Hyperpartisanship and the parties in 2024

Two parties, two different strategies

Last week we posted the last of a four-part series on hyperpartisanship — here’s a quick summary and a few thoughts about party strategies in the 2024 campaign.

Part I: Scholars warn that hyperpartisanship can lead to debilitating legislative gridlock and a lack of trust in the outcome of elections. In the post we argued that Congress hasn’t gotten to the point of legislative stalemate, but of course election denial is a real thing on the Republican side.

Part II: The distrust between the two parties’ faithful that has increased over the last few decades has resulted in a kind of electoral stalemate. Congressional and presidential elections have been closely contested since the ‘90s, an unusually long period in American history.

Part III: This post shows why the nearly even breakdown of Democratic and Republican voters in the electorate leaves the GOP at an advantage in the electoral college and the Senate. The playing field in House elections doesn’t tilt in one direction or the other.

Part IV: The argument here is that Democrats, despite their electoral disadvantages, are complacent, with no discernible plan to shake up the status quo. At the same time, Republicans are making concerted efforts to do just that.

TWO PARTIES, TWO DIFFERENT STRATEGIES

We have cited public opinion data from Pew and others which show that the majority of the electorate is not locked into either liberal or conservative positions. At the same time, most the country does indeed lean Democratic or Republican (there are very few true independents), and there is a fundamental distrust between the parties on dimensions of morality, patriotism, and work ethic. Perhaps the key characteristic of hyperpartisanship is that the two sides dislike each other — a lot.

So what are the parties trying to do to gain power — or maybe even change the equation — in this contentious political year?

While we have argued that Democrats are surprisingly complacent, they do have a plan. One part of it amounts to sticking to consistently liberal positions with occasional efforts to moderate in response to political duress. These take the form of: “we don’t intend to defund the police” (after the idea to do so became prominent during the George Floyd protests) and “we will close the border if immigrant surges get out of hand.” Presumably the thinking is that this tack will appeal to some disaffected voters.

The main component is to gin up turnout among Democratic constituencies by, for example, campaigning on reproductive rights in response to the demise of Roe v. Wade, getting young voters excited by reducing or waiving student loan payments, and reminding people about the threat Trump poses.

Republicans, for their part, are not trying to appeal to moderates, and they’re confident that their base is energized and in line. Rather, the ascendent populist right is about doubling down on cultural conservatism and taking what were once Labor left positions on trade — and sometimes even going after big business. Witness J.D. Vance teaming with Elizabeth Warren to crack down on banks, and Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz agreeing with Biden ”in opposing broad immunity for social media companies.” The idea is not to find some elusive middle ground, but rather to identify a new synthesis of views that will break the electoral stalemate by winning over large numbers of Democratic-leaning voters.

The coming months should provide a real world test for these divergent approaches.