As I await the outcome of today’s midterm elections, my mind keeps returning to a spirited political conversation — in these fraught times, does anyone talk about anything else? — that I had recently with a friend and colleague who asked a disturbing question: What more can be done to get those proverbial “in-the-middle voters” to come out and cast their ballot?
I didn’t have a satisfying answer. Truth be told, I fear there is no answer: After months of politicking, hundreds of millions of dollars raised and spent, endless loops of campaign advertising and pro/con arguments by candidates, I honestly worry that we lack answers as to what it really takes to inspire civic duty and participation for the broad swathe of Americans who, for whatever reason, won’t further their political engagement.
Partisans of all stripes remain only too easy to identify and, if we’ve learned anything from Twitter wars and Facebook threads, there’s no use arguing with them at this point. As The New York Times’ Michael D. Shear noted keenly in a recent story voters can be sorted into two camps in this election cycle — those who reside inside “the Trump bubble,” and those who sit beyond its borders:
Outside the Trump bubble, the president is fact-checked, scorned, doubted or challenged. His words — and there are many of them most days — appear to have lost their ability to persuade moderates and independents. To his critics, Mr. Trump is a liar and a fraud who is cheapening the office he holds and threatening the fabric of the nation’s democracy.
But inside the bubble, it is different. Inside, supporters share Mr. Trump’s view that men are the aggrieved gender. Inside, they vent their fury at Democrats and the news media using the president’s incendiary language. Inside, they harbor Mr. Trump’s conspiracy theories and echo his dark fear of immigrants.
Of course, I know there are other Americans who live separate and apart from any political bubble. By and large, these citizens are either completely disinterested in politics or they are alienated by all of the attention to which the media accords politics. These, however, are the very Americans my lunch companion wants to reach with last-minute information and talking points.
Like many ardent progressive citizens, she believes persuasive arguments can nudge marginal voters — especially that unicorn-like segment of suburban center-right white voters who broke with tradition to cast ballots for Trump in 2016 — to return to form and vote with Democrats in the midterms. No doubt rock-ribbed conservatives have similar designs on this wayward constituency. If this election cycle is any guide, they believe they can win their support with Trump’s noxious blend of campaign arguments; in recent months, for example, conservative hopefuls have lowered themselves into the President’s swamp with aggressive anti-immigrant messaging and bull-horn nationalism — the better to appeal to their racist fears.
I’m not so sure it would matter, at this point, to exert tremendous effort to reach any potential voter who hasn’t already committed themselves to the democratic process. They’re not swaying, as if riding a teeter-totter, struggling to maintain equilibrium between the clash of ideological arguments they see in these final days’ interminable campaign of televised political ads. If they’ve gotten this far without getting animated to vote, they’ve likely made up their minds not to participate.
Many Americans simply aren’t paying attention to the minutiae of politics from either side and, as a result, they simply won’t vote.
For those of us drowning a sea of politics, this is a difficult thing to realize and accept. But fact of the matter is this: Many Americans simply aren’t paying attention to the minutiae of politics from either side and, as a result, they simply won’t vote.
Analysis of voter participation, such as one by the U.S. Election Project, supports this view. Two years ago, in the 2016 presidential election, slightly more than half (54.7 percent) of the nation’s voting age population cast a ballot for president. Counted another way, some 111.2 million people, who could have voted, didn’t show up at the polls.
For sure, a goodly number of them were prevented from voting in 14 states that imposed new and restrictive voting laws, which have historically targeted poor and minority voters. But as undemocratic as our history of voter suppression might be, there’s far more to the story of low voter turnout than restrictive laws. Indeed, as the Pew Research Center notes, poor voter participation “has confounded politicians, activists and academic seeking to reverse a trend that puts the country behind many of the world’s developed nations.”
According to an August 2016 study, Pew ranked the United States 31st out of 35 countries for voter turnout based on voting age populace, among the most democratic countries associated with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. In a separate and more recent survey, Pew researchers found that while there is higher than usual excitement for this year’s midterm elections (voter enthusiasm and participation is typically weak in off-year campaigns, when a presidential election isn’t on the national ballot), the fact remains that “millions of Americans will not exercise their right to vote on Tuesday.”
As much as I want to have faith that most people will do the right thing tomorrow, i just dunno.#Vote
— Raising Kane (@eugene_kane) November 5, 2018
Now, as we wait anxiously for this Election Day to end and reveal what kind of politics our nation might have in the days to come, there is — for the moment, anyway — nothing left to do. The nation is voting and soon, a verdict will be rendered. My lunch companion and I — like all Americans — must be faithful to this process and place our trust in the will of the voters who take the franchise seriously. Crossing our fingers, we hope that there are enough of them to save the nation.