Most ordinary Americans with a strong commitment to either the Democratic or Republican party behave as fans in sports rivalries who mainly care about beating the other team rather than participating in the political process for the broader good, according to a new study by researchers from the University of Kansas and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Much of the time, voters are not focused on "high-minded, good-government, issue-based goals," said study co-author Patrick Miller, a University of Kansas assistant professor of political science. "It's, 'I hate the other party. I'm going to go out, and we're going to beat them.' That's troubling."
Pamela Conover, distinguished professor of political science at UNC, co-authored the study, "Red and Blue States of Mind: Partisan Hostility and Voting in the United States," which was recently published in the journal Political Research Quarterly.
The study analyzed nationwide voters' attitudes from survey data and found that "average voters with strong party commitments care more about their parties simply winning the election than they do either ideology or issues."
"Unlike previous research, the study found that loyalty to the party itself was the source of partisan rivalry and incivility, instead of a fundamental disagreement over issues," the study said.
Researchers analyzed the 2010 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, which found that 41 percent of partisans believed that simply winning an election is more important than policy or ideological goals. Only 35 percent said policy issues motivate them to participate in politics.
Thirty-eight percent said their parties should use any tactic - from voter suppression, stealing and cheating in elections, physical violence, threats against the other party, and filibusters - in order to "win elections and issue debates."
"This is the first research to show that strong partisans who are motivated by partisan conflict are endorsing uncivil attitudes about the political process," Miller said. "This comes to an important point. If our politicians are polarized and uncivil, maybe it's because many voters are polarized and uncivil."
It's often professed that competitive and closely contested elections encourage healthy debates, but Miller says the data indicates otherwise.
"Competitive elections are making you hate the other party more. They're having a 180-degree opposite effect from what we think they should," Miller said. "Instead of bringing us together to talk and deliberate, they're making us hateful people who are disengaged from our fellow citizens."
Because many voters are not well informed on issues and choose to blindly support their party, incumbents who may have supported failed policies or been involved in scandals while in office are not punished as they should be, the study said.
"If all I care about is the game and my side winning, then what happens between games? I am not paying much attention to policy after the election. I'm only tuning back in at game time to find out who my team is fielding in the election. Too many partisans are saying, 'My side is good; the other side is evil. We have to go beat them,'" Miller said. "They're our rivals, like Kansas or Missouri, Duke or North Carolina. And that sense of animosity and demonization is really motivating average partisans to participate in politics, much more so than issues or ideology."
Miller continued: "If you want politics to change, you need brave politicians of both parties to convince the average partisan that just because you may disagree with those other people, that doesn't mean the other side is evil and that you're not necessarily morally superior. You're no more or less American than they are. And maybe, you don't have to hate each other to disagree. But that's a very unpalatable argument to a lot of average people."
