External signs of political engagement felt risky in 2024. Putting political signs and stickers on your home or your vehicle during such a contentious election is an easy way to become the target of hateful speech or even vandalism.
Political polarization in the US has increased rapidly in the last 20 years. In my working class neighborhood, which is about 50/50 democrat/republican, people have moved from good-natured ribbing to a genuine fear of "the other side," likely as a consequence of heightened political rhetoric and even violence. There were zero political signs in my neighborhood this election and nary a MAGA hat.
I know data can be interpreted in many ways, but here's a summary quote from a study that sums up my experience:
Nearly half of the U.S. electorate thinks members of the opposing party aren't just wrong for politics—they're "downright evil."
When political polarization runs this deep, there's little hope that a yard sign or bumper sticker could lead to a productive conversation. However, there's a decent chance that many of your neighbors will think you're a bad person.
Can we use these thoughts to think in terms of "active" suppression and "passive" suppression. What if any data do we have on comparative active voter suppression in terms of various requitements in states where these requirements did not exist in 2016 or 2020? Could we then interpolate in some crude way what passive suppression might have been? In such a close election,1.5m votes (?) can we "infer' at least what suppression had to do with the skintight outcome?
Fascinating assessment. Have been sharing this with folks in some state political circles.
I agree that exahaustion is part of it but I think an even bigger issue is that the political polarization/political landscape is sorta solidifying with precious few competitive races anymore so being active doesn't seem to be all that useful. If your side consistently gets elected no matter what, there is no point to rallying or supporting a candidate. If you are on the opposite side, it doesn't matter what you do. If you are a Fox New conservative in a place that elects Democrats, why bother other than for the sake of performance art? Ditto if you are a liberal in a state/district where conservative Republicans call all the shots and no Democrat has a chance of being elected to Congress. With people elected based on ideology, writing your elected representative is limited at best. If you are opposed to the Big Beautiful Bill but your elected figures in Congress are MAGA supporters, why bother writing them your concerns since you know it won't make a difference. If you support a strong border and immigration enforcement but are a resident of a sanctuary city, what is reaching out to your city leaders really going to accomplish?
The other issue is demographic and that is lack of strong viable candidates to rally around. I have seen a lot of local and state races where the folks running are totally new and unskilled at the process. Why bother wasting my time and money to encourage amateur hour at the voting booth?
I think the political engagement of the rank-and-file has to be balanced with the amount of those adherents that are in powerful positions. Most White Evangelicals not being politically engaged doesn't jibe with their outsized population in powerful appointed and elected positions.
This isn't really true. It's Catholics that are overrepresented. Look at SCOTUS. Evangelicals supply votes to the GOP but relative to our vote share, we're underrepresented in elite places.
Though PEW doesn't categorize White Evangelicals specifically, the "Baptist" and "Unspecified/Other" Christian have shown to be approximations of the White Evangelical item in the past. It also has the US adherent population in there to compare. Contrast that with the Nones being 28% of the population but nearly invisible in congress.
I think the nature of the Supreme Court (rare, lifetime appointments) makes for a bad example of the representative nature. Appointments are a picture in time of political power.
I'd say that's a huge leap to me, to assume Unspecified/Other maps to evangelicals. I'd imagine it's probably a mix of evangelicals, mainliners, and nominals, and leaning towards nominals. What religion would Trump -- a nominal -- identify as? I would guess Unspecified/Other.
If you look at Baptists, it maps pretty closely to share of the US population. And probably underrepresented if you compare to the median voter, who is in his 50s.
The dominance, or at least overrepresentation, of Catholics within elite conservative spaces isn't just a fluke, it's a very real phenomenon with many visible indicators that evangelical intellectuals have been observing for decades now. It is still active and doesn't show any signs of turning around at the moment. The Republican SCOTUS appointees are relatively old and 5-1 Catholic-Mainline, but the much younger JD Vance (Yale Law) is also Catholic.
But I can see how if you're a None, that would seem underrepresented. My guess is that a lot of Nones with relatively weak convictions (i.e. the "Nothing in Particulars") are identifying as nominal Christians for political reasons. Because why not? Again, see Trump. It's only high-conviction atheists/agnostics that are going to refuse to do this.
There’s a simple solution to offer to those who don’t care or think both parties are the same or it makes no difference who gets elected. Automatically vote against the incumbent. Vote for anyone else on the ballot or write in someone. Once incumbents realize that, in addition to the votes normally going to their opponent, an ADDITIONAL 30-40% of the electorate won’t vote for them, they’ll be powerfully motivated try to appeal to a wider range of voters. Just turning out “their base” won’t cut it. It would only take a couple of cycles before they’d be enacting widely popular policies and emphasizing competence and customer service in government functions.
Religion may be as much a marker as a determinant. We Jews come out pretty active. We also have a lot of university degrees which create discretionary income and a culture that requires us to donate part of that treasure to causes, literacy that does not mind composing paragraphs to the websites of our representatives, big front yards to put our lawn signs when the HOAs in Florida don't object, and a certain cultural Chutzpah. None of this will get our cars vandalized like putting our tallis bags on the back seat in a parking lot might, so some activity and expression we prudently lowered the public profile. Has this changed in four years, other than legitimate fear of reprisals? I don't think so. Has it changed in twenty years, the 2004 election most closely matching the outcome of the 2024 cycle, perhaps? If the CES goes back that far, Ryan could run the same graphs though with a time frame of twenty years, but lacking a candidate that any religiously identified constituency would find overtly abhorrent or a country in turmoil, but with a reasonably decisive election. I think it would reveal more about how different faith groups engage politically in response to circumstances that were more affable but with the same demographic divides.
It looks to me like there's a Gaza effect going on here, for the left. The hard left [loosely correlated here with atheists] and Muslims, were more ambivalent towards the Democratic Party as a result of its waffling on Gaza. Meanwhile Jews were annoyed with the same waffling, coming at it from the other side.
As for Republicans, it was the third time with Trump. Even if core convictions haven't changed, we're farther and farther removed from the energy of the original MAGA meme magic. Trump won, in part, by picking up votes from the double haters, whose population expanded as a result of Biden's failures. Meanwhile Trump did nothing, really, to convince the double haters not to hate him, even if they're willing to vote for him. But double haters aren't giving money or putting up lawn signs.
External signs of political engagement felt risky in 2024. Putting political signs and stickers on your home or your vehicle during such a contentious election is an easy way to become the target of hateful speech or even vandalism.
Help me understand this a bit more. In your opinion was the 2024 contest more contentious than 2020 or 2016? And if so, why?
Political polarization in the US has increased rapidly in the last 20 years. In my working class neighborhood, which is about 50/50 democrat/republican, people have moved from good-natured ribbing to a genuine fear of "the other side," likely as a consequence of heightened political rhetoric and even violence. There were zero political signs in my neighborhood this election and nary a MAGA hat.
I know data can be interpreted in many ways, but here's a summary quote from a study that sums up my experience:
Nearly half of the U.S. electorate thinks members of the opposing party aren't just wrong for politics—they're "downright evil."
https://hub.jhu.edu/2024/10/27/snf-agora-poll-september-2024/
When political polarization runs this deep, there's little hope that a yard sign or bumper sticker could lead to a productive conversation. However, there's a decent chance that many of your neighbors will think you're a bad person.
Can we use these thoughts to think in terms of "active" suppression and "passive" suppression. What if any data do we have on comparative active voter suppression in terms of various requitements in states where these requirements did not exist in 2016 or 2020? Could we then interpolate in some crude way what passive suppression might have been? In such a close election,1.5m votes (?) can we "infer' at least what suppression had to do with the skintight outcome?
Fascinating assessment. Have been sharing this with folks in some state political circles.
I agree that exahaustion is part of it but I think an even bigger issue is that the political polarization/political landscape is sorta solidifying with precious few competitive races anymore so being active doesn't seem to be all that useful. If your side consistently gets elected no matter what, there is no point to rallying or supporting a candidate. If you are on the opposite side, it doesn't matter what you do. If you are a Fox New conservative in a place that elects Democrats, why bother other than for the sake of performance art? Ditto if you are a liberal in a state/district where conservative Republicans call all the shots and no Democrat has a chance of being elected to Congress. With people elected based on ideology, writing your elected representative is limited at best. If you are opposed to the Big Beautiful Bill but your elected figures in Congress are MAGA supporters, why bother writing them your concerns since you know it won't make a difference. If you support a strong border and immigration enforcement but are a resident of a sanctuary city, what is reaching out to your city leaders really going to accomplish?
The other issue is demographic and that is lack of strong viable candidates to rally around. I have seen a lot of local and state races where the folks running are totally new and unskilled at the process. Why bother wasting my time and money to encourage amateur hour at the voting booth?
Interesting data. I do think a lot of political engagement has migrated to online.
I think the political engagement of the rank-and-file has to be balanced with the amount of those adherents that are in powerful positions. Most White Evangelicals not being politically engaged doesn't jibe with their outsized population in powerful appointed and elected positions.
This isn't really true. It's Catholics that are overrepresented. Look at SCOTUS. Evangelicals supply votes to the GOP but relative to our vote share, we're underrepresented in elite places.
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2025/01/02/faith-on-the-hill-2025/
Though PEW doesn't categorize White Evangelicals specifically, the "Baptist" and "Unspecified/Other" Christian have shown to be approximations of the White Evangelical item in the past. It also has the US adherent population in there to compare. Contrast that with the Nones being 28% of the population but nearly invisible in congress.
I think the nature of the Supreme Court (rare, lifetime appointments) makes for a bad example of the representative nature. Appointments are a picture in time of political power.
I'd say that's a huge leap to me, to assume Unspecified/Other maps to evangelicals. I'd imagine it's probably a mix of evangelicals, mainliners, and nominals, and leaning towards nominals. What religion would Trump -- a nominal -- identify as? I would guess Unspecified/Other.
If you look at Baptists, it maps pretty closely to share of the US population. And probably underrepresented if you compare to the median voter, who is in his 50s.
The dominance, or at least overrepresentation, of Catholics within elite conservative spaces isn't just a fluke, it's a very real phenomenon with many visible indicators that evangelical intellectuals have been observing for decades now. It is still active and doesn't show any signs of turning around at the moment. The Republican SCOTUS appointees are relatively old and 5-1 Catholic-Mainline, but the much younger JD Vance (Yale Law) is also Catholic.
But I can see how if you're a None, that would seem underrepresented. My guess is that a lot of Nones with relatively weak convictions (i.e. the "Nothing in Particulars") are identifying as nominal Christians for political reasons. Because why not? Again, see Trump. It's only high-conviction atheists/agnostics that are going to refuse to do this.
There’s a simple solution to offer to those who don’t care or think both parties are the same or it makes no difference who gets elected. Automatically vote against the incumbent. Vote for anyone else on the ballot or write in someone. Once incumbents realize that, in addition to the votes normally going to their opponent, an ADDITIONAL 30-40% of the electorate won’t vote for them, they’ll be powerfully motivated try to appeal to a wider range of voters. Just turning out “their base” won’t cut it. It would only take a couple of cycles before they’d be enacting widely popular policies and emphasizing competence and customer service in government functions.
Religion may be as much a marker as a determinant. We Jews come out pretty active. We also have a lot of university degrees which create discretionary income and a culture that requires us to donate part of that treasure to causes, literacy that does not mind composing paragraphs to the websites of our representatives, big front yards to put our lawn signs when the HOAs in Florida don't object, and a certain cultural Chutzpah. None of this will get our cars vandalized like putting our tallis bags on the back seat in a parking lot might, so some activity and expression we prudently lowered the public profile. Has this changed in four years, other than legitimate fear of reprisals? I don't think so. Has it changed in twenty years, the 2004 election most closely matching the outcome of the 2024 cycle, perhaps? If the CES goes back that far, Ryan could run the same graphs though with a time frame of twenty years, but lacking a candidate that any religiously identified constituency would find overtly abhorrent or a country in turmoil, but with a reasonably decisive election. I think it would reveal more about how different faith groups engage politically in response to circumstances that were more affable but with the same demographic divides.
It looks to me like there's a Gaza effect going on here, for the left. The hard left [loosely correlated here with atheists] and Muslims, were more ambivalent towards the Democratic Party as a result of its waffling on Gaza. Meanwhile Jews were annoyed with the same waffling, coming at it from the other side.
As for Republicans, it was the third time with Trump. Even if core convictions haven't changed, we're farther and farther removed from the energy of the original MAGA meme magic. Trump won, in part, by picking up votes from the double haters, whose population expanded as a result of Biden's failures. Meanwhile Trump did nothing, really, to convince the double haters not to hate him, even if they're willing to vote for him. But double haters aren't giving money or putting up lawn signs.