Anyone following the American media knows that Americans are in an uproar. Disgust with the federal government is worse than ever. Extremist political views are spreading rapidly. The Tea Party movement has become a massive populist revolt. President Barack Obamas approval rating has collapsed. Incumbents are terrified they will be swept away in the November mid-term elections. Washington insiders tremble.
Its nothing less than a revolution.
But what you probably dont know is that 418 sitting members of Congress sought their partys nomination to run in the November election. (In the U.S. system, these primary races are often the toughest fights.) Of those 418 incumbents, a grand total of seven lost. Thats less than 2%.
So almost every incumbent who sought a nomination got it and even that extraordinary fact doesnt tell the full story. If one looks at the seven cases where an incumbent was defeated, says Michael J. Robinson, a political scientist retired from George Washington University, it had nothing to do with the Tea Party movement, nothing to do with ideological shifts. It had to do with scandal, or people switching parties in the middle of their term in office.
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In a new report for the Pew Research Center, Robinson surveyed the numbers and came to a conclusion that is simultaneously startling and reassuring. Im sure Canadians are now totally convinced that America is going to hell in a handbasket, Robinson says with a laugh. But in terms of politics, the centre is holding. There have been no basic changes in American political values, or party identification, or ideology, in the last 25 years.
Robinson is not exaggerating. He really means no changes.
On 33 questions about underlying political values, there is a shift of 6% for all the values combined over a period of 22 years, Robinson notes. Four of those six percentage points show a shift to the left. Two come from a shift to the right. Subtract two per cent from four per cent and you wind up with a net shift (of two percentage points) in the direction of liberalism over 22 years. Which is to say, there was essentially no change at all.
Party identification? In 1987, Democrats had a nine-point advantage over Republicans. Today, the Democrats have an eight-point lead.
To look at ideology, Robinson turned to the General Social Survey, which asks people to place themselves on a seven-point scale where one means extremely liberal and seven is extremely conservative. In 1987, Americans overwhelmingly put themselves smack in the middle. Today, its the same. The most liberal we have ever been on this survey is a 4.0, which is dead centre, and the most conservative we have been is 4.25, Robinson says. On a chart, the trend line is so flat it looks like the EKG of somebody who is dead.
As for polarization at the extremes, Robinson notes that in 1987 3% of Americans considered themselves extremely liberal and 3% said they were extremely conservative. So thats 6% willing to acknowledge they are, to use the term currently used in the United States, wingnuts, Robinson chuckles. Whats the percentage of wingnuts in the United States today? Four percent for extremely conservative, which is an increase of one percentage point. And for liberals, its 3%. So weve gone from 6% wingnuts to 7% wingnuts in the course of 22 years.
The big story in the United States isnt populist anger or the Tea Party, Robinson insists. Unemployment is almost 10%. The economy is sickly. Consumers are underwater. Deficits are mounting. The U.S. is bogged down in seemingly futile wars. But despite all this, Robinson notes, we have had almost no social disorder in America and weve had almost no political violence. And most Americans seem content to return Congressional incumbents to Washington.
Even the President isnt doing that badly, given the circumstances. Obamas approval rating of about 46% is actually equal to, or a little above, the approval ratings of Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan at a similar point in their first terms.
אָב, אִמֹּתֵינוּ כְּאַלְמָנוֹת.
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