I have never had much faith in the wisdom of voters. Indeed, I have devoted much of my academic career to writing about the dangers of widespread political ignorance. my first academic paper. The book was published in 1998, when most experts tended to be relatively optimistic about the capabilities of the electorate. Since then I have published a book on this topic.Democracy and political ignorance – and many other articles exploring the various dimensions of the problem, implications for legal and political theory, and possible solutions.
In this article, I demonstrated that most voters often don’t know even basic facts about the political system and government policies, and that those who know more (‘political fans’) tend to evaluate political information in highly biased ways. I also claimed that Information shortcuts and the “miracle of aggregation” largely fail to offset ignorance and prejudice.Sometimes it even makes the situation worse. Moreover, this sad state of affairs is not the result of stupidity or lack of information, but of the generally rational behavior of most voters. “Rational ignorance” (lack of motivation to seek out political information) and “rational irrationality” (lack of motivation to engage in unbiased evaluations)..
After Trump and similar politicians emerged in other countries, academics and political commentators became more aware of how dangerous public ignorance can be. I wish I could say that my own views on the subject have been vindicated. But in one important respect, the Trump era has shown me that I am not pessimistic enough.
I have long argued that voter ignorance and bias are serious risks and that information shortcuts are overrated, but I have argued that shortcuts actually work well in one important way. In other words, democratic voters will punish politicians who cause great harm in clear and unambiguous ways. For example, what I quoted is Economist Amartya Sen The famous discovery is that mass famines never or rarely occur under democracies, but are all too common under dictatorships. Even ignorant and prejudiced voters will realize that a famine is brewing and will blame incumbent politicians and punish them at the polls. Knowing this, democratic political leaders have a strong incentive to avoid famine and other obvious disasters. And they usually do so when they have at least the necessary knowledge and resources (disasters can still happen if they are difficult to avoid).
“Retrospective voting” (rewarding and punishing incumbents for things that happened while they were in office) often doesn’t work as well in less extreme and unclear cases. As I explain in Chapter 4 of my book, voters often reward or punish public officials for things they did not cause, often short-term economic trends, droughts, or even sports team wins. They are actually responsible. But retrospective voting is a great mechanism for punishing politicians for apparent large-scale horribleness, and it works very well.
Or so I thought, along with many other scholars. But Trump proved me at least partially wrong. I was too optimistic.
Trump’s effort to use force and fraud to overturn the 2020 election was the kind of clear, blatant egregiousness that retrospective voting theory predicts voters should emphatically reject. The peaceful transfer of power is fundamental to democracy, and Trump’s actions in 2020 struck at the heart of this norm. If he had succeeded, the basic structure of our liberal democratic institutions would have been seriously damaged. But a majority of Republican voters nominated Trump again this year. And he has an almost even chance of winning this year’s general election. If he goes on to lose, it will probably be by a very narrow margin, and not a landslide rejection that would prove the theory.
Some people who would otherwise vote Republican. is Punish Trump for his 2020 actions by voting for Harris, or at least abstaining. mike pence and Former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney You are not alone. Thanks in part to these defectors, Trump is doing worse than any untainted Republican candidate heading into 2020. But the number of such voters is much smaller than optimistic retrospective voting theory predicts.
Ignorance and prejudice are playing a large role in Trump’s relative success. Opinion polls consistently show that More than one-third of Americans—including most Republicans—Trump lies about the 2020 election despite overwhelming evidence, including numerous court decisions rejecting Trump’s claims of voter fraud (including some written by conservative judges appointed by Trump himself) I believe. Ignorance and partisan bias are large enough to cause millions of Republican supporters to reject what is fairly obvious here. If he believes the 2020 election was “stolen” from Trump, his response seems justified, or at least excusable.
But this isn’t the whole story. If Trump had just had the support of voters who actually believed his lies about the 2020 election, he still could have won the Republican nomination in 2024. But he would lose the general election by a landslide, about 60 to 40 or more. He remains competitive with Kamala Harris because there are many voters (about 10 to 15 percent of the electorate) who reject his views for 2020 but prioritize other issues like the economy and immigration.
There is a more traditional political ignorance at work here. Most polls say the economy is the top priority for voters, including swing voters, and many are angry about inflation and rising prices in 2021-23. There’s a fairly standard political ignorance story here. Swing voters blame incumbent Democrats for inflation and rising prices. This is despite the fact that both parties supported the policies that led to this (mainly massive Covid-era spending). What’s worse is that we tend to think that President Trump will lower prices despite his plans for massive tariff increases and immigration restrictions. Will raise them as expected.
It is not uncommon for voters to misassign responsibility for common bad situations or misunderstand the impact of policies. But for a large group of swing voters, the relative traditional ignorance about price increases and the policies that give rise to them is enough to outweigh concerns about what Trump did in 2020. Faulty existing retrospective voting poses risks to Trump’s extraordinary 2020 and, if left unpunished, to our constitutional system.
The fact of price increases also applies to immigration. In fact, immigration is increasing Beneficial, not harmfulThe best way to deal with disorder at the border is Make legal migration easierIt’s not harder (as Trump suggests). But even if you are a border hardliner, it is difficult to show that the problems posed by migration are as urgent as the threats to the constitutional order. At least Republican primary voters could choose from a very limited number of candidates who were not involved in Trump’s efforts to overturn the election. Immigration is not simply a policy issue; “aggression” The fact that we are reaching a huge crisis is itself heavy. connected to ignorance.
One possible way to reconcile recent developments with optimistic retrospective voting theory is to say that what happened in 2020-21 wasn’t all that bad. Because Trump’s plan to overturn the election failed and the “guardrails” were in place. So we don’t need to worry too much about it. Because of these kinds of considerations, it’s unclear whether significant numbers of voters will continue to support Trump. But that would be a very wrong inference. Liberal political philosopher Michael Huemer explain:
Let me tell you how I see this. [argument]. Imagine you are riding a bus on a winding mountain road. The driver is seen suddenly swinging the steering wheel to the right, attempting to send the bus over a cliff. Fortunately, the guardrail on the side of the road holds and the bus bounces back onto the road. The bus driver repeats this while driving, and each time the guardrail catches the bus.
When he finally gets off the bus, one of his fellow passengers declares that this man was a great bus driver. He suggests hiring this driver to take the same group to another city.
“What are you, are you out of your mind?” you answer “He tried to drive us off a cliff!”
“Oh, that’s it.” Another passenger said: “The guardrail is caught, what’s going on? Don’t worry, the next drive won’t go over a cliff. remain Since your driving skills were good, I should hire you… “
Do I really have to memorize it…? Driving off a cliff isn’t the only bad thing a bus driver can do. There are countless disasters that a crazy person can cause. Anyone who tries to drive a bus off a cliff can never trust the bus or anything else. And if you think he’s a decent driver, you’re just as crazy.
I would like to add that any driver who has attempted to drive off a cliff once may do so again. And with the future of constitutional democracy at stake, even the slightest chance of guardrails being breached poses enormous risk. Moreover, failing to punish politicians who try to overturn elections by force and fraud only encourages more such actions. And some of those who try it in the future may be more successful than Trump.
This is not the first time that many people have failed to retrospectively punish truly terrible policies and candidates due to their belief in lies and flawed retrospective voting in general. The terrible devastation of World War I forced Europeans to reject the expansionist nationalism that had led to it. Some did. But many Germans actually doubled down on nationalism and imperialism. The “stab in the back” myth Germany claimed that it lost the war due to the betrayal of Jews, leftists, and others.
Later, the combination of the back-turning myth and the traditional retrospective vote against the Weimar Republic government that led the Great Depression helped the Nazis rise to power. In the United States, the political consequences of the Great Depression were less bad. But ignorance led voters to: It embraces a range of harmful policies that have actually made the crisis worse..
At least the Great Depression was a terrible crisis that caused tremendous suffering. There is no comparison between today’s price increases and border issues. If even the latter can make many voters give up on punishing truly terrible political leaders, then that means retrospective voting is much less effective than I and others have acknowledged.
Recent developments do not prove that retroactive voting is legitimate. completely drossy. I think Amartya Sen’s argument about democracy and famine is still right! Democracy is still better than dictatorship. But the bar for reliable and accurate retroactive political punishment is higher than I and others previously believed. Mass famine may be enough. But blatant threats to the foundations of liberal democracy do not necessarily bring it down. Too many people are easily persuaded that the threat is actually justified, or at least more important than a relatively ordinary policy issue.
Voter ignorance and prejudice are not limited to the right side of the political spectrum. I’ve written about the left-wing case before (e.g. here). But the Trump situation is the most dramatic evidence yet that the problem is worse than relative voter knowledge pessimists like me previously thought.
This election may invalidate my new pessimistic view. If Trump loses by a wide margin, contrary to what the polls say, that means he may pay a higher political price in 2020 than I currently expect. But if he wins or loses narrowly, pessimism will increase.
There is no easy way to “fix” political ignorance. I evaluate the range of possible options in a recent article on “Top-down and bottom-up solutions to the problem of political ignorance.And in my book Democracy and political ignorance. I believe the best approach is to make fewer decisions at the ballot box and more decisions by “voting with your feet.” There is a better incentive to seek out information and use it wisely.. However, we acknowledge that effective approaches take time and may not be a sufficient solution in and of themselves. A combination of multiple strategies may be necessary.
But recent developments strongly suggest that the problem is much more serious than previously believed. This makes the need for a solution even more urgent.
