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| NOV./DEC. 2004 VOLUME 107 NUMBER 3 | Letter from Ithaca |
The Great Divide
PRESIDENTIAL POLITICS IN RED AND BLUE
THE SHARP REGIONAL DIVISIONS OF THE 2000 ELECTORAL college map--and the prospect that those lines will hold in 2004--have suffused our political talk. Many pundits see the red/blue division as a culture clash, pitting guntoting, war-loving, homophobic Sunbelt fundamentalists against latté-drinking, pro-abortion, anti-religious readers of the New York Review of Books. Political scientist Morris Fiorina is exasperated by this kind of talk, and in his book Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America he marshals data to show that Americans are not polarized on most issues.Why, then, the stark red/blue divide?
One reason is that the presidential nomination system changed significantly in the late 1960s. Reforms intended to wrest control from cigarchomping bosses had the unintended effect of handing the process to groups with intense preferences (especially on social issues) who vote in primaries and caucuses, yet make up less than 20 percent of the electorate. The old-style bosses were probably more moderate in their policy preferences--and, as party professionals, could assess the strengths and weaknesses of potential standard bearers. Today's delegates have more extreme preferences, and so do the candidates they nominate.Moderate voters are thus forced to choose between the nominees of two rather polarized delegate groups.
In presidential elections, the electoral college assigns all of a state's electoral votes to the plurality winner, thus exaggerating the territorial effect of preferences. New York conservatives and Mississippi liberals are overwhelmed by the majorities in their states, however narrow those majorities might be. This exaggeration, combined with the changes in the nomination process, produces election results that superimpose sharp territorial and ideological divisions on a moderate population.
Sectionalism is an old pattern in presidential elections, but sharply delineated “red state conservatism” is recent. In 1976, the Democratic candidate, Jimmy Carter, carried both the South (except for Virginia) and most of the Northeast. Likewise, Bill Clinton cut into presumed Republican territory--though Fiorina argues that Clinton, more than any other public figure, spurred the culture war because his sexual indiscretions and support for feminism, abortion, and gay rights caused a backlash in areas of traditional values.
For most of its history, the Democratic Party was the party of economic liberalism and traditional morality. As late as the 1960s, congressional opponents of abortion were likely to be Democrats, otherwise liberal representatives of urban, working-class (often Catholic) constituencies. But as a result of the new methods for choosing delegates and the Democratic requirement that half of all delegates be women, by the 1990s the Democratic Party appeared to traditional working-class and lowermiddle- class voters to be giving more emphasis to opposing any limits on abortion than to economic issues.
Other regionally divisive issues are easier for the party to navigate. For instance, gay marriage can be (and is, by John Kerry) subordinated to support for states' rights and endorsement of civil unions. And Democratic candidates who oppose the Iraq war could (if they were more gifted communicators) wrest the banner of terrorism fighters away from the Republicans. But abortion, especially late-term abortion of healthy fetuses, remains a divisive issue, and one on which younger voters appear more open to conservative moral arguments than were their counterparts twenty or thirty years ago.
By assuming abortion is the issue that most agitates women and appearing less strongly committed to positions more likely to be endorsed by female voters across the country--such as peace, jobs, pollution, education, health care, and child care--Kerry may have lost critical support among women and in rural areas of the critical Midwestern swing states. In doing so, he may have unwittingly collaborated with George W. Bush in perpetuating the red/blue divide in American politics.
-- Elizabeth Sanders
Elizabeth Sanders, PhD '78, is a professor in the Department of Government. This piece was adapted from a presentation she made at an election forum in September.