For several years now, this blog has tracked growing political partisanship in the U.S., the estrangement between grassroots Republicans and Democrats that echoes some of nineteenth-century inter-party vitriol, although does not reenact some of nineteenth-century bloodshed (yet). The division is increasingly about culture and identity rather than about policy. Differences on issues such as health, immigration, and entitlements are not fundamental–witness red states voting for Medicaid expansion and raising the minimum wage. Instead, more and more voters are basing their policy preferences (and a lot more) on their parties. Furthermore, party lines increasingly match regional, state, and community borders, which intensifies the political consequences.
This polarization had been under way for a few decades among political elites but not among the wider public until more recently. Trump’s victory depended critically on that polarization; his campaign and presidency, in turn, widened it. Both in 2016 and 2018 Trump spurned the “big-tent” outreach strategy of the GOP elites and instead revved up the base over cultural topics.
One result of this year’s midterms is, as many commentators have noted (e.g., here), yet further widening of the cleavage. The very size of the midterm turnout is one sign: Massive mobilization against Trump seemed to spur massive mobilization for Trump. In the end, a handful of culturally red states purged themselves of anomalous Democratic senators as many culturally blue congressional districts purged themselves of anomalous Republican representatives–often by replacing them with the sorts of victors who provoke the Trump base: career women, minorities, LGBT, and even Muslims.
Where is this bitter polarization heading?
Social scientists cannot really predict much of interest; we’re mostly about explaining after the fact.[1] But I’ll throw out an informed speculation.
Assuming no radical shock over the next few years–no large-scale terrorist attack or war, no great economic crisis, absorbing Watergate-like scandal, political putsch, or the like–the cultural-political divide is likely to continue, even widen in the short term.
The Trump party has the advantages of geography in its strong rural base,[2] a growing economy (for now), major corporate money, a media megaphone (Fox), energetic religious activists, and the fervent loyalty of older, white voters who regularly show up at the polls. The Democratic party has the advantages of an educated, metropolitan, and affluent base, some big-money donors, allies who shape popular culture (who, for example, mainstream black and gay characters in the media), and loyal minority voters who, however, do not show up regularly at the polls. Pretty much a standoff today.
Long-term, it is hard to see how the Trump strategy can be sustained, mainly because of demographics. I do not mean racial demography; third- and fourth-generation Latinos and Asians are not that different from third- and fourth-generation Italians and Irish. I mean that this generation of young people–twenty-somethings and teenagers–are very disproportionately Democrats. Young people tend not to vote, but once they do, they tend to stay voters and to stay with the party of their youth for years. In 2018, it appears that the ever-anticipated and never-arrived youth vote started to show up. That should mean more showing up in 2020 and beyond. Meanwhile, Trump voters are disproportionately passing from the scene, both from old age and from the demographic decline of the rural Anglo population. The way Ronald Brownstein put it, the election showed one party “ever more clearly representing what America has been, and [the other] what it is becoming.”
A plausible scenario is that, as today’s young people mature into more-or-less consistent voters, they will slowly lift a blue tide which would, in turn, give Democrats an increasingly firm grip on more states and on national politics–leaving the U.S. Senate and U.S. courts as conservative holdouts. The Republican party would be forced to find new constituencies (later-generation, middle-class immigrants? cultural libertarians? who?) that could, in turn, start a new political realignment that might ease polarization. Is this a likely future? Who knows? But it seems plausible–assuming no catastrophic events and that the nation is still operating under our current constitutional system.
Update (11-9-18): More on the youth vote here.
