by Nate Hoekstra
Illustration by Laura Wilusz

In an interview with Grand Valley Magazine, political science professor Erika King shared her thoughts about how the changing face of America has changed the way candidates campaign for the presidency.

Grand Valley Magazine: Why is the 2016 campaign so divisive?

Erika King: We’re engaged in an interesting political season where every day seems to bring a surprise. But that’s not really a surprise. Every political season has its ebbs and flows. I’m also looking at the context of political campaigns. What goes on in the wider society impacts people’s beliefs — especially this year — their concerns, angers and anxieties. I see a lot of that being manifested this year. Frustration, anger and anxiety are on both sides of the aisle.

GVM: For the first time in history, both candidates, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, have higher than 50 percent unfavorable ratings. Why?

EK: This is something political scientists will be disentangling for years after this election is over.

I think you need to look at the context. Part of the context in this election is a changing America. America is changing demographically, we’re seeing some very distinct changes in this country that have been going on for a while, and they’re becoming more apparent.

We’re also seeing a new generation coming of political age. When millennials are concerned about jobs and downward mobility, that’s becoming a fault line in American politics. We’re also changing in terms of the workforce and education, and what’s available to individuals who haven’t completed a college degree. It used to be that in Michigan, you could get a good job in a factory and still achieve a middle-class lifestyle, but that has changed. Few of those jobs exist now. There’s all that anxiety for older people, too; it’s just another fault line. Ethnic and racial changes are another contextual factor that’s changing dramatically. Then there is the issue of immigration, and changing demographics in general. The white population is becoming less and less of a really strong majority in the U.S.

All kinds of changes are promoting anxieties and angers. And this isn’t unique to 2016, this has been building slowly.

GVM: How did you become interested in teaching and researching politics for a living?

EK: It’s interesting because I was not a political science major in college. I was a sociology/anthropology major, and very interested in society in general, specifically what makes different societies tick, and what makes them different from one another. In my senior year I took a course in political sociology, and I suddenly realized I was interested in the political part of society, so I decided to apply to graduate school in political science. I got particularly interested in the sociology of public opinion and how that translates to political campaigns.

GVM: Given that people are angrier and anxious about politics, when you are teaching, do you keep your personal opinions to yourself?

EK: I’m very careful not to inject myself or my personal beliefs into my teaching. My sense is that what I teach is not about me, and that if I were a student, I would not care what the political affiliation of my faculty member was. By the time you’re an adult, you can think that out for yourself, and political beliefs are such a combination of so many different things (family background, religious beliefs, instances that have happened to you) so I try not to inject my beliefs.

What I always say to my students is that we should be able to have a reasonable conversation about different kinds of ideas.

We need to attempt to understand the perceptions of others, because if you’re going to understand people’s voting behavior, you have to attempt to understand what motivates them.

GVM: It seems like reasonable discourse is happening less and less in modern politics. Is the process marred by today’s world of 24/7 media coverage and social media?

EK: I like to focus my own research on how the content of media and different types of media organizations present information to the public, and how that is changing in the contemporary world. To me, that’s fascinating because in my lifetime we have morphed into a world that has different kinds of media access, different kinds of media discourse, and it forms an essential part of the context of political campaigns. That is very different from decades ago when most people received an afternoon or evening newspaper and then sat down and watched one of three evening newscasts that were essentially saying the same things.

“In my lifetime we have morphed into a world that has different kinds of media access, different kinds of media discourse, and it forms an essential part of the context of political campaigns.”
— Erika King, political science professor

So thinking about discourse and how information is presented: we have the mainstream media, social media and the internet, where we have a flattening of the media world and individuals become their own reporters. What we are finding is people are reaching out to organizations or individuals where the information they are given is already in accord with what they believe. That is serving to polarize people because they can live in their own separate media world and get information that matches what they believe and think and feel.

It’s fascinating. You can take the same political event with either Clinton or Trump, and according to what media outlet, blog or social media post you look at, you can see that we’re living in two separate universes here in terms of how we’re interpreting what’s happening politically.

GVM: You’re always very cautious not to predict what you think will happen in campaigns and elections. Why?

EK: Because political scientists are very good at explaining what has already happened through statistical analysis and careful reading of the facts. We are not terribly good at predicting the future. One thing you see in any election year is the constant, daily polling. What researchers realize is that you can’t rely on any one poll, two polls, even five polls. You have to take an average of the polling results over a period of time and that gives you the best sense of what is happening at the moment. There are so many things that can happen in politics and society that change how people respond to polls. One example is the day before 9/11 and the day after 9/11. Public opinion on a number of things changed dramatically. You have to be very careful on a political campaign, because you never know what might occur.

GVM: As a political scientist, what has been the most interesting part of the 2016 campaign so far?

EK: It’s fascinating to watch how the candidates are using the media to get their message and image out there. You have Donald Trump, maestro of Twitter and media coverage, and two candidates who will likely end up spending more than $1 billion on ads. Also within the media context, it’s interesting to see what set of messages will resonate the most with the American public.

Who will be the person who can grab something that is of great importance and concern to the American public and can turn it to his or her advantage? It’ll be interesting to see who does that — and I won’t predict — but it will be a
wild ride.