From an ecological or systems level point of view, one can look a bit beyond the politics, human rights and economic effects of this election to understand how these things happen. I will say that it troubles me that we half the country looking at the other half of the country saying, “I can’t understand how you could have voted for him/her”. And really meaning it. That they cannot summon an empathy, a theory of mind that lets them imagine being someone on the other side.
So first, as a human behavior, this is quite typical. To trivialize it in the extreme, the Yankee fan has no understanding of how anyone could be a Mets fan and that Mets fan (my family’s group identification) could not understand how anyone could cheer for those Yankees. In fact, some anthropologists have suggested that the more trivial or untrue the group beliefs are, the stronger the group affinity since facts can’t possibly sway a group member into defecting.
So we choose (or are born into) our group and that identification leads to our rationalization of our loyalty. And as long as beliefs aren’t upset by what I think of as “brute facts” that make belief untenable in the world, we hold those beliefs tighter and tighter.
So let’s just say that voting is a simple application of group identification where we try to figure out which party is aligned with our group identity. Some identify by party, some by creed, some by social standing, etc. Without going into detail, I believe it’s clear which party captured a bit more group identification this time around.
The second factor is our regional single representative by majority system of government. Which is opposed to a proportional system where groups are allowed seats in government based on the percentage of their support. In political science, “Duverger’s law” says that this type of single member district election will lead to a two party system. As I envision it, basically, every group is trying to be on the majority side because only the winners get to govern. So it tends to lead to a 50-50 split where anyone not feeling represented by the majority will defect to the other side to gain influence there and build a majority. I believe this year we had a lot of defections by those who felt they were not being heard by the side in power and put the other side into the majority.
It’s important to realize that this group identification and picking sides in an election is by feel. One side feels more right than the other. That’s why all of the arguments and fact checking don’t lead to a rational decision based on Multiple Attribute Utility Theory (MAUT). And even if you ask how the decision was arrived at you’ll get a rationalization or an answer representative of that group fit with one side over the other.
It’s a process of alignment and realignment. And a losing party can’t steer to the correct side by analyzing previous outcomes because the many unspoken factors that provided that comfort with the other side can’t be fully surfaced because they vary for different individuals with their multiple group identifications. Making it even more difficult some of the factors either aren’t known to the individuals themselves or can be recognized by them but culturally must be left unspoken.
I’m no political consultant, but I’d really like to hear more empathy and understanding. To my way of thinking, honest empathy is the only way to improve our ability to engage others productively rather than simple cheering for our side and insults for the other side.
