The Political Parties in your head aren’t real, and why that matters
How much are we, as consultants, to blame for America’s tribalism?
Today, Perry Bacon Jr. at FiveThirtyEight shared what I think is a bombshell of a story: that the defining divide in our country — the partisan divide—is real, but often for wholly imagined reasons. About 40% of Americans, he says, are often members of their party (or “tribe”) because they oppose the values of the other party… but that Americans are also typically really, well, wrong about what the “other party” is like.
As Bacon put it:
…Americans overall are fairly misinformed about who is in each major party — and that members of each party are even more misinformed about who is in the other party.
In short, “the parties in our heads,” as Ahler and Sood write, are not the parties in real life.
So why does this matter, and more specifically why does it matter for digital consultants and political strategists?
For starters, these dynamics—stereotyping, misunderstanding, and otherization of our neighbors—are the sort that can precede and precipitate civil conflict. It’s far easier to be hostile, intolerant, and violent towards someone who you believe is vastly different from you, and this data seems to indicate that that’s how the two parties see each other. I think we can all agree that’s a path we’d do well to avoid.
But for digital strategists and political consultants more generally, I fear that we bear a good deal of responsibility for creating the conditions that make these misconceptions happen. So often we caricature the other party by exaggerating contrasts, questioning motives, and raising the stakes—all in pursuit of that marginal dollar of online fundraising revenue. And we wonder why our politics has become more polarized.
It should go without saying that this isn’t a partisan question. Both parties are guilty of hyper-partisanship and otherization of their opponents. But we, as practitioners of political campaigning, ought to be asking ourselves “what, if any, code of ethics do I follow?” Is winning all that matters?
For my part, every time I see grassroots activists screaming at each other on Facebook or in some viral video, I find myself questioning what role I have to play in all of this. I wonder: am I adding value to my community? I want to be, but I am often unsure that I am. Are you?
