Sorted

During the 2008 election, I ran into an interesting book while working on my Undecidedman blog, a book entitled The Big Sort by Bill Bishop.

The thesis of Bishop’s book, summed up in the title, is that America has sorted itself over the last 35 years into communities of the like minded where agreement on key political issues is assumed and thinking outside this consensus shunned.

Bishop’s evidence for this phenomenon is compelling. Looking at an electoral map from 1976, Bishop discovered that 26% of voters lived in so-called “Landslide Districts,” that is districts in which one candidate beat the other by a margin of over 20% of the vote. Fast forwarding to 2004, the writer discovered that that number had almost doubled to 48%, meaning half the voting population lives in districts where one political candidate (and, one assumes, one political disposition) reigns supreme.

I’ve not found any recent data that would show if this trend has continued, declined or leveled off,  but I think it’s safe to assume that the specific type of polarization many of us experienced in 2008 will likely be as intense this election cycle (if not more so).

Bishop theorized that much of this polarization derives from fact that most of the people taking part in discussion and debate over the election do so within environments where it is very unlikely they will ever hear an opinion that dissents from their own. Fold in narrow-casted cable TV and Internet sites that allow people to only receive news and opinion they already agree with and you’re left with half the nation (maybe even more today) living in a world where rarely is heard a political opinion outside the consensus shared by neighbors, friends, colleagues and relatives.

You can begin to see the challenges this type of mindset poses to anyone engaging in critical thinking about the upcoming presidential vote.  For thinking in a political context pre-supposes interaction with others, ideally in the form of dialog with interlocutors whose minds are open – at least a little bit – to considering options they might not naturally gravitate towards.  Keep in mind that the does not require people to ultimately accept those options (much less act on them), but just to try them on for size – if only for the sake of conversation.  

But if trying on different ideas that cut across your personal-political grain is already somewhat unnatural, how much more unnatural will such explorations be for those who have not only never thought this way in the past, but who have never interacted with someone who does not share their world view?  When we all agree with our family members, our friends and our neighbors (except, perhaps, for that odd uncle or person up the street, with whom we agree to disagree in silence), how can being asked to think about the most important decision we can make in a democratic society seem anything other than positively weird?

I’ve noted how imagination gives us a small opening to consider options we might not consider once a two-man race is truly on (if only because it allows us to imagine candidates even more like us than the ones we have to choose from).  But that window will close more and more tightly once election emotions begin to run high, leaving anyone contemplating the election through a less-than-predictable lens (such as the lens of critical thinking) looking more and more out of place.  You can anticipate blank stares or polite nods from people trying to figure out what you’re really up to. And if you’ve been a loyal partisan up until now, expect questioning as to why you don’t come right out and admit that you’ve actually switched sides (the only possible explanation for why someone would think outside the tribe).

How to explain to them that spending yet another election cycle interacting only with like-minded friends and colleagues means that they are effectively opting out of the political process altogether? 

To take the most obvious example, here in Massachusetts (the bluest of blue landslide states), our vote doesn’t even matter!  More specifically, no presidential candidate will campaign here because we, like most Americans, do not live in a “swing state,” meaning our state-level landslide status has already caused us to be taken for granted. Thus the very consensus my neighbors cling to make us completely irrelevant to this year’s vote. With luck, we’ll get some spillover commercials from a neighboring state of “swingers,” but for the most part we’ll spend this election wringing our hands over events that we have opted out of taking part in.

Think about that the next time you think the election is so clear cut there is no point in thinking about it any further.