Index Political Independents as Uninterested

For a long time now, American politicians have been debating about the extent of cheating in elections. The compelling evidence is that actual voting fraud is rare. But a trio of researchers from Kent State University and University of Michigan start by reporting how with regard to oversight of voting procedures by politicians, the U.S. has performed poorly on measures of integrity. Tactics like placing voting machines in ways which manipulate turnout occur too often.
     The researchers explored the relationships between partisan affiliation and tolerance, or even support, for subversion of democracy via suppression of political competition. The studies accomplished this by presenting to people the same descriptions of unambiguous deliberate attempts to manipulate elections, but with some people the perpetrators were described as Democrats and with others as Republicans.
     Not surprisingly, the study results indicated that people are more tolerant of election manipulation when it’s carried out by their own party than by the opposing party. And, as expected, citizens are more likely to cry foul when the tactic harms their party than when it helps their party.
     The researchers do report their own surprise at the study participants’ tepid response overall to the descriptions of flagrant violations of fairness and the law. The finding I consider most intriguing concerns the responses from study participants who identified themselves as political independents: They were less likely than both the Democrats and Republicans to object to a violation. Independents were better than partisans at being impartial, but worse at calling out infractions.
     Perhaps this indicates that political independents are not so much disinterested—in the sense of impartial—as they are uninterested—in the sense of detached from matters of politics. This has implications for how politicians should allocate funding for persuasive communications. Independents could be less responsive than partisans.
     The study results are consistent with studies showing that voters who support a particular candidate for elective office consider the results of a political poll as less believable when that preferred candidate does less well in the poll. The researchers at Witten/Herdecke University, University of Zurich, and University of Mannheim posit this phenomenon as harmful to society, since in a healthy democracy, voters should be keeping their beliefs correct and current.
     The research findings indicate that this motivated reasoning problem is eased when more poll results from a broader range of sources are provided over the course of a campaign.

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