Category Archives: elections

what people mean when they say that Trump or Clinton is honest

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It flabbergasts many people to learn that more Americans view Trump rather than Clinton as “honest and trustworthy” (35% versus 33%), even though we can read in The New York Times, “A Week of Whoppers from Donald Trump”; in The Washington Post, “Trump’s Week Reveals Bleak View, Dubious Statements in ‘Alternative Universe‘”; and in The Los Angeles Times, “Scope of Trump’s Falsehoods Unprecedented for a Modern Presidential Candidate.”

In philosophy school, you learn to make distinctions, and I think two distinctions may be useful for interpreting the public’s response. First, “truthfulness” can mean:

  1. Saying what is true. Because they envision truths as claims consistent with evidence, many fact-checkers compare candidates’ assertions to government data and public records or to academic research. For instance, Donald Trump has said that Lester Holt, the debate moderator, is a Democrat, but official records show that Holt is a registered Republican. The Times calls that a “whopper.” I am confident that Hillary Clinton’s claims are far more often verifiable than Donald Trump’s, and in that sense, she is more truthful and trustworthy.
  2. Investing skill and effort in finding the truth. If truth is correspondence to some independently verifiable reality, then a person could say something true–or false–by accident. We can also err when we fact-check. But some people truly strive for truth. They are careful not to opine on matters for which they lack evidence, they listen to alternative views, they complicate their positions when they encounter contrary evidence, they may even seek contrary evidence, and they select appropriate methods for answering empirical questions. They can still be wrong, but they have a respectful attitude to truth. I am confident that Hillary Clinton is a much more dedicated and skillful truth-seeker than Donald Trump is, although one could raise serious criticisms of her truth-seeking in episodes like her vote to authorize the Iraq War (when she had privileged access to intelligence) or her endorsement of the “super-predator” theory of crime.
  3. Speaking what is in your mind. For many people, honesty and truthfulness mean candor, sincerity, or forthrightness. Provoked by tricky Odysseus, guileless Achilles exclaims, “I hate like the Gates of Hell a man who says one thing and thinks another in his mind!” A candid straight-shooter can say lots of things that are false, either by accident or because he’s not a good truth-seeker. If he really, truly thinks that taxes are higher in the US than any other country, he looks you in the eyes and says so. Judged by that third standard, I am not sure whether Trump is “honest.” Although he may be guileful, it’s at least plausible that he blurts out what he really thinks, reflecting an ideological/normative worldview that he genuinely holds. Sometimes he even says things that cost him tactically because they make him look dumb or alienate a specific voting bloc that might have preferred him. And just for that reason, lots of people think he’s “honest.” As for Hillary Clinton, I perceive that she thinks many things in her mind and puts them through a very careful screen before she speaks aloud. Voters are sensitive to that kind of processing. They take slip-ups, like her “deplorables” comment, to be glimpses of a hidden stratum of sincere beliefs. This is what some have in mind when they call Trump more honest than Clinton.

“He tells it like it is”

My own view would be something like this: Truth-seeking is an important virtue for political leaders. It raises the odds that leaders will know the actual truth, although I’d forgive any human being for making errors if she demonstrates both commitment and skill in her truth-seeking.

Politicians should also demonstrate some candor. To struggle to know the truth and then to say something less than, or different from, the truth in public is not very democratic. On the other hand, politics isn’t a seminar room, a lab, or a witness stand in a court of law. Other political virtues may conflict with candor, such as tact, diplomacy, privacy, national or global security, and sheer effectiveness. A political leader must strive to enact and change policies, and it can undermine her effectiveness if she says everything she believes. I am pretty sure that’s why Clinton talks as she does, but because many people equate truthfulness with candor, she pays a price.

It’s also worth distinguishing between …

  1. the immediate empirical truth of statements (e.g., “Lester Holt is a Democrat,” which is false), and
  2. the truth or validity of broad ideological positions (e.g., “The media is biased against regular folks”).

I believe that Hillary Clinton’s center/left ideology is much more defensible than Trump’s authoritarian ethno-nationalism, but that requires arguments rather than empirical data; and other positions are more defensible still than Clinton’s.

I am also inclined to think that Trump is pretty candid about his own ideological position, although he fails to acknowledge its implications (which is a fault of his truth-seeking). I am not sure how candid Clinton is about her ideology; that is hard to assess from afar. I’d argue that center-left American politicians exhibit a general lack of ideological candor because they presume that many beneficial policies are unpopular. For instance, it would be wise to borrow and spend on infrastructure, but you can’t say that because the American people don’t trust government. It would be desirable to standardize curricula and tests because in lots of communities, parents are creationists or otherwise misguided, but you’d better not say that because those people vote. I’d posit that Clinton struggles to attract trust in part because she belongs to a whole ideological bloc that has struggled since the 1970s to present itself candidly to the electorate.

See also: Bernard Williams on truth as a virtue of the humanities; why Hillary Clinton appears untrustworthy; and Hillary Clinton on spending for infrastructure.

CIRCLE identifies top 50 congressional districts for the youth vote

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Medford/Somerville, MA – Will the youth vote help shape the next Congress? A new index ranks the top 50 districts where young people could have a significant influence on the outcome of Congressional races across the country. The Youth Electoral Significance Index Top 50 was developed exclusively by the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning & Engagement (CIRCLE) – the preeminent, non-partisan research center on youth engagement at Tufts University’s Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life.

Taking into account the competitiveness of the Congressional races, as well demographic characteristics, the number of higher education institutions in the district, and historical youth turnout data, the index highlights the districts where young people are poised to have a disproportionately high impact this year.

“Young people can shape our elections and the make-up of Congress, but their potential is limited when campaigns don’t reach out to them,” said Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg, Director of CIRCLE. “We hope this tool encourages campaigns, media outlets, and advocates in these districts – and in many others – to engage young people on issues that matter to them.”

Key findings include:

  • Iowa’s 1st Congressional District comes out on top due in large part to a large number of college campuses (31) and high percentage of young people enrolled in college in the district.
  • New York has six Congressional Districts in the YESI Top 50, the most of any state. Though New York tends to be reliably Democratic in presidential and Senate elections, many Congressional races are much more fiercely contested.
  • Colorado has four districts on this list, including the number 2 spot in the ranking: the Colorado 6th, which includes the eastern part of the Denver-Aurora metro area. This district ranks highly due to its competitiveness: in 2012, the election was decided by only 7,000 votes, young people cast a high number of ballots, and the seat is expected to be highly contested again this year.
  • Four Michigan districts make the Top 50, including two in the top 15: Michigan’s 7th District, which includes parts of Lansing, the western suburbs of Ann Arbor, and the southeast corner of the state; and Michigan’s 1st District, in which there are 12 colleges and universities with close to 20,000 enrolled students.

Throughout this election season, CIRCLE’s 2016 Election Center will offer new data products and detailed youth voting analyses.

three ways of thinking about fluctuations in polls

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With the national presidential polls suddenly looking very tight, here are three ways of looking at the state of the election.

  1. An election is like a race. As in a race, the contenders stand in some relation to each other at any given moment. They can increase or reduce their speeds, but it’s an advantage to be in front, and more so as time passes. If an election is like a race, then it becomes increasingly important who’s ahead as the finish line approaches. A race course may have features that favor one or the other contender at a given moment. For instance, each presidential candidate gets a burst of speed after her or his convention, and a debate offers a chance for one of them to speed up or stumble, but the last stretch will be pretty level and even. In that case, it is bad news for Clinton that her lead had dissipated as we’ve moved through September. Much depends on whether that trend continues or reverses in the next few weeks, because by mid-October, a candidate who trails has little time to make up the gap. (That conclusion follows from the race metaphor.) It supports the idea that Trump has as much as a 40% chance of winning.
  2. An election is an event that occurs at one moment (although kind of a stretched-out moment nowadays, thanks to early voting). Polls ask people how they will vote once the big moment comes. It’s not clear when our predictions are most accurate, and accuracy may not necessarily increase over time. Instead, we might think of each of the many hundreds of polls taken so far as a measure of how the public will vote once the actual election comes. The best estimate, from this Bayesian perspective, averages all the polls taken so far. It does so not only to maximize the sample size but also to negate the random variations in competitors’ standing due to recent events. As Sam Wang says, “I still expect Clinton’s lead to increase again, on the grounds that she has led all year. Previously, I noted that the national Clinton-vs.-Trump margin in 2016 has averaged 4.5 percentage points. The standard deviation is 2.2 points, comparable to the four Presidential elections from 2004 to 2012. … Today, conditions seem right for regression to the mean.'” There is no such thing as regression to the mean in a race, where the leader accumulates an increasing chance of winning. But this second way of thinking about the election avoids the race analogy. Wang‘s own Bayesian prediction is a little more complicated, but it gives Trump only a 14% chance of winning.
  3. An election is an event that will happen at one moment in the future, and each poll is a prediction of what will happen when that moment comes–but the sample that responds to pollsters varies depending on recent events. Democrats, for instance, may have become marginally less likely to answer surveys in the last two weeks because of some generalized discouragement–or Republicans who were going to vote for Trump all along may have become more willing to answer the pollsters’ calls. If this theory applies, I think we should act as Wang recommends, because we should treat the variations in response rates as pretty random. But we might view the real vote as similar to a single poll and ask whether the experience of actually voting will encourage or discourage the people who have been favorable to Clinton or to Trump all along. We cannot tell the answer to that question from poll data, but we might propose reasonable hypotheses about it.

Since I don’t know which of these theories is true, I’m inclined to estimate the odds of a Clinton win somewhere between the Bayesian estimate (86% or so) and the horse race estimate of only about 60%.

how schools teach about political parties

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According to a new paper released today by CIRCLE:

  • Forty-three states require students to learn about political parties; however, the language in the standards nearly always promotes a simplistic understanding of the role that political parties play in a democracy.
  • Only eight states ask students to study the ideological underpinnings of the two major political parties.
  • Only 10 states ask students to study controversial political issues and their relationship to political parties.
  • There is very limited support for learning about political ideology. When states do include language about ideology, it is most commonly mentioned in history/social studies standards and very rarely linked to contemporary political parties.

“This generation has grown up in a vitriolic and polarized political climate. In order to sort through the noise, young people need to have a deep understanding of the ideological values that divide us and how those values do, and do not, map onto political parties,” reports Paula McAvoy, lead author of the study and program director for the Center for Ethics and Education at UW-Madison, who completed this study with Rebecca Fine and Ann Herrera Ward.  “Our team’s findings show that state standards stop short of asking students to make meaningful connections between partisanship, ideology, and the issues of the day.  If schools are to fulfill their mission of preparing young people for political participation, teachers need to be encouraged to bring these ideas into the classroom.”

“Understanding what major political parties are and what they stand for is essential in navigating politics and elections in the U.S., but very little support exists.  These findings emphasize the need to strengthen standards and support teachers in U.S. civic education,” said Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg, Director of CIRCLE. “Encouraging this type of learning about politics, elections and voting is a major reason why we are collaborating with other organizations to support teachers during this election year via the Teaching for Democracy Alliance.” For more on this Alliance see here.

For CIRCLE’s full briefing, please see here or the interactive map here. More research and background on youth civic education can be found on CIRCLE’s Quick Facts on Civic Education page.

CIRCLE’s 2016 Election Center will continue to offer data products and analyses providing a comprehensive picture of the youth vote, including the Youth Electoral Significance Index, which offers insight into key states where young people have the potential to shape the 2016 general election.

two kinds of populism

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Last May, at a campaign rally, Donald Trump said, “the only important thing is the unification of the people – because the other people don’t mean anything.” Jan-Werner Müller quotes that phrase both in his book What is Populism? and in a useful summary article that he wrote for The Guardian. Müller defines “populism” so that it describes Trump, Hungry’s Viktor Orbán, Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, Britain’s Nigel Farage, and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, but not Bernie Sanders or Jeremy Corbyn. The difference isn’t their placement on a left-right spectrum but their attitude toward diversity. In his book (p. 101), Müller writes:

Not everyone who criticizes elites is a populist. In addition to being antielitist, populists are antipluralist. They claim that they and they alone represent the people. All other political competitors are essentially illegitimate, and anyone who does not support them is not properly part of the people. When in opposition, populists will necessarily insist that elites are immoral, whereas the people are a moral, homogeneous entity whose will cannot err.

Müller thinks that populists despise actual participation because the bestpolicy can already be deduced from a correct understanding of “the people.” If populists support referenda, it’s only because they expect their view to win. When they lose elections, they are prone to declare them illegitimate. Their fundamental stance is inconsistent with immigration and an independent civil society, both of which threaten an imagined uniformity of identity and beliefs.

The results are very dangerous (p. 102):

Populists can govern, and they are likely to do so in line with the idea that only they represent the idea of the people. Concretely, they will engage in occupying the state, mass clientelism and corruption, and the suppression of anything like a critical civil society. These practices find an explicit moral justification in the populist political imagination and hence can be avowed openly.

Note that Müller’s account avoids attributing views to populists that they would dispute. It doesn’t assume, for instance, that Trump is a representative of “deplorables,” defined by their racism and sexism. It takes his explicit views at face value and explains their dangerous implications.

That said, “populism” can have a different meaning. It can be explicitly and fundamentally pluralist. In her recent book Populism’s Power: Radical Grassroots Democracy in America, Laura Grattan writes:

Radical democratic actors, from grassroots revolutionaries, to insurgent farmers and laborers, to agitators for the New Deal, Civil Rights, and the New Left, have historically drawn on the language and practices of populism. In doing so, they have cultivated peoples’ rebellious aspirations not just to resist power, but to share in power, and to do so in pluralistic, egalitarian ways across social and geographic borders.

In the examples that Grattan explores, populists who celebrate “the people” (in contrast to corrupt elites) do not merely tolerate diversity or accommodate themselves to it. They are actively enthusiastic about pluralism, inventing “alternative” spaces and styles of engagement, inviting disparate actors to join in their festivals and parades, emphasizing freedom of speech and assembly as core values, and usually preferring to retain some distance from the state. In fact, one of their political liabilities is their tendency to splinter because they fear uniformity.

In the US context, being populist in that sense requires a concern for racial and ethnic inclusion. However, traditions of pluralist populism go back to Old World countries that were more ethnically homogeneous. Mikhail Bakhtin recovered the medieval spirit of carnivals, of special feast days, and of places set aside to be fairs. In the carnival, all social strata, deviant groups, odd individuals, and exaggerated behaviors were welcomed and expected to mix on terms of equality. The spirit of carnival was populist in the sense that it encompassed the whole people and undermined hierarchies and distinctions, but at the same time it celebrated differences, novelties, and creativity. It was part of what Grattan calls “the language and practices of populism.”

The carnival was a world apart. It didn’t reliably improve the everyday world of authority and control except by giving people circumscribed times and places in which to escape and create ephemera together. Democratic revolutions drew on the carnival tradition, but not in sustained or satisfactory ways. I think that countering Trumpian populism requires liberal norms: limited government and individual rights guaranteed by written laws and independent courts. These protections are necessary but not very vibrant and participatory. We also need a dose of pluralist, carnivalesque populism to answer the grim version on offer from men like Donald Trump.

Here is Grattan’s talk at this year’s Frontiers of Democracy Conference.

See also: is Trumpism akin to the European right?; the word “populism”; why the white working class must organize; Gerald Taylor on property, populism, and democracy; against a cerebral view of citizenship; St. Margaret of Cortona and medieval populism; and a darker As You Like It.