Political Science, continued

Now I'm going to say a bit about politics in the U.S. Elections -- certainly not in the U.S. -- are not machines for turning voters' policy preferences into representation that produces them. Consider a current and very clear case. Polls consistently find that close to 70% of the electorate does not want Roe v. Wade to be overturned and wants abortion to remain legal. Yes, views about the circumstances under which it should be legal vary, but there is scant support for the bills being pushed through many state legislatures that would ban abortion entirely or allow it only under very narrow conditions.  But despite what is presumably the support of 70% of voters, the senate couldn't pass a bill codifying abortion access.

This is different from many political issues in that people are aware of it, understand it, and can't help but perceive that policy will affect their lives or those of people they know, and exactly how. Most people have limited information or understanding of most policy issues, and that's a major reason why the electoral system isn't principally about turning popular will into policy. People do know that they receive, or will receive, Social Security benefits, so those are very hard to take away. But people don't understand the complexities of health insurance markets or the tax system. They can easily be tricked by rhetoric. "I'm going to cut taxes," when they really mean taxes on wealthy people, not you. Many false beliefs are prevalent. For example, people overestimate the percentage of the federal budget that goes to foreign assistance by orders of magnitude.

Of course people's votes are also influenced by factors that have nothing to do with policy at all.  There is always racism, sexism, religious or ethnic loyalty. People also respond to personality and charisma. Supposedly people voted for George Bush II because he was somebody they might want to have a beer with and Al Gore wasn't. Republicans somehow manage to effectively present themselves as part of and champions of ordinary people, whereas they portray their opponents as "elitists." Never mind that Bush graduated from Andover, Yale and Harvard, inherited a fortune, and his cowboy accent was completely phony. Somehow this works. (Viz. J.D. Vance.)

But the abortion issue doesn't have those sorts of complications, which let's us isolate on a couple of factors. The first is so-called concentrated vs. diffuse interests. For a lot of people who oppose legal abortion, probably most of them actually, it's the issue they care about the most -- quite possibly the only issue they care about. It completely determines their voting choices. For most of that large majority that favors legal abortion, however, it's just one of many issues that matter to them. As long as Roe v. Wade has been the law of the land, in fact, it hasn't seemed to matter very much to most people, who just assumed that what politicians said about it was pretty much irrelevant. 

That may change now but in the meantime the issue has benefited abortion opponents because if you can guarantee getting 30% of the people to vote for you on the basis of that issue alone, you can pick off another 20% who will vote for you for other reasons. Those 30% also tend to be activists, who donate money and volunteer for campaigns. 

We have a federal system, of course, and in some states support for legal abortion is lower and even below 50%. So it's not surprising that legislation to outlaw abortion would advance in a few states. But in the U.S., conservatives have advantages that magnify their numbers. Liberal voters tend to be concentrated in urban areas, whereas conservative voters are spread out in less densely populated regions. That means all those Democratic voters can be squeezed into a single district where Democrats win overwhelmingly, whereas conservatives may win three districts by a much narrower margin. This is a built in advantage, but it can be exacerbated by gerrymandering. 

Then of course there is the Senate and the electoral college. That Wyoming has the same number of senators as California is just ridiculous, but there it is. Because electoral votes are allocated according to representation in both the house and the senate, small rural states also get an extra advantage in presidential elections. 

Finally, there is the incorrigible problem of the corporate news media, which pay little attention to public policy issues and instead focus on personalities, electoral horse races, and stenographically and uncritically channeling political rhetoric. The exception if the Fox News propaganda network which continually spews lies and bigotry. That seems to work for a lot of people.