Essay: Mass Media, Wedge Issues, Polarization and Character in the 2016 Presidential Election

In their book The Gamble: Choice and Chance in the 2012 Presidential Election, authors Sides and Vavreck (2012) explain that elections can be predicted with two types of factors: choice and chance. Chance (“the fundamentals”) refers to the broad structural factors that the candidates cannot control such as the state of the economy or voter partisanship. Choice refers to the events that occur during the election season that the candidate has some influence on, such as the individual campaigns. Most social scientists argue that elections can essentially be predicted simply by looking at the fundamentals, especially the state of the economy. However, because the “fundamentals” predict an extremely tight race for the 2016 election, it is crucial to examine different components of choice to better understand this election. More specifically, media’s “in-your-face politics”, candidates’ debates on wedge issues, the large quantity of persuadable partisans and character assessments play a particularly large role in this 2016 election, and understanding the role these four elements of “choice” play in the election will facilitate a deeper understanding of this year’s presidential election.
Throughout the 2016 presidential election, media coverage of the election has been filled with reports of candidates making inflammatory remarks. For example, in the most recent televised presidential debate, viewers watched the Republican nominee, Donald Trump, and the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton interrupt each other and rally insults. Oftentimes, the cameras zoomed in on the candidates’ faces as they spoke. The presidential debates highlight two key characteristics of political television, referred to as “in-your-face politics” (Mutz 2015). The first component of “in-your-face politics” is uncivil political discourse, which violates social norms regarding polite conversation. This incivility often leads to heightened psychological arousal in the viewer. The second characteristic of “in-your-face politics” is television’s simulation of close physical proximity between the viewer and the politician, which violates social norms regarding spatial distance. The visual perception of closeness intensifies the viewer’s reactions, negative or positive, to the political discourse. Essentially, “in-your-face politics” is a media strategy designed to attract more viewers and keep them captivated for longer periods of time. However, this media strategy has broad effects on politicians, voters and the democratic process as a whole. Firstly, “in-your-face politics” encourages political incivility (Levendusky 2016). Media exposure is essential to candidates, especially during the primary season, when viewers have little information on the candidates. In fact, there is a direct correlation between increased media coverage and rising in the polls. As a result, candidates often capitalize on the media’s bias toward sensationalism and purposefully attract attention through incivility (Wilson, Dilulio, Bose, and Levendusky 2015). In the 2016 presidential election, the role of media in encouraging political incivility is most clear in the rise of Donald Trump. In 2015, Trump captured media attention and dominated headlines by insulting women, immigrants, the disabled, war heroes and much more. As a result of his comments, Trump gained roughly $55 million in free exposure from just 8 major news outlets (Paterson 2016). Moreover, Trump dominated Republican coverage, receiving nearly double the amount of coverage as Jeb Bush, the next most heavily covered Republican candidate, and nearly 2.5 times the amount of coverage as Marco Rubio, Ben Carson and Ted Cruz. Trump’s massive media coverage caused his surge in the polls and eventually helped him win the Republican nomination. Furthermore, since incivility results in increased recall, politicians are further incentivized to be uncivil. For example, in the first general election debate of the 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump interrupted Hillary Clinton 55 times while Clinton interrupted Trump 11 times (Wilson 2016). So despite 95 percent of Americans believing civility in politics is important, political incivility is only increasing due to this media incentivization. Secondly, “in-your-face politics” increases viewer awareness of issues, but also decreases perceived legitimacy of the opposition. In fact, incivility combined with closeness reduces the extent of warmth viewers feel for the opposition by more than 10 thermometer degrees. Fundamentally, the political incivility combined with close physical proximity leads to viewers’ decreased respect and perceived legitimacy for the opposition. This can be incredibly detrimental to our government since democracy requires people on the losing side to accept the loss and be willing to be governed by the opposite side. Decreasing respect for the opposition makes compromise incredibly difficult, which undermines democracy as a whole. Though the 2016 presidential election has not yet occurred, there are already concerns over the lack of “losers consent” due to Trump’s incivility. In fact, Trump’s repeated comments that the election was rigged by the media have led to concerns over voter fraud with 64 percent of Trump supporters saying they were more likely to have serious doubts about the accuracy of the vote count if Clinton won (Lemire and Swanson 2016).
One of the major policy areas that has been constantly discussed during the 2016 presidential election has been the issue of immigration reform, and presidential nominees Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton remain incredibly divided on the issue. On one hand, Trump, famous for calling Mexican immigrants murderers and rapists, has advocated for the construction of a wall across the US-Mexican border, stricter enforcement of immigration laws and the temporary halt of the issuing of green cards for foreign workers. On the other hand, Clinton has called for the creation of a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants and a change in detention policies (Valverde 2016). The candidates have fiercely debated other divisive issues such as abortion and gun control. These controversial political issues, known as wedge issues, have been the centerpiece of the 2016 presidential campaigns and their messages (Lee 2016). During campaigns, candidates often discuss wedge issues in an attempt to convince the members of the opposite party to defect (Hillygus and Shields 2008). The voters most receptive to this kind of campaign information and most likely to defect parties are the partisans who disagree with their party on a specific issue that is extremely important to them. These persuadable voters are known as cross-pressured partisans. In recent years, the ability to win cross-pressured partisans has been crucial to any campaign, especially since recent presidential elections have been won by extremely narrow margins. In fact, in the last 10 out of 14 presidential elections, the number of partisan defectors in the electorate has been large enough to mean the difference between winning and losing. In the 2016 election, the three main wedge issues have been immigration policy, gun control and abortion. While most partisans’ views align with their party’s, an important number of Republicans and Democrats disagree with their respective party’s platforms on one of the three issues. In fact, 33 percent of Republicans and 23 percent of Democrats are identified as persuadable voters (Clement 2016). More specifically, roughly one third of Republicans support a path to citizenship and abortion and around 28 percent support stricter gun control measures. There is similar discord in the Democratic party with 17 percent of Democrats opposing a path to citizenship, and roughly 20 percent opposing legal abortion and stricter gun control policies. Both the Trump campaigns and the Clinton campaigns have attempted to capitalize on cross-pressured partisans’ disagreement with their respective party’s policies on certain issues by consistently emphasizing their respective platforms on these issues. For example, Clinton has directly attacked Trump’s abortion policies, stating, “I will defend Roe v. Wade and I will defend women’s rights to make their own healthcare decisions” (Kane 2016). Both candidates have been mildly successful in courting the cross-pressured partisans, with Trump gaining around 2 percent support among persuadable Democrats and Clinton gaining 3 percent.
In the status quo, there is a common perception that America has become increasingly polarized and bipartisan compromise is simply a dream of the past. Though there is much debate regarding whether or not partisan or ideological polarization has actually dramatically increased in the United States, it is clear that affective polarization is on the rise (Lee 2016). Affective polarization is the tendency of partisans (identifying as either Republican or Democrat) to view the opposing party negatively and with contempt. Today, 58 percent of Republicans have highly negative views on the Democratic Party, seeing the Democratic Party as a “threat” (Pew Research Center 2016). This number is significantly higher from the 32 percent during the 2008 election. Democrats have also seen a similar increase in partisan antipathy with 55 percent of Democrats viewing the Republican party unfavorably, up from just 37 percent in 2008. This increase in affective polarization has resulted in partisanship increasingly being based on negative feelings for the opposite party. In fact, the majority of partisans from both parties identify negative factors rather than positive as the reason for their partisanship. For Republicans, 68 percent say that a major reason they identify with the GOP is because they believe that the Democratic Party’s policies are detrimental to the nation. Similarly, 62 percent of Democrats identify with the party because they believe Republican policies harm the nation. Negativity based partisanship parallels the increase in negative voting, which is voting for a candidate due to opposition for the opponent rather than support for your candidate (Lee 2016). Among Republican supporters, 53 percent of voters state their choice is more of a vote against Clinton rather than a vote in support of Trump. This number is a drastic increase from the 2008 election, when only 35 percent of voters based their choice more on opposition to Obama rather than support for McCain. Similarly, among Democratic supporters, 46 percent of individuals are voting for Hillary due to opposition to Trump, up from just 25 percent in the 2008 election. This increase in affective polarization and negative voting can have profound post-election consequences. Most importantly, increased polarization results in decreased support for bipartisan compromise and decreased confidence in the government (Levendusky 2016).
One of the main functions of presidential campaigns is to help voters assess the character of the candidates (Wilson, Dilulio, Bose, and Levendusky 2015). To voters, a candidate not only must have the correct position on certain issues, but must also possess the traits of a strong leader, such as integrity, empathy and strong leadership. Character evaluations are a type of valance issue, which is an issue on which everyone agrees, but the question is whether the candidate embraces this view. In the 2016 election, character assessments are particularly important as both Clinton and Trump have battled poor character allegations (Levendusky 2016). Democratic party nominee Hillary Clinton has constantly battled dishonesty allegations and the “Crooked Hillary” narrative (Kristof 2016). The many scandals Clinton has been involved in, such as the Whitewater scandal to Benghazi to her use of a private email server during her time as Secretary of State, have only exacerbated and perpetuated the crooked Hillary narrative that her opposition created (Graham 2016). In fact, according to a July 2016 CNN poll, 68 percent of respondents believed that Clinton was untrustworthy, while just 30 percent viewed Clinton as honest (Black 2016). On the other hand, Republican party nominee Donald Trump has battled allegations that he does not have the temperament fit for president. Since the beginning of Trump’s campaign has been wrought with concerns over his overall disagreeableness, prejudice and narcissism (Todd, Murray and Dann 2016). Trump’s constant prejudiced comments and campaign gaffes, such as mocking a disabled reporter or calling President Obama the founder of ISIS, have only contributed to the narrative that Trump is unfit to be president. These types of character evaluations are incredibly important in any election since it provides a method by which voters assess how the president will behave in office.
Because the “fundamentals” predict a very tight presidential race this year, the elements of choice matter more than ever this year. However, these elements of choice also have long term impacts that extend way further than the immediate 2016 election. The factors discussed above will have long term impacts on the American public and our government. The mass media’s constant “in-your-face” political coverage is likely to have detrimental effects on voters’ trust in the government and to further exacerbate the growth in affective polarization. The presidential candidates’ respective discussions on major wedge issues also potentially alienate members of the opposing party. As the public’s faith in government decreases and partisans’ distrust of the opposition increases, bipartisan compromise seems more and more unlikely in the coming years. Essentially, the actions of the 2016 presidential campaigns and the media may undermine democratic processes in the long term.