What does this mean for the midterms?
 | By John Guida Senior Staff Editor, Opinion |
They are relentlessly pursued and endlessly talked about and strategized over — and they are critical to American politics. They are swing voters. |
By reputation, they are centrists, moderates — the unaffiliated who still often vote. But as Lee Drutman and Charlotte Hill, co-founders of an organization dedicated to reforming our electoral system, point out in a guest essay, they defy "easy categorization." And they are not necessarily in the middle — what makes them so confounding is that, as Lee and Charlotte write, they "hold an idiosyncratic mix of priorities and values that scramble the common liberal-conservative divide." |
"As Democrats and Republicans continue to diverge," they write, "the stakes of winning over these mostly disengaged voters are higher than ever." Lee and Charlotte argue that an electoral system set up to make swing voters so important should change. |
In a brief conversation, I asked them to go a little deeper on swing voters and the election and what a better political system might look like. |
JG: If you have to say how swing voters will break on Election Day, what would you predict? On a scale of 1 to 10, how confident are you? |
CH: Young people are overrepresented among swing voters and tend to break left. But based on the economic fundamentals and historical trends, I still anticipate a swing toward the G.O.P. I hope I'm wrong. I'd only put my confidence at a 4. |
LD: Historically swing voters tend to break against the party in the White House. Because they're not particularly enthusiastic about either party, they might want some kind of balance in the system, which they hope that divided government could provide (though it only produces gridlock). So like Charlotte, I anticipate a shift toward the G.O.P., but with a bit higher confidence (8 out of 10). |
JG: Lee, a year ago, you offered Times readers a political party quiz in which you argued for a long-term alternative to our current party arrangement. Tell us a little more about how this could work, and why we should consider it a viable alternative? |
LD: First, on the viability: Americans today are deeply dissatisfied with the two-party system. Almost everyone recognizes we're in a moment of clear political crisis. Leaders can see that the system is not going to self-correct. It's moments like these when big structural changes have historically happened. Congress has constitutional authority to mandate states elect their congressional delegations using larger multimember districts that could send, say, the Top 5 vote-getters to Washington rather than just the Top 1. Under a proportional voting rule, this would make more room for more viable parties. Congress could also repeal the ban on multimember districts and free the states to experiment with their own approaches to proportionality. |
JG: Charlotte, based on your work with youth participation in elections, would this type of party restructuring impact their engagement? |
CH: I'd expect so. Young Americans are, on average, quite interested in elections. But they vote at relatively low rates. While there are several reasons for this — my research, for instance, highlights how voting barriers are especially high for young people — polling does show that many youth don't vote because they dislike the candidates. If we had more viable parties, we'd likely see new candidates emerge who appealed to younger voters. Once elected, they could engage in a functioning policymaking process to deliver on their campaign promises, and that would incentivize young people to keep voting to protect their legislative wins. You can imagine a virtuous cycle setting in. |
Here's what we're focusing on today: |
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