The Purple Principle

Anyone casually following the 2020 election this year may have noticed a particular pattern in polling trends and election results. That pattern, in key presidential states as well as Senate races, went something like this: 

Democrat ahead… Democrat still ahead... Democrat a bit ahead, days away from the election… But then: Republican wins by a fair amount. 

How was so much polling inaccuracy possible again in 2020 at nearly all levels?

Episode 21 of the Purple Principle, “2020 Polling in Hindsight,” attempts to answer that vexing question by consulting two polling experts – Dr. Natalie Jackson, Director of Research at PRRI and Dr. Brian Schaffner of Tufts University. 

Dr. Jackson gives a sense of the technological challenges faced today by pollsters now that few individuals answer their phones, both landline or mobile. On top of that, a sizable number of bright red Republicans are mistrustful of pollsters and unlikely to participate even when contacted. But for indie-minded Purple Principle listeners, Dr. Jackson does confirm that the independent position often predicts which way the American majority will swing. 

Dr. Shaffner mentions that in today’s polarized environment, some respondents deliberately give dishonest answers to pollsters, often venting ideological views in the process. It also appears a “non-trivial” number of voters split their tickets in 2020, marking the Pro-Biden (or anti-Trump) box up top, but hedging against Democratic control down-ballot as well.   

What’s a pollster to do in a polarized age with a mistrustful slice of electorate and a shifting political landscape? No simple answers but a lot of helpful insights and information in Episode 21, “2020 Polling in Hindsight (Someone Please Answer the Phone)”. 

Original music by Ryan Adair Rooney.

For show notes and transcript, please visit our website: www.fluentknowledge.com/shows/the-purple-principle/2020-polling-in-hindsight

Source Notes:

Changing Attitudes on Same-Sex Marriage, Pew Research Center 

Increasing Support for Religiously Based Service Refusals, PRRI 

National Council on Public Polls Analysis Of Final 2012 Pre-Election Polls

Raymond La Raja and Brian Schaffner (2015). Campaign Finance and Political Polarization. University of Michigan Press. 

Nick Hatley and Courtney Kennedy. “State Election Polls and Weighting Factors.” Pew Research Center Methods. 

Brian F Schaffner, Samantha Luks, Misinformation or Expressive Responding? What an Inauguration Crowd Can Tell Us about the source of Political Misinformation in Surveys, Public Opinion Quarterly, Volume 82, Issue 1, Spring 2018, Pages 135–147.

Danielle Kurtzelben (11/19/20). “Why Were The Polls Off? Pollsters Have Some Early Theories.” NPR.

Lila Harakles (11/9/20). “The 2020 election showed that polls could not anticipate voter turnout.” The Maine Campus. 

Parker Richards (11/3/18). “Republican Governors in New England Defy the Blue Wave.” The Atlantic. 

Deja Thomas and Juliana Menasce Horowitz (9/16/20). “Black Lives Matter support down since June, still strong among Black adults.” Pew Research Center. 

Jasmine Aguilera (11/5/20). “The Complexities of the 2020 'Latino Vote' Were Overlooked, Again.” Time. 

Elaine Kamarck and Alexander Podkul (10/23/18). “Political polarization and voters in the 2018 congressional primaries.” Brookings Institute.  

Christine Zhang and Courtney Weaver (12/30/20). “Underestimating Trump: the US polling industry under fire.” The Financial Times. 

Eli Yokley (1/25/21). “Biden's Initial Approval Rating Is Higher Than Trump's Ever Was.” Morning Consult. 

Dhrumil Mehta (6/19/18). “Separating Families At The Border Is Really Unpopular.” FiveThirtyEight.

Natalie Jackson (12/5/20). “Trump-Biden polls damaged trust because voters saw them as predictions.” USA Today. 

A Major Pandemic… Election 2020 that lasted weeks… Election Denial 2020 is still going months later… Insurrection… Impeachment… And possibly more to come. There’s been a lot of polarized and polarizing events over the past few months. So it seems time to step back and take a longer range, wider-angle view of partisanship in our DisUnited States. 

The Purple Principle does that in Episode 20 with featured guests Dr. Andrew Gelman of Columbia University (Departments of Political Science and Statistics) and Stephen Hawkins, Research Director of the international non-profit, More in Common, authors of the seminal study on American political identity, The Hidden Tribes. 

Dr. Gelman explains how polarization is measured over time with modern statistical techniques, which reveal how seemingly unrelated issue positions can form into partisan constellations. Why, for example, should someone’s position on the minimum wage correlate with their view on global warming? Logically, there’s little connection. But in our partisan age, these correlations are increasing over time, if not yet fully correlated. 

Stephen Hawkins of More in Common defines the seven tribal identities identified through extensive psychology-driven polling. More in Common defines the four groups in the American center as “The Exhausted Majority.” Hawkins explains that those suffering from partisan exhaustion tune out from political news while our tribal wings consume more media, thus incentivizing media companies to play to their outrage.  

What’s a polarized nation to do? Hawkins suggests the answer may lie back in the Cold War, when a common enemy solidified American identity. Tune in to learn more about the major trends in polarization and our surprisingly complex political tribalism in Episode 20, “Polarization at the Tipping Point.”

Original music composed and created by Ryan Adair Rooney. 

For show notes and transcript, please visit our website: www.fluentknowledge.com/shows/the-purple-principle/polarization-at-the-tipping-point

The Year 2020 has not exactly been brimming with good news. Certainly in terms of public health and the economy, you could say it was the worst of times and the worst of times.  

But we did find a bright audio spot in Purple Principle Episode 13, which we repodcast today with important new information, most notably that Alaska’s ambitious Ballot Measure Two has officially passed. 

Ballot Measure Two packaged together the opening of statewide primaries to non-partisan or independent voters with top four ranked choice voting and greater campaign finance transparency – all in one referendum! 

But Alaskan politics is different. A remarkable 57% of Alaskan voters are registered as either non-partisan or unaffiliated voters. The drafters of Alaska Ballot Measure Two sought to preserve and enhance this non-partisan political culture toward more cooperative governance.  

This repodcast features excerpted interviews with the successful Campaign Manager of Alaskans for Better Elections, Shea Siegert, on the challenges surmounted by Ballot Measure Two.  

Join us as The Purple Principle takes an audio cruise through our nation’s most indie-minded state while asking if Alaska might inspire similar efforts against polarization among the lower 48.   

Original Music by Ryan Adair Rooney.

For show notes and transcript, please visit our website: www.fluentknowledge.com/shows/the-purple-principle/repodcast-of-declaration-of-independents-alaska-style

Colleges have come to be known as havens for divisive politics, cancel culture, and trollism, all miserably co-existing with academic stress, social pressure and stale pizza. In Episode 18, “Civil society and Campus Politics,” The Purple Principle profiles two college students pushing back against the polarizing forces on college campuses and the nation writ large. 

Avinash Bakshi, President of the Penn State College Independents, describes the importance of having a third, less tribal option among political groups on his campus of 40,000 undergraduates. While Tyler Swanson, sophomore at University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana and founder of the student-run Bipartisan Post, decided fact-based reportage was the best method to counter disinformation, echo chambers, and polarization on his and other campuses around the country.

Tune in to hear that all is not quite lost in our not so United States, assuming a growing number of college students like Avinash and Tyler join the fight against polarization as a true threat to American higher education, politics, and society.   

Original Music by Ryan Adair Rooney.

For show notes and transcript, please visit our website: www.fluentknowledge.com/shows/the-purple-principle/civil-society-and-campus-politics

Inaccurate polling… Split-ticket results… Denial of election results by large numbers of Republican voters and members of Congress...

There have been plenty of head-scratching developments related to the 2020 election. In Episode 17, “Party Dynamics in Context,” we turn to noted historian and columnist, Geoffrey Kabaservice, for 2020 election analysis. 

Given the demise of moderates in the Republican party, Dr. Kabaservice explains that today’s unprecedented Republican loyalty to Donald Trump, the individual, rather than to the party, is not entirely surprising. He also explains why swing voters seem to have gone for President-elect Joe Biden but not for Democrat candidates down ballot, as had been expected. 

What about the future of the Republican Party and for bipartisan governance within a closely divided Congress? Dr. Kabaservice is not optimistic about major legislation but does see some hope for a centrist coalition in the House of Representatives.  

For an informed, contextual view of the 2020 election and current party dynamics, tune into Episode 17 of the Purple Principle with Dr. Geoffrey Kabaservice, author of Rule to Ruin (Oxford Press) and Director of Policy Studies, Niskanen Center. 

Original music composed and created by Ryan Adair Rooney. 

For show notes and transcript, please visit our website: www.fluentknowledge.com/shows/the-purple-principle/party-dynamics-and-the-2020-election-in-context

The 2020 election has revealed the partisan state of American politics and society like no other event in recent history. How did we get to this point? Our special guest today, Trevor Potter, Founder and President of the Campaign Legal Center (CLC), provides insight into that question and suggestions for rehabilitating our polarized polity. Gerrymandering, the partisan drawing of electoral districts, is one major factor. 

In Episode 16, “Democracy & Elections Under Stress,” Trevor Potter (a former Chairman of the Federal Election Commission) describes how the long-practiced art of gerrymandering has become a polarizing science in the age of big data. Potter’s nonpartisan group, the CLC, is working to combat gerrymandering through litigation and the establishment of independent redistricting commissions at the state level. Potter also outlines CLC initiatives in campaign finance transparency and ranked choice voting. 

Last but not least, Trevor Potter (General Counsel to John’s McCain’s presidential campaigns) comments on attempts by the Trump campaign to block and overturn 2020 election results in several pivotal states. He commends the courage and professionalism of Secretaries of State and election officials from both parties for adhering to democratic process. 

Tune in to learn more about our democracy and our elections under stress in Episode 16, with Trevor Potter, Founder and Chairman of Campaign Legal Center, and Former Chairman of Federal Election Commission.  

Original music composed and created by Ryan Adair Rooney. 

For show notes and transcript, please visit our website: www.fluentknowledge.com/shows/the-purple-principle/democracy-elections-under-stress-a-discussion-with-trevor-potter-of-the-campaign-legal-center

Exactly one hundred years ago this month, at a time of political polarization and the Spanish Flu pandemic, William Butler Yeats published “The Second Coming,” a poem premised on the cycles of history that resonates today with striking immediacy. 

Things fall apart, the center cannot hold, the worst are full of passionate intensity... These and other enduring lines from “The Second Coming” are now part of our collective vocabulary. 

In Episode 15, “The Second Coming Turns 100," we look at the historical context in which Yeats conceived and published the poem with special guest, prize-winning documentary filmmaker Briona Nic Dhiarmada, Professor of Film and Irish Studies at Notre Dame University.  

Find out more about the poem, its birthplace, and remarkable composer, Nobel Prize-winning poet, W.B. Yeats, in Episode 15, “The Second Coming Turns 100," Part 2. 

Original music composed and created by Ryan Adair Rooney. 

For show notes and transcript, please visit our website: www.fluentknowledge.com/shows/the-purple-principle/the-centennial-of-w-b-yeats-the-second-coming-part-2

How does a century-old poem written in Ireland as European civil wars erupted in the aftermath of World War I still resonate in our own partisan era? That is the central question The Purple Principle asks in both Episode 14 and 15, as the classic poem, “The Second Coming”, by William Butler Yeats, turns one hundred years young. 

In Episode 14, our special guest is another great Irish poet, Paul Muldoon, author of 15 collections of poetry, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and Professor of Poetry at Princeton University. Muldoon speaks about the poem’s insight and longevity, the influences at work on Yeats as he wrote it, and the impact Yeats still exerts on poetry today. 

The center cannot hold.. The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity… Lines published one hundred years ago this month (November 1920) that still speak to us today here in the U.S., as we polarize over COVID, election results, and other issues. Tune in to learn more about the remarkable relevance and endurance of “The Second Coming” by W.B. Yeats with special guest, the renowned Irish poet, Paul Muldoon.

Original music composed and created by Ryan Adair Rooney. 

For show notes and transcript, please visit our website: www.fluentknowledge.com/shows/the-purple-principle/the-second-coming-turns-100

The great state of Alaska is different in many ways – its vast size, low population, and great distance from “the lower 48” (states). Politics in Alaska is different as well: a remarkable 57% of Alaskans are registered as either non-partisan or unaffiliated voters. 

The proponents of Alaska Ballot Measure 2 would like to preserve and enhance the state’s non-partisan political culture. This measure would create an open unified primary system, top four ranked choice voting, and greater campaign finance transparency. If passed this year, it would be one of the most comprehensive and significant reforms to state level elections in U.S. history. 

Episode 13 features Campaign Manager of Alaskans for Better Elections Shea Siegert on both the challenges and rewards of Ballot Measure 2. Join The Purple Principle as we take an audio cruise through our nation’s most independent-minded state, meeting notable Alaskans along the way, and learning that electoral change never comes easy.  

Original music composed and created by Ryan Adair Rooney. 

For show notes and transcript, please visit our website: www.fluentknowledge.com/shows/the-purple-principle/declaration-of-independents-alaska-style

Independent candidate David Krucoff is running for the non-voting D.C. Congress position without much hope of unseating incumbent Democrat Eleanor Holmes Norton for her 16th term. Instead, Krucoff seeks to call attention to his non-partisan “retrocession” solution to D.C. disenfranchisement – the creation of Douglass (as in Frederick Douglass) County, Maryland as the new and fully enfranchised home for Washington, D.C. citizens. 

Could David’s retrocession proposal slay the D.C. disenfranchisement Goliath? Krucoff says he’s in it for the long game with the hope of seeing Douglass County, Maryland created before the 2030 census. Tune in to find out how non-partisan candidates and proposals can take on partisan politics on Episode 12 of The Purple Principle. 

Original music composed and created by Ryan Adair Rooney. 

For show notes and transcript, please visit our website: www.fluentknowledge.com/shows/the-purple-principle/a-discussion-with-non-partisan-dc-candidate-for-congress-krucoff