Livin’ in a Land Where Almost Everyone is Red or Blue

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It was once blue and gray. We’ve been here before. If you live in Los Angeles or Boston, it is very difficult to comprehend how anyone could ever vote for autocratic populist Donald Trump. Likewise, if you live in Oklahoma City or Bismark, the notion of voting for radical leftist Joe Biden is deeply abhorrent. Such passions now border on the religious zeal of a deeply faithful committed churchgoer. Those adhering to the opposite view in a land where the sea is virtually all blue or red are evil, unpatriotic and destroying our nation. Those who are intensely uncomfortable living where there is one overwhelming shared political belief, because they have opposite feelings, are often pressured to move to more compatible political venues. Or they simply hide their beliefs.

Families are often fractured, couples divorce, where those schisms are just too strong to ignore. Put a poster in your front yard or on your bumper representing the opposite political choice in such areas of uniform belief, and you may just provoke a violent reaction that flies in the face of the First Amendment. Even driving a car with a California license plate can provoke serious red state wrath. So, today’s blog examines the impact of peer pressure on individual political choice, even where personal values would suggest a very opposite result. Peer pressure is everywhere on this planet, and nations without a strong history of democracy often unravel quickly in a sea of political conformity.

Let’s start with the fact that someone participating in an anonymous survey may report a voting preference different from his or her actual political preference. Also, realize that how a question is asked on a survey may tilt the response. Here is an extreme (fabricated) example: “Are you a patriotic Republican American or are you a radical socialist Democrat?” Here’s what peer pressure place on African Americans in a recent study described by David Leonhardt in the March 22nd The Morning in the New York Times:

“The political scientists Chryl Laird and Ismail White used a creative strategy several years ago to study the voting patterns of Black Americans. Laird and White took advantage of the fact that some surveys are conducted through in-person interviews — and keep track of the interviewer’s race — while other surveys are done online.

“In the online surveys that Laird and White examined, about 85 percent of Black respondents identified as Democrats. The share was almost identical during in-person surveys done by non-Black interviewers. But when Black interviewers conducted in-person surveys, more than 95 percent of Black respondents identified as Democrats…. It is a fascinating pattern: Something about talking with a person of the same race makes Black Americans more likely to say they are Democrats. As Laird and White concluded, voting for Democrats has been a behavioral norm in Black communities. People feel social pressure from their neighbors, relatives and friends to support the Democratic Party.”

This is a pretty simple example, but this notion of peer pressure and public willingness openly to defy a heavily prevailing preference not only accounts for some polling inaccuracies but to a very basic human trait. “Similar social pressure exists in other communities, of course. A liberal who attends a white evangelical Southern church — or a conservative who lives in an upscale Brooklyn neighborhood — knows the feeling. And Laird and White emphasized in their 2020 book, ‘Steadfast Democrats,’ that Black Americans have behaved rationally by sticking together. It has allowed them to assert political influence despite being a minority group. Consider that President Biden’s vice president and his only Supreme Court pick are both Black.” NYT.

It is equally interesting to note that the extremes within political parties tend to govern the overall image of that political party to others. Georgia Congresswoman and MAGA evangelist, Republican Majorie Taylor Greene, has become the face of the GOP to many, while ultra-liberal New York Congresswoman, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is what many Republicans see as a typical Democrat. But the majority of voters in both parties, as well as independents, are more moderate often with surprisingly diverse political beliefs. Yet we tend to group different races, ethnicities and religion sects into homogeneous political blocs. For those building political campaigns where the margin of victory is often very slim, making those assumptions could cost their candidate an election.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I hope that the great red/blue divide can find a solution in the very diversity that made this nation great in the first place.