by Robin Hanson
Parents of children in public school are not more supportive of government aid to schools than other citizens; young men subject to the draft are not more opposed to military escalation than men too old to be drafted; and people who lack health insurance are not more likely to support government-issued health insurance than people covered by insurance.3
Even if a person wanted to vote “selfishly,” however, the bigger problem is that voting doesn’t make sense as an economic activity.4 Voting costs time and effort—not just a trip to the polls, but also the work required to form an opinion beforehand, like reading news and watching debates. And yet the personal benefits are infinitesimal. It’s true that your life might improve if Candidate A is elected instead of Candidate B, but the odds that your single vote will tip the scales is miniscule. In the 2008 U.S. presidential election, for example, this figure was estimated at 1 in 60 million.5 So even if you stood to gain an enormous $500,000 worth of personal value (including subjective benefits) from Candidate A’s election, in expected value, your vote would still be worth less than a penny. In terms of outcomes and probabilities, you’d be better off buying a lottery ticket.
Similar cost–benefit calculations apply to other, more involved forms of political participation, like attending rallies, donating to interest groups, and working for political campaigns. Compared to voting, these activities plausibly offer a greater chance of influencing national outcomes, but they also require greater investment. Citizens who simply want better political outcomes for themselves would be wasting their energies.
It would seem, then, that only an altruistic Do-Right should be motivated enough to invest in the political process. Not surprisingly, however, there are a number of cracks in this flattering picture. It’s easy to say we’re acting like Do-Rights, but our actions often betray other, less visible motives.
In what follows, we’ll present a few puzzles that cast doubt on the Do-Right model of political behavior. But before we tarnish the image of voters, it’s important to clarify that this isn’t an indictment of democracy. We’re questioning the motives of individual citizens, not the efficacy of any particular system (democracy or otherwise). Even if voters turn out not to be ideal Do-Rights, democracy could still be a great form of government—or as Winston Churchill put it, “the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried.”6 In fact, much of the appeal of democracy is that it doesn’t require citizens to be saints.
With that in mind, let’s start picking apart our political motives, shall we?
PUZZLES
Puzzle 1: Disregard for Vote Decisiveness
The 1-in-60-million figure we saw earlier applies to the average U.S. voter. Individual voters, however, aren’t necessarily average, and their odds of deciding a presidential election depend on which state they live in.7 During the 2008 race, for example, voters in “battleground” or “swing” states, like Colorado and New Hampshire, had relatively high odds of deciding the election, at 1 in 10 million. But in states like Oklahoma and New York, where one party is all but guaranteed to win, the odds were closer to 1 in 10 billion.8 That’s an astonishing 1,000-fold difference.
Faced with these realities, pragmatic Do-Rights should be considerably more eager to vote when they find themselves in a swing state. After all, the costs of voting are the same in each state, whereas the benefits (i.e., a chance to influence national outcomes) are substantially higher in swing states. Do-Rights in these states won’t necessarily be 1,000 times more likely to vote, but the effect should be clear and significant.
Real voters, however, show remarkably little concern for whether their votes are likely to make a difference. Swing states see only a modest uptick in turnout, somewhere between one and four percentage points.9 In other words, decisiveness seems to matter to less than 4 out of every 100 eligible voters.10 Equally surprising is the fact that so many people bother to vote in non–swing states. If these voters were perfectly altruistic Do-Rights, many would consider doing other, more impactful things in lieu of voting, such as volunteering at an after-school program.
None of this is absolutely damning for the Do-Right model, but it highlights that our voting behavior isn’t an act of practical, straightforward altruism.
Puzzle 2: Uninformed Voters
As voters, Do-Rights should care deeply about being informed. If they don’t understand the issues, they might as well flip a coin or abstain from voting altogether.
Real voters, however, show more interest in the status, personalities, and election drama of politicians than in their track records or policy positions. In fact, people often show great interest in “elections” that have almost no policy consequences, such as for student class president or best singer on The Voice TV show. Even in meaningful elections, however, voters act more like sports fans rooting for their favored team than like analysts trying to figure out which team ought to win.
When it comes to specific political issues, voters are notoriously ignorant. For example, only 29 percent of American adults can name their congressperson, let alone discuss their congressperson’s voting record.11 When asked, “What percentage of the federal budget goes to foreign aid?” voters typically estimated 25 percent, and said they thought 10 percent was an appropriate level. In fact, American “bilateral foreign aid” clocks in at only 0.6 percent.12
These examples of voter ignorance abound, and such ignorance plausibly influences our political positions. Relative to better-informed citizens, less-informed citizens consistently prefer different policies.13 On economic issues, for example, Bryan Caplan identifies a number of areas in which the average voter deviates from expert consensus: an antiforeign bias, an antimarket bias, a make-work bias, and a pessimistic bias (systematically underestimating the value of economic progress).14
Now, while an earnest Do-Right might freely admit ignorance about some political issues, real voters rarely do. When people are asked the same policy question a few months apart, they frequently give different answers—not because they’ve changed their minds, but because they’re making up answers on the spot, without remembering what they said last time.15 It is even easy to trick voters into explaining why they favor a policy, when in fact they recently said they opposed that policy.16
If our goal is better outcomes, we should care not just about the overall intentions and spirit of policy; we should also care about how policies will be implemented, such as how outcomes will be measured, or whether a particular task is assigned to local, state, or federal government. Far more important than mere technicalities, these choices often determine whether a well-intended policy will succeed or fail.17 The devil, as they say, is in the details.
Real voters, however, seem apathetic about practical details, and prefer instead to focus on values and ideals. We’d rather debate hot-button identity issues, like gay marriage or immigration, than issues that hinge on an understanding of facts, like trade agreements or net neutrality. And we see a similar bias when electing our representatives. As long as our politicians talk a good game, we don’t seem to care whether they’re skilled at crafting bills and shepherding them through the system.18 Across the board, we seem to prefer high-minded rhetoric over humble pragmatism.
Note that political Do-Rights don’t need to devote their entire lives to politics. They just need to spend their “political time” wisely and calibrate their level of involvement accordingly. By this logic, Do-Rights should happily abstain from a vote if they judge themselves significantly less informed than the average voter. On such issues, they might even consider it their patriotic duty to stay out of the country’s political business and to encourage other uninformed voters to do likewise.19 Suffice it to say, however, that this attitude is uncommon among real citizens, many of whom shake their heads in disdain at nonvoters (for reasons we’ll explore in a moment).
Puzzle 3: Entrenched Opinions and Strong Emotions
An ideal political Do-Right will be the opposite of an ideologue. Becaus
e Do-Rights are concerned only with achieving the best outcomes for society, they won’t shy away from contrary arguments and evidence. In fact, they’ll welcome fresh perspectives (with an appropriately critical attitude, of course). When a smart person disagrees with them, they’ll listen with an open mind. And when, on occasion, they actually change one of their political beliefs, they’re apt to be grateful rather than resentful. Their pride might take a small hit, but they’ll swallow it for the sake of the greater good. Think of an effective business leader, actively seeking out different perspectives in order to make the best decisions—that’s how a Do-Right would consume political information.
But of course, that’s not at all how real voters behave. Most of us live quite happily in our political echo chambers, returning again and again to news sources that support what we already believe. When contrary opinions occasionally manage to filter through, we’re extremely critical of them, although we’re often willing to swallow even the most specious evidence that confirms our views. And we’re more likely to engage in political shouting matches, full of self-righteous confidence, than to listen with the humility that we may (gasp!) be wrong.20
The fact that we attach strong emotions to our political beliefs is another clue that we’re being less than fully honest intellectually. When we take a pragmatic, outcome-oriented stance to a given domain, we tend to react more dispassionately to new information. We do this every day in most areas of our lives, like when we buy groceries, pack for a vacation, or plan a birthday party. In these practical domains, we feel much less pride in what we believe, anger when our beliefs are challenged, or shame in changing our minds in response to new information. However, when our beliefs serve non-pragmatic functions, emotions tend to be useful to protect them from criticism.
Yes, the stakes may be high in politics, but even that doesn’t excuse our social emotions. High-stakes situations might reasonably bring out stress and fear, but not pride, shame, and anger.21 During a national emergency, for example, we hope that our leaders won’t be embarrassed to change their minds when new information comes to light. People are similarly cool and dispassionate when discussing existential risks like global pandemics and asteroid impacts—at least insofar as those risks are politically neutral. When talk turns to politicized risks like global climate change, however, our passions quickly return.
All of this strongly suggests that we hold political beliefs for reasons other than accurately informing our decisions.
* * * * *
These are just a few of the inconsistencies between our civic ideals and our actual behavior. To explain these and other puzzles, we’ll have to make use of another political archetype—one whose motives are, not surprisingly, less noble than those of the altruistic Do-Right.
THE APPARATCHIK
In the Soviet Union during the 1930s, a single party ran the government, which had unprecedented control over ordinary lives. And Joseph Stalin ran that party with an iron fist. Apparatchiks were government or party officials, and political loyalty was so central to their lives that the word has now come to mean “a very loyal member of an organization who always obeys orders.”22
For a Soviet apparatchik, it wasn’t enough simply to show great loyalty to Stalin; those who didn’t show more loyalty than others were suspected of disloyalty and often imprisoned or killed. In The Gulag Archipelago, the Russian novelist and historian Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn gives a dramatic example of these extreme incentives:
At the conclusion of the conference, a tribute to Comrade Stalin was called for. Of course, everyone stood up, and the small hall echoed with stormy applause. For three minutes, four minutes, five minutes, the applause continued. It was becoming insufferably silly even to those who really adored Stalin. However, who would dare be the first to stop? So the applause went on—six, seven, eight minutes! They couldn’t stop now till they collapsed with heart attacks! Finally, after eleven minutes, the director of the paper factory assumed a businesslike expression and sat down in his seat. And, oh, a miracle took place! To a man, everyone else stopped dead and sat down. They had been saved!
That, however, was how the [secret police] discovered who the independent people were. And that was how they went about eliminating them. That same night the factory director was arrested. They easily pasted ten years [in a labor camp] on him.23
The kicker? Stalin himself wasn’t even in the room. His cult of personality was strong enough to sustain 11 minutes of applause even in his absence.
At least 600,000 people were killed in these ways during Stalin’s purges.24 And similar dynamics have played out in China under Mao Zedong and in North Korea under the Kim family regime.25
Now, most of us don’t live in a totalitarian state. But even in modern, pluralistic democracies, we face the same kind of incentives as the apparatchik. (Ours are just much weaker.) We, too, are rewarded for professing the “right” beliefs and punished for professing the “wrong” ones—not by any central authority but by our fellow citizens. And yes, our societies aren’t dominated by a single political party, but whenever an issue becomes factionalized, framed as Us against Them, we should expect to find ourselves behaving more like an apparatchik competing to show loyalty to our team.
Note that the coalitions that command our loyalty aren’t always the kind we typically consider “political.” Each of us is a member of many different groups, which can be nested within each other or else partially overlapping, as in a Venn diagram. We live in neighborhoods, cities, states, and nations; we work on teams within companies; and we worship at churches belonging to denominations of overarching religions. We’re also tied to a given race, ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation. All of these groups compete for our loyalties; note, for example, Madeleine Albright’s insistence that “there’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other.”26 And how much loyalty we feel to each group depends on many factors, both personal and cultural. As the political scientist Samuel Huntington points out, Westerners typically have a lot of national loyalty, whereas Arab Muslims are less devoted to their nation than to their extended family and tribe (on the one hand), and to their entire religion and civilization (on the other).27 These tensions among our various loyalties are, in part, what makes politics so complex and full of drama.
When we suggest that our political behavior is driven largely by coalition loyalty, then, we’re not trying to single out political parties (Democrat, Republican) or political ideologies (liberal, conservative) as the fundamental focal points. The left–right split happens to be important in modern liberal democracies, especially the United States in recent, more-polarized decades, but changing circumstances can shift the focal points. When a nation goes to war, for example, intra-national political divisions often take a back seat to patriotism and national unity.
In other words, context matters—a lot. Nevertheless, our hypothesis is that the political behavior of ordinary, individual citizens is often better explained as an attempt to signal loyalty to “our side” (whatever side that happens to be in a particular situation), rather than as a good-faith attempt to improve outcomes. In addition to the Do-Right’s motives, then, we also harbor the motives of the apparatchik: wanting to appear loyal to the groups around us.
This is the key to making sense of our political behavior. It’s not just an attempt to influence outcomes; it’s also, in many ways, a performance.
POLITICAL INCENTIVES IN DAILY LIFE
Crucial to the argument we’re making is the fact that politics isn’t an isolated arena confined to the voting booth and a handful of explicitly political activities. Rather, the incentives from “politics” spill out into many other areas of life, forcing our inner apparatchik to be ever vigilant about our political posture.
Take dating and marriage, for instance. People tend to date and marry other members of their political party.28 And they want the same for their children: a 2010 survey found that 49 percent of Republicans and 33 percent of Democrats sa
id they would be upset if their child married someone from the opposite party.29
In another survey, 80 percent of people chose to award a scholarship to a member of their favored political party, even when another applicant had better grades. In fact, this political favoritism was stronger than racial favoritism.30 Stanford’s Shanto Iyengar, who did the survey on scholarships, put it this way:
Political identity is fair game for hatred, racial identity is not. . . . You cannot express negative sentiments about social groups in this day and age. But political identities are not protected by these constraints. A Republican is someone who chooses to be Republican, so I can say whatever I want about them.31
In some professions, political affiliations matter substantially for success on the job. College professors, for example, skew heavily Democrat—not just by the numbers,32 but also in their hiring practices. Among sociology professors, a quarter admitted that they would favor a Democrat over a Republican for a job in their department.33 (Presumably, even more of them harbor an unacknowledged or unconscious bias against Republican applicants.) And such biases are reflected in the actual hiring data. Holding constant the quality of their publications, Republican academics (compared to Democrats) have jobs at significantly lower-tier colleges. This effect is larger than the effect for women, who also seem to face discrimination in academic jobs.34
Even in our daily lives, we feel pressure to conform to the political opinions of those around us. Among frequent conversation partners, for example, U.S. citizens talk about politics at least as often as they talk about work, sports, or entertainment. But since disagreement can cause interpersonal strife, having different political beliefs from friends and family can take its toll on relationships.35 As the economist Russ Roberts points out, expressing unpopular political opinions can put a “frost in the air” or cause friends to “edge away from us on the picnic blanket,”36 hence the common wisdom not to discuss politics in polite company.