Uncontested seats help foster fear, demonizing of political opponents

In our most recent column, we asked, “Why are Republican policies so bad for rural Iowa?” We suggested one possible answer: Republicans aren’t really a rural party.

We thought the column was more analytic than electrifying. So we were surprised when we received a caustic comment claiming that “(Democrats) are all contemptible, corrupt, narcissistic buffoons and a stain on humanity.” And that over-the-top reaction to party registration statistics prompts another question: Why do so many voters so strongly support a party, even when that party might not support them?

Many people vote for “their team” regardless of what policies either party proposes. But why does that happen?

One explanation could be that they are “captive voters.” Captive voters are voters with no real choice in what party they support. The term originally referred to Black voters: Republicans, the story went, opposed the Voting Rights Act, affirmative action, and similar policies, leaving Black voters with no viable alternative to the Democratic Party. So the Democratic Party could mostly ignore their other policy preferences.

This concept applies to rural Iowans very literally: in 2022, 45 Iowa legislative seats were uncontested. Often, rural seats had no Democratic challenger and urban seats had no Republican challenger. And no challenger also means no debate, no discussion, no local face to give the lie to whatever caricature the unopposed party paints about the other side.

And that creates the conditions for a second explanation: Parties can capture their voters’ minds, not just their votes. They do this through propaganda (exaggerations and lies), dehumanization of out-groups, and peer pressure. The goal is to move people from agreeing with certain things a political party stands for to becoming tools of the party. Parties stop pitching their own visions of the future and instead preach fear about the depraved, blighted hellscape that they say the other party will bring about.

These techniques were broadly studied in the aftermath of the Holocaust, World War II, and the authoritarianism and totalitarianism of the 1930s and 1940s.

We can hear them repeating today in talk radio, Russian propaganda, and Donald Trump’s Hitleresque language. These tactics succeed more easily when no one local is standing up to argue against them.

Captive minds and captive voters combined lead to negative partisanship. Negative partisanship means voting

against one party, not for the other party. It’s on the rise, and it affects supporters of both parties and independents alike.

In the face of this division and negativity, we find ourselves returning to Timothy Snyder’s “On Tyranny” and the essay that led to its creation:

When listening to politicians, distinguish certain words. Look out for the expansive use of “terrorism” and “extremism.” Be alive to the fatal notions of “exception” and “emergency.” Be angry about the treacherous use of patriotic vocabulary.

The last part is especially important. We should not just accept the terms politicians and pundits use. We should get angry at them for demonizing our neighbors, relatives, and fellow Americans, not at the people they are targeting. With some unfortunate exceptions, most of your fellow citizens may have different priorities or different experiences, but they do not want to destroy America. Think hard before believing anyone who says otherwise.

Captive voters and captive minds are bad for democracy, and they are also bad for “uncontested” Iowa, urban and rural alike. Fortunately, we can take concrete actions to fix this.

We can demand that our representatives appear at forums and debates where the public can hear them. We can press them to present us with a vision of what they are for, not just what they oppose, and call them out if they fall to slandering their opponents.

We can encourage our elected officials to adopt systems like Ranked Choice Voting that reduce negative partisanship.

And if we find ourselves apoplectic over voter registration statistics, we should consider who benefits from our anger.