(no subject)

[sophiaserpentia]

Of the numerous political maps discussed on the wonderful blog Strange Maps, this one of Poland's 2007 electoral returns shook me to the core. The whole series of maps forces me to reconsider everything I thought I knew about democracy.

Another earlier entry comparing the 2008 electoral results in the south to the distribution of cotton production in 1850 is worthy of note.

We tell ourselves that democracy is the interplay of ideas freely and openly discussed and considered rationally in a free marketplace of ideas. That the party that wins is the one who presented the best ideas. Presented as a more cynical view is the argument that money and campaign slogans have more to do with it. Underlying both views is the notion that every person in the republic is an independently-minded clean slate, of relative likelihood to be influenced by appeals to logic, loyalty, emotion, or fear.

It stands to reason that one's circumstance -- one's economic situation, one's background, one's cultural environment -- would play a role in making the decision. If these maps are any indication, then these factors are the only ones that really matter. IOW, whatever party becomes the one you associate with your cultural identity is the one you're going to support in the election. It should perhaps be cautioned that this may be more true in Europe than in the US, but I think it seems to bear out as fundamentally true in the US as well.

ETA. The troubling corollary to this is that democratic voting results will always fundamentally reflect the underlying racial divisions and hierarchy. The inequalities of imperialism appear to linger for hundreds of years, even long after they have supposedly become "distant history." IOW there will never be a 'free marketplace of ideas' or anything resembling any such thing.

Comments

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

I think even there, though, it's not so much that people change their minds, but more likely what happens (IMO) is that the supporters of the party in power are fatigued by disappointment and are not as eager to vote them back in, as campaign promises go unmet -- whereas the people who's party is not in power perceive a continual string of things to be outraged about, and have more enthusiasm for going out to vote. Even a shift of enthusiasm of 5% either way makes the difference.

[lassiter.livejournal.com]

What we have seen as a general trend in the US, though, is not so much voter churn between party choices, but ever-increasing voter apathy. As Texas humorist and occasional political candidate Kinky Friedman has observed, all that campaign money goes, not to convince voters to go to the polls, but rather to convince them to stay home. Most political strategies these days literally are about holding down the opposition's vote, rather than increasing one's own tally.