutions to find them.</p>
<h2>Rethinking assumptions</h2>
<p>There is good news in these findings for everyone, regardless of their political leanings. <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Bowling-Alone-Revised-and-Updated/Robert-D-Putnam/9780743219037">Social science theories from the 1990s and 2000s argued</a> that leaving religion was part of a larger trend in declining civic engagement, like voting and volunteering, but that may not be the case. </p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/socrel/srad018">According to my research</a>, it was actually unaffiliated respondents who reported still attending religious services who were least likely to vote. Their turnout rates were lower than both frequently attending religious affiliates and unaffiliated people who never attended.</p>
<p>This finding matches up with previous research on religion, spirituality and other kinds of civic engagement. Sociologists <a href="https://www.cla.purdue.edu/directory/profiles/jacqui-frost.html">Jacqui Frost</a> and <a href="https://cla.umn.edu/about/directory/profile/edgell">Penny Edgell</a>, for example, found <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0899764017746251">a similar pattern in volunteering</a> among religiously unaffiliated respondents. In a previous study, sociologist <a href="https://www.hamilton.edu/academics/our-faculty/directory/faculty-detail/jaime-lee-kucinskas">Jaime Kucinskas</a> and I found that spiritual practices like meditation and yoga were <a href="https://theconversation.com/yoga-versus-democracy-what-survey-data-says-about-spiritual-americans-political-behavior-187960">just as strongly associated with political behavior</a> as religious practices like church attendance. Across these studies, it looks like disengagement from formal religion is not necessarily linked to political disengagement.</p>
<p>As the religious landscape changes, new potential voters may be ready to engage – if political leadership can enact policies that help them turn out, and inspire them to turn out, too.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/207584/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Evan Stewart does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Nonreligious voters are poised to make an impact, but sweeping statements about the ‘nones’ don’t tell the full story.Evan Stewart, Assistant Professor of Sociology, UMass BostonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2125702023-08-31T14:42:31Z2023-08-31T14:42:31ZWho’s Vivek Ramaswamy? He’s the Trump 2.0 candidate who’s making waves in the Republican primaries<p>The New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/05/us/politics/vivek-ramaswamy.html">described</a> him as promising “to exert breathtaking power in ways that Donald Trump never did”. An article for <a href="https://time.com/6265036/vivek-ramaswamy-trump-defense-indictment/">Time</a> magazine called him a “rockstar for those who think cancel culture is threatening every corner of American life”.</p>
<p>Well-spoken, polemical and supremely self-assured, it’s no surprise that the Trump-loving Vivek Ramaswamy has emerged as the new <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/6b9689a6-0dec-41b9-a5d0-50ceba4b3bd4">darling</a> of the Republican presidential primary field.</p>
<p>Coming out of the <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/video/6335464873112">first GOP debate in late August</a>, where he oratorically <a href="https://www.wsj.com/politics/vivek-ramaswamy-grabs-spotlight-at-first-republican-primary-debate-b168dd06">dazzled</a> (and also drew <a href="https://www.msnbc.com/the-reidout/reidout-blog/vivek-ramaswamy-republican-debate-civics-test-fail-rcna101625">sharp criticism</a>) after a combination of pre-scripted lines and impromptu take-downs, Ramaswamy is <a href="https://apnews.com/article/debate-republican-takeaways-president-gop-trump-ramaswamy-christie-f38e0aa189ad85f347f97b1b6bea4c53">gaining ground in the polls</a> — and is <a href="https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/elections/presidential/caucus/2023/08/25/vivek-ramaswamy-speaks-to-overflow-iowa-crowds-after-republican-debate/70680509007/">reportedly</a> seeing a “surge of Iowans flock to his campaign stops,” ahead of the state’s important caucus, due on January 15 2024. </p>
<p>Nationally, Ramaswamy has now <a href="https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-primary-r/2024/national/">cruised</a> into third place in the Republican race, at 10%, according to FiveThirtyEight polling averages, and is hoping to overtake Florida governor Ron DeSantis (14%), once seen as the <a href="https://theconversation.com/ron-desantis-the-florida-governor-who-may-steal-the-republican-nomination-from-under-his-mentor-donald-trumps-nose-194423">prohibitive choice to rival Donald Trump</a>. While still some 40 points out of first place, it’s a sudden uptick for a candidate who was, until recently, a virtual unknown.</p>
<p>But at just 38 years old, can this billionaire rookie politician of Indian descent, who — according to his own <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/08/24/ramaswamy-obama-line-gop-debate/">admission</a> — is a “skinny guy with a funny last name,” crack Trump’s insurmountable lead, much less foil his coronation?</p>
<p>Ramaswamy is a self-styled “<a href="https://wcfcourier.com/news/local/government-politics/ramaswamy-talks-in-waterloo-after-debate/article_929eefa0-4464-11ee-a04b-e7b9c852803c.html">clear outsider</a>” who’s never served in government. A graduate of Harvard and Yale Law School, he cut his teeth at a Wall Street hedge fund, before founding a multi-billion-dollar pharmaceutical firm. As “one of the richest thirty-somethings” in the nation, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnhyatt/2023/08/21/how-vivek-ramaswamy-became-a-billionaire/">according to Forbes</a>, Ramaswamy has lived, <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/supreme-courts-affirmative-action-decision-step-forward-gop/story?id=100539615">in his words</a>, “the American dream”.</p>
<p>Ramaswamy, however, isn’t your typical socially liberal Ivy League graduate. He can <a href="https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2023/08/12/vivek-ramaswamy-gop-rapping-eminem-iowa-state-fair-nr-vpx.cnn">rap like Eminem</a>. And he’s <a href="https://www.nixonfoundation.org/2023/08/vivek-ramaswamy-at-the-nixon-library/">called</a> former US president Richard Nixon “the most underappreciated president of our modern history in this country, probably in all of American history”.</p>
<p>More importantly, he’s a chest-thumping, Maga-type who, despite <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/ramaswamy-deems-trump-best-president-21st-century-gop-hopefuls-side-pence">praising</a> Trump as “the best president of the 21st century,” is running to beat the ex-president so he can take the Trumpist agenda “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/04/03/vivek-ramaswamy-2024-presidential-gop/">much further</a>”.</p>
<h2>The anti-wokester</h2>
<p>The author of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Woke-Inc-Corporate-Americas-Justice/dp/1546090789">Woke, Inc</a>. and <a href="https://www.amazon.com/s?k=nation+of+victims&hvadid=616991208878&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=9006672&hvnetw=g&hvqmt=e&hvrand=3178780336399106094&hvtargid=kwd-372094379727&hydadcr=24658_13611734&tag=googhydr-20&ref=pd_sl_2gqibjhtln_e">Nation of Victims</a>, Ramaswamy brags that he’s the <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11787751/Who-Vivek-Ramaswamy-anti-woke-hedge-fund-millionaire-running-president.html">original anti-woke candidate</a>. A self-branded “<a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2023/06/06/vivek-ramaswamy-gop-nationalist-00100395">non-white nationalist</a>” he speaks stridently against the modern progressive movement.</p>
<p>Ramaswamy <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2023/08/18/ramaswamy-pledges-to-draw-voters-of-color-from-dems-00111956">declares</a> that he would appeal to voters of all colours and is fond of <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/meet-press-august-27-2023-n1307092">paraphrasing</a> John Roberts, US supreme court chief justice, who has said: “The right answer to stop discrimination on the basis of race … is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”</p>
<p>Ramaswamy <a href="https://www.concordmonitor.com/Vivek-Ramaswamy-Concord-GOP-Event-51835246">says</a> that he’s running for president to unite the country under a new “American Revolution” based on “1776 ideals”. Many of his policies, like the revolution he seeks to provoke, are decidedly counter-establishment.</p>
<p>For instance, Ramaswamy waxes poetically about <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/08/24/vivek-ramaswamy-policy-gop-candidate/">laying off 75% of the federal workforce</a>, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/meetthepressblog/vivek-ramaswamy-lays-plans-eliminate-federal-agencies-fbi-rcna95409">taking a sledgehammer to US government agencies</a> like the FBI and the Department of Education, and <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=QDIeEAAAQBAJ&pg=PT89&lpg=PT89&dq=%2525252525252522managerial+class%2525252525252522+and+%25252525252525E2%2525252525252580%252525252525259Cspreading+like+a+plague%25252525252525E2%2525252525252580%252525252525259D&source=bl&ots=auFMhs4eKd&sig=ACfU3U1A75mdGPUzntNbqazJHNS9SwJWag&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiVoczuzYCBAxWsk4kEHTuSAm4Q6AF6BAgNEAM%25252525252523v=onepage&q=%2525252525252522managerial%2525252525252520class%2525252525252522%2525252525252520and%2525252525252520%25252525252525E2%2525252525252580%252525252525259Cspreading%2525252525252520like%2525252525252520a%2525252525252520plague%25252525252525E2%2525252525252580%252525252525259D&f=false">defeating the “managerial class”</a> that’s “spreading like a plague” across society.</p>
<p>Ramaswamy’s agenda also includes a number of political non-starters — for example, <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/vivek-ramaswamy-wants-civics-tests-young-voters-18-to-24/">requiring</a> every US citizen to pass the same civics exam that immigrants do in order to vote, before age 25.</p>
<p>Unlike most millennials, Ramaswamy has <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/08/25/vivek-ramaswamy-says-hoax-agenda-kills-more-people-than-climate-change/">pilloried</a> the climate change agenda as a “hoax”. “Drill, frack, burn coal, and embrace nuclear” is his unapologetic <a href="https://rollcall.com/2023/08/24/transcript-gop-presidential-hopefuls-debate-in-milwaukee/">solution</a> for America’s energy challenges.</p>
<p>On immigration, Ramaswamy favours ending America’s <a href="https://www.usa.gov/green-card-lottery">“green card” lottery system</a>, which annually makes available 50,000 visas to migrants, and replacing it with “<a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/vivek-ramaswamy-celebrates-immigrant-family-pushing-far-right-border-p-rcna101592">meritocratic admission</a>”. He advocates hardening the US-Mexico border “where criminals are coming in every day” through the <a href="https://twitter.com/VivekGRamaswamy/status/1669088239469166592">deployment of military resources</a>.</p>
<h2>Slash aid to Ukraine</h2>
<p>Although not an isolationist, Ramaswamy is sceptical about an activist US foreign policy. He wants to <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/08/25/vivek-ramaswamy-ukraine-post-zelensky-warlord-russia/">slash aid to Ukraine</a>, implying that what’s in America’s best interest isn’t necessarily what’s in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s worst interest.</p>
<p>To end the war, Ramaswamy <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/week-transcript-6-4-23-vivek-ramaswamy-rep/story?id=99814403">proposes</a> granting Russia “major concessions”, while “freezing … current lines of control in a Korean War-style armistice agreement”. In exchange, “Russia has to leave its treaty” and its joint military agreement with China. </p>
<p>In Asia, Ramaswamy <a href="https://www.foxbusiness.com/video/6324982560112">champions</a> a full-scale economic “decoupling” of the US from China. He also <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/vivek-ramaswamy-disrupt-china-russian-alliance-like-splitting-germany-japan">favours</a> Washington more aggressively “driving a wedge” between Beijing and Moscow, which he calls “the single greatest military threat that we’re going to face”.</p>
<p>Ramaswamy’s <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/vivek-ramaswamys-plan-to-defend-taiwan-5d5f751d">response</a> on Taiwan is short-term “strategic clarity,” insisting that he would defend the island “vigorously until the US achieves semiconductor independence,” then return to a policy of “strategic ambiguity”. </p>
<h2>Creating Trump 2.0</h2>
<p>Ramaswamy’s biggest potential strength, and liability, in the primaries is fusing himself to Trump’s hip. As <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/07/26/vivek-ramaswamy-2024-presidential-campaign/">“Trump 2.0,”</a> his <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/vivek-ramaswamy-pushing-delicately-win-trump-supporters-102216640">challenge</a> is a delicate one: to please the right-wing base, while still separating himself enough from Trump to win over converts.</p>
<p>So far, Ramaswamy has leaned toward the former.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1641559434307547142"}"></div></p>
<p>When pressed, he’s <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/vivek-ramaswamy-says-ve-certified-2020-election-results-rcna102010">said</a> that he would have certified the 2020 election results. Yet he’s also claimed that former vice president Mike Pence missed a “historic opportunity” to reform the electoral structure on January 6.</p>
<p>Ramaswamy has <a href="https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/trumps-indictment-more-about-revenge-claim-presidential-candidates-nikki-haley-vivek-ramaswamy/articleshow/99131917.cms?from=mdr">attacked</a> criminal prosecutions of Trump as “politically motivated and setting an awful precedent. He’s pledged to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/07/30/trump-pardon-republican-candidates/">pardon Trump if elected</a>. He’s even <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/video/vivek-ramaswamy-says-he-d-make-trump-an-adviser-or-mentor-if-elected-president-191683141686">hinted</a> at hiring Trump as an "adviser” or “mentor” in his White House.</p>
<h2>What’s next?</h2>
<p>Political statistician Nate Silver has <a href="https://www.natesilver.net/p/ramaswamy-and-the-physics-of-multi">predicted</a> that Ramaswamy will almost certainly make more headway in the polls, especially as his name recognition grows. Yet that publicity will also make him a target.</p>
<p>Already, he’s feeling the heat. Washington Post columnist George F. Will has <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/08/25/vivek-ramaswamy-overconfident-simplistic-solutions/">derided</a> him as “comparatively, a child”.</p>
<p>Trump holds a <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/video/trump-leads-republican-presidential-candidates-with-sizable-lead-poll-shows/">commanding lead</a> and looks poised to dominate Iowa and New Hampshire, before running the table in the remaining primaries.</p>
<p>If that happens, Ramaswamy might be <a href="https://theconversation.com/who-won-the-first-us-republican-presidential-debate-an-expert-reviews-the-highlights-212216">auditioning for a cabinet post or a 2028 replay</a>. The odds of Trump <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2023/08/19/vivek-ramaswamy-would-reject-vice-president-00111964">choosing him as his vice-presidential running mate</a> seem remote. Ramaswamy is too charismatic and Trump resists sharing the spotlight.</p>
<p>For now, the silver-tongued, dynamic newcomer to the Maga party will enjoy his 15 minutes. Whether there’s substance behind his candidacy — and whether he has independent staying power — are the big questions for #Vivek2024 to answer.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/212570/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Thomas Gift does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Republican rising star Vivek Ramaswamy had a bump in the polls after a recent television debate.Thomas Gift, Associate Professor and Director of the Centre on US Politics, UCLLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2121882023-08-31T12:19:42Z2023-08-31T12:19:42ZSpecial counsels, like the one leading the Justice Department’s investigation of Hunter Biden, are intended to be independent − but they aren’t entirely<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/545070/original/file-20230828-25-umot03.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=35%2C17%2C5955%2C3970&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Attorney General Merrick Garland announces on Aug. 11, 2023, that he has appointed a special counsel to handle the investigations into Hunter Biden.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/attorney-general-merrick-garland-conducts-a-news-conference-news-photo/1592786287">Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/06/20/1087173827/hunter-biden">June 20</a>, 2023, <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-brief-history-of-colorful-presidential-relatives-from-alice-roosevelt-to-hunter-biden-208183">Hunter Biden</a>, the second son of President Joe Biden, entered into <a href="https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/plea-agreement#google_vignette">a plea agreement</a> with prosecutors <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/hunter-biden-agrees-to-plea-deal-for-income-tax-and-illegal-weapon-charges">related to tax-related charges and the illegal possession of a firearm</a>.</p>
<p>On <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2023/07/26/hunter-biden-plea-deal-00108276">July 26</a>, <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2023/07/26/proposed-hunter-biden-plea-agreement-00108426">the plea agreement</a> was challenged by <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/maryellen-noreika-trump-appointed-judge-weighing-hunter-bidens/story?id=101670909">the judge in the case</a>. <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/07/26/1190211798/hunter-biden-plea-tax-charges">She wanted to know more</a> about any immunity being offered, given that Hunter Biden is under several <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/11/us/politics/hunter-biden-legal-troubles-timeline.html">federal investigations</a>.</p>
<p>After the prosecution and defense <a href="https://theconversation.com/hunter-bidens-plea-agreement-renegotiation-is-rare-a-law-professor-explains-what-usually-happens-210531">failed to renegotiate</a> the deal, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced on Aug. 11 that <a href="https://www.justice.gov/usao-de/meet-us-attorney">U.S. Attorney David Weiss</a>, the Donald Trump-appointed lead federal prosecutor for Delaware who had already been investigating the case, had been <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/appointment-special-counsel-2">appointed as special counsel</a> so that he would have “the authority he needs to conduct a thorough investigation and to continue to take the steps he deems appropriate independently, based only on the facts and the law.”</p>
<p>After the appointment, Sen. Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, <a href="https://www.durbin.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/durbin-statement-on-the-appointment-of-us-attorney-weiss-as-special-counsel-to-investigate-hunter-biden-matters">praised Garland</a> for being “committed to avoiding even the appearance of politicization at the Justice Department.”</p>
<p>Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, however, <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/sen-graham-slams-doj-special-counsel-hunter-biden-probe-dumb-political-decision">attacked Weiss’ appointment</a> as “<a href="https://youtu.be/nxmlZMIEqio?feature=shared&t=376">a dumb political decision,</a>” despite having <a href="https://www.cassidy.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Hunter%20Biden%20Special%20Counsel%20Letter%20FINAL.pdf">previously supported it</a>. </p>
<p>From my perspective as <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=vXXZBEkAAAAJ&hl=en">a political scientist</a>, I believe that while special counsels are intended to be independent, in practice they aren’t entirely. Here’s why.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/545071/original/file-20230828-21-az92sj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man stands at a lectern and gestures with one hand." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/545071/original/file-20230828-21-az92sj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/545071/original/file-20230828-21-az92sj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=717&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545071/original/file-20230828-21-az92sj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=717&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545071/original/file-20230828-21-az92sj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=717&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545071/original/file-20230828-21-az92sj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545071/original/file-20230828-21-az92sj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545071/original/file-20230828-21-az92sj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">David Weiss, pictured here in 2009, has been a federal prosecutor in Delaware since 2007. He is now also a special counsel investigating Hunter Biden.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/IranSmugglingCharges/583ef025e2af4147807840b335c4e391/photo">AP Photo/Ron Soliman</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Independent and special counsels</h2>
<p>Ensuring impartiality in the Justice Department can be difficult, as the attorney general is <a href="https://theconversation.com/should-the-president-pick-the-attorney-general-141333">appointed by</a> – and answerable to – a partisan president. This gives presidents the power to try to compel attorneys general to pursue a political agenda. President <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/presidents/richard-m-nixon/">Richard Nixon</a> did this during the investigation of the Watergate break-in, which threatened to implicate him in criminal acts. </p>
<p>On the evening of <a href="https://www.npr.org/2018/10/21/659279158/a-brief-history-of-nixons-saturday-night-massacre">Oct. 20, 1973</a>, Nixon ordered Attorney General <a href="https://www.justice.gov/ag/bio/richardson-elliot-lee">Elliot Richardson</a> to fire <a href="https://www.justice.gov/osg/bio/archibald-cox">Archibald Cox</a>, whom Richardson had appointed to lead the Watergate investigation. Richardson refused and resigned. Nixon then ordered Deputy Attorney General <a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/11/27/783492672/william-ruckelshaus-who-defied-nixon-in-saturday-night-massacre-has-died-at-87">William Ruckelshaus</a> to fire Cox. Ruckelshaus also refused and resigned. Finally, Nixon ordered Solicitor General <a href="https://www.justice.gov/osg/bio/robert-h-bork">Robert Bork</a>, the next most senior official at the Justice Department, to fire Cox. Bork complied. </p>
<p>This shocking series of events, often referred to as the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZuthKhjAfk">Saturday Night Massacre</a>, demonstrated how presidents could exercise political power over criminal investigations.</p>
<p>As a result of the Watergate scandal, Congress passed the <a href="https://www.congress.gov/95/statute/STATUTE-92/STATUTE-92-Pg1824.pdf">Ethics in Government Act of 1978</a>. This allowed for investigations into misconduct that could operate outside of presidential control.</p>
<p>After passage of this legislation, if the attorney general received “specific information” alleging that the president, <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-does-the-vice-president-do-152467">vice president</a> or other <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/28/591">high-ranking executive branch officials</a> had committed a serious federal offense, the attorney general would ask a special three-judge panel to appoint an independent counsel, who would investigate. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/545072/original/file-20230828-158158-fmojfm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A black and white photo of a man in a suit pointing at a table stacked with bound volumes." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/545072/original/file-20230828-158158-fmojfm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/545072/original/file-20230828-158158-fmojfm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545072/original/file-20230828-158158-fmojfm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545072/original/file-20230828-158158-fmojfm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545072/original/file-20230828-158158-fmojfm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545072/original/file-20230828-158158-fmojfm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545072/original/file-20230828-158158-fmojfm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">President Richard Nixon, here pointing to transcripts of White House tapes he agreed to turn over to congressional investigators, was an inspiration for the 1978 law that created truly independent counsels. It expired in 1999.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/PresidentsLegalTroubles/dbf0e83250c040109016f9bbb50081ea/photo">AP Photo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Ethics in Government Act also disqualified Justice Department employees, including the attorney general, from participating in any investigation or prosecution that could “<a href="https://www.congress.gov/95/statute/STATUTE-92/STATUTE-92-Pg1824.pdf">result in a personal, financial, or political conflict of interest</a>, or the appearance thereof.”</p>
<p>In the decades since the law’s passage, independent counsels investigated <a href="https://www.hsdl.org/c/abstract/?docid=814877">Republicans</a> and <a href="https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CDOC-105hdoc310/pdf/CDOC-105hdoc310.pdf">Democrats</a> alike. In 1999, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1999/03/01/independent.counsel/">Congress</a> let the Ethics in Government Act expire. That year, then-Attorney General <a href="https://www.justice.gov/archive/ag/testimony/1999/aggovern031799.htm">Janet Reno</a> <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/counsels/stories/counsel063099.htm">authorized</a> the appointment of special counsels, who could investigate certain sensitive matters, similar to the way independent counsels operated. </p>
<p>Robert Mueller, who was appointed in <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/appointment-special-counsel">2017</a> by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to investigate <a href="https://theconversation.com/russian-interventions-in-other-peoples-elections-a-brief-history-74406">possible Russian interference</a> in the 2016 elections and <a href="https://theconversation.com/fbis-russia-probe-threatens-a-reckoning-for-team-trump-75002">possible links between the Trump campaign and the Russian government</a>, was a special counsel. Some Republicans accused him of <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42372603">bias</a>, despite his long career serving under <a href="https://www.npr.org/2018/02/01/582358540/muellers-reputation-in-washington-is-stunningly-bipartisan-journalist-says">both Democratic and Republican presidents</a>.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.justice.gov/sco-durham">2020</a>, John Durham – another <a href="https://www.nbcconnecticut.com/news/local/u-s-attorney-for-connecticut-john-durham-resigns/2432294/">veteran</a> of the Justice Department – was appointed as special counsel to <a href="https://www.justice.gov/storage/durhamreport.pdf">investigate</a> the origins of the investigation that triggered Mueller’s appointment. Michael Sussmann, a former Democratic Party lawyer and target of that probe, accused Durham of <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/02/15/1080841516/john-durham-sussmann-trump-russia-investigation">political prosecution</a>. Sussmann was later <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/31/us/politics/michael-sussmann-durham-fbi.html">acquitted</a>.</p>
<h2>Politicizing the process</h2>
<p>Although special counsels were meant to resemble independent counsels, there are notable differences.</p>
<p><a href="https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/R43112.pdf">For instance</a>, while special counsels operate independently of the attorney general, both their appointment and the scope of their investigations are determined by the attorney general. In contrast, the appointment of independent counsels and the scope of their investigations were determined by a three-judge panel, which in turn was appointed by the <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/about/about.aspx">chief justice</a> <a href="https://theconversation.com/states-pick-judges-very-differently-from-us-supreme-court-appointments-160142">of the United States</a>.</p>
<p>Also, since Congress authorized independent counsels, presidential influence was limited by law. In contrast, since Justice Department regulations authorize special counsels, a president could try to compel the attorney general to change departmental interpretation of these regulations – or even just revoke them entirely – to influence or <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2017/06/13/can-trump-fire-special-counsel-robert-mueller-239500">end</a> a special counsel investigation. </p>
<p>For example, on at least one occasion, Trump <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/25/us/politics/trump-mueller-special-counsel-russia.html">sought to have Mueller dismissed</a>. When his attorney general, <a href="https://theconversation.com/3-things-jeff-sessions-did-as-attorney-general-that-history-should-remember-106614">Jeff Sessions</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1235181043881299969">refused to comply</a>, Trump <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/03/04/an-emboldened-trump-says-quiet-part-out-loud-about-why-he-fired-jeff-sessions/">fired</a> him.</p>
<p>Sessions was later <a href="https://theconversation.com/should-the-president-pick-the-attorney-general-141333">replaced</a> by <a href="https://www.justice.gov/ag/bio/barr-william-pelham">William Barr</a>, who previously served as attorney general under President George H.W. Bush. Prior to his appointment, Barr sent an unsolicited memo to the Justice Department <a href="https://theconversation.com/nominating-a-crony-loyalist-or-old-buddy-for-attorney-general-is-a-us-presidential-tradition-108160">defending</a> Trump by arguing that presidents have “<a href="https://www.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/BarrMueller.pdf">complete authority to start or stop a law enforcement proceeding</a>.” </p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0234938">In my own research</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.soscij.2019.04.006">I have found</a> that abuses of power are more common in situations in which the president and the attorney general are political allies.</p>
<p>For instance, after Mueller finished his <a href="https://www.justice.gov/archives/sco/file/1373816/download">report</a> in 2019, Barr released a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/context/read-attorney-general-barr-s-principal-conclusions-of-the-mueller-report/218b8095-c5e3-4eab-9135-4170f5b3e87f/">summary</a> of its “principal conclusions.” Later, Barr’s summary was criticized for “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/context/special-counsel-mueller-s-letter-to-attorney-general-barr/e32695eb-c379-4696-845a-1b45ad32fff1/">not fully captur[ing] the context, nature, and substance</a>” of Mueller’s work.</p>
<p>In 2020, a Republican-appointed judge <a href="https://context-cdn.washingtonpost.com/notes/prod/default/documents/bd363044-e2ec-4a02-b0b3-43fbc48b2f49/note/f003c01c-cde9-4c1e-a926-bc74e461ca7f.pdf">ruled</a> that Barr “failed to provide a thorough representation of the findings set forth in the Mueller Report” and questioned whether Barr had “made a calculated attempt to influence public discourse … in favor of President Trump.”</p>
<h2>To be or not to be free of partisanship</h2>
<p>The independence of the Justice Department rests, in part, <a href="https://theconversation.com/will-merrick-garland-joe-bidens-pick-for-attorney-general-be-independent-in-that-role-history-says-its-unlikely-151952">on who occupies</a> the offices of president and attorney general.</p>
<p>Trump, for example, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/post-impeachment-trump-declares-himself-the-chief-law-enforcement-officer-of-america/2020/02/18/b8ff49c0-5290-11ea-b119-4faabac6674f_story.html">saw himself</a> as “the chief law enforcement officer of the country” and thought it was appropriate to “be totally involved.” </p>
<p>Meanwhile, Joe Biden has <a href="https://scholarship.law.unc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3093&context=nclr">a long history</a> of supporting the independence of Justice Department investigations, dating back to his <a href="https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/about/chairman/previous">1987-1995 tenure as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee</a>.</p>
<p>Barr once <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/former-attorney-general-trump-was-right-to-fire-sally-yates/2017/02/01/5981d890-e809-11e6-80c2-30e57e57e05d_story.html">argued</a> that the attorney general’s role is to advance “all colorable arguments that can [be] mustered … when the president determines an action is within his authority – even if that conclusion is debatable.” </p>
<p>In contrast, Garland – a former U.S. circuit judge – <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/statement-attorney-general-merrick-b-garland">insists</a> that “political or other improper considerations must play no role in any investigative or prosecutorial decisions.”</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1690111067576254464"}"></div></p>
<figure><figcaption><span class="caption">Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has claimed the Biden administration is using the Justice Department unfairly.</span></figcaption></figure>
<p>Garland has served as attorney general for only 2½ years, yet at this point he has appointed more special counsels than <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-trump-russia-investigations-idINKCN1R01C1">any of</a> <a href="https://www.axios.com/2023/01/13/special-counsel-history-biden-trump-classified">his predecessors</a>.</p>
<p>The first, <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/appointment-special-counsel-0">Jack Smith</a>, is overseeing investigations into former President Donald Trump’s role in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/pro-trump-rioters-storm-u-s-capitol-as-his-election-tantrum-leads-to-violence-149142">Jan. 6 insurrection</a>, as well as Trump’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/fbis-mar-a-lago-search-warrant-affidavit-reveals-how-trump-may-have-compromised-national-security-a-legal-expert-answers-5-key-questions-189500">handling of classified government documents</a> upon leaving office in 2021. The second, <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/appointment-special-counsel-1">Robert Hur</a>, is overseeing President Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents after leaving office as <a href="https://theconversation.com/kamala-harris-has-tied-the-record-for-the-most-tie-breaking-votes-in-senate-history-a-brief-overview-of-what-vice-presidents-do-210444">vice president</a> in 2017. Weiss’ investigation of Hunter Biden is Garland’s third special counsel appointment.</p>
<p>However, despite attempts by Garland to keep sensitive cases an arm’s length away, the reality is that special counsels – by design – are not as independent as the independent counsels of the past. As a result, the perception of <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/109423468870178087">political prosecution</a> can be hard to avoid.</p>
<p><em>This is an updated version of an <a href="https://theconversation.com/special-counsels-like-those-examining-bidens-and-trumps-handling-of-classified-documents-are-intended-to-be-independent-but-they-arent-entirely-197773">article</a> published Jan. 13, 2023, which was an updated version of an <a href="https://theconversation.com/special-counsels-like-the-one-leading-the-department-of-justices-investigation-of-trump-are-intended-to-be-independent-but-they-arent-entirely-195640">article</a> originally published Dec. 14, 2022.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/212188/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joshua Holzer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Special counsels can help presidential administrations avoid the perception of bias, but they are not as independent as the independent counsels of the past.Joshua Holzer, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Westminster CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.