The claim that support for democracy is falling in most countries–and falling quickest among the young–has caused much consternation this week. One datapoint that supports this argument: “In 2011, 24 percent of U.S. millennials (then in their late teens or early twenties) considered democracy to be a ‘bad’ or ‘very bad’ way of running the country.” Erik Voeten and others have argued that this survey is being presented in an alarmist way by focusing on the minority who chose the extreme responses to key questions. Voeten shows that this is how support for democracy looks if you display the mean responses on a scale from 1-10:

Most people are still in favor, and the gaps by age are not huge.

But it is natural to be a bit uninspired by democracy if you’re encountering it for the first time right now. In my freshman philosophy seminar, democracy has been our topic this week. We’ve been reading:

• Bayard Rustin, “From Protest to Politics: Future of the Civil Rights Movement,” Commentary (February, 1965)
• Robert A. Dahl, Democracy and its Critics, pp. 106-52
• Kwasi Wiredu, “Democracy and Consensus in Traditional African Politics” and Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze, “Democracy or Consensus?”

My questions include the following:

Is democracy a reliable means to achieve such (possibly) valuable ends as human happiness/welfare, liberty and rights, or equality? Is it a process that yields such outcomes? Or is it a good in itself? (To see it as an intrinsic good may require the belief that involvement in self-government is dignified or worthy in some way.) Does democracy mean “voting equality at the decisive stage” (Dahl), or a search for consensus (Wiredu), or an opportunity for discussion that enlarges people’s knowledge and empathy (Dewey et al, not assigned)? Is democracy necessarily adversarial (Eze) or can it be unitary (Wiredu), and if the latter, is unity a good thing, perhaps a sign of fraternité? Finally, is democracy a process or set of rules, or rather a culture and set of norms and practices?

My students are thoughtful, open-minded, and quick to understand various perspectives and arguments. But I think their current views are colored by what they regard as the debacle of the 2016 election–both its outcome and the campaign season that preceded it. I asked them whether they thought the election had changed their views of democracy, and they tended to think it had. They are unlikely to see democracy as an intrinsic good, because it rather seems like an undignified and disappointing spectacle. They are attuned to the dangers of communication (propaganda, group-think, polarization, selective use of evidence) and pessimistic about the potential of communication for learning and consensus-building.

I don’t necessarily disagree. And I certainly don’t play the advocate for any philosophical view in the classroom. But I think that those who hope to engage such young people must make the struggle against forms of politics that they despise seem intrinsically rewarding, and must demonstrate that responsible and responsive communication is possible.

Hillary Clinton is winning the popular vote, and I am seeing commentary to the effect that she has one of the largest vote counts ever received, at nearly 64 million. It’s true that only Obama beat that number (twice, with 69 million and then 66 million votes in his two presidential races). However, the population of the US keeps growing, so one would expect the number of votes cast to rise.

The best measure of popular support is the percentage of all adults who turn out for a given candidate. Clinton got about 28%; 27.1% voted for Trump. The 0.9% gap was one of the smallest in modern times, although 1960, 1968, and 2000 were actually closer races in these terms. Clinton’s share of all eligible voters was the same as Obama’s in 2012 (28%).

There have been thirty major party presidential nominees since 1960, and Clinton ranks seventh among all of them in votes/adult population. A few candidates drew much bigger shares back when turnout was higher and partisan swings were wider. LBJ drew the votes of 37.5% of all adults in 1964, about one third more than Clinton did–but politics has changed since then.

(Major third party candidates are shown for 1968, 1980, 1992, and 1996.)

(By the CIRCLE staff, cross-posted from civicyouth.org.) Since Election Day, CIRCLE’s analysis has focused on whom young people voted for, how many voted, and which segments of the youth population cast their ballots—placing each in historical context by examining trends from recent elections. Today’s analysis looks more deeply at the youth vote in the 2016 presidential race, offering a breakdown of young people’s support for each major candidate and for the political parties they represent. We also consider the long-term implications, for both Democrats and Republicans, of a youth electorate that is increasingly loathe to identify strongly with either major party.

READ OUR FULL ANALYSIS HERE

Major findings include:

The Youth Electorate

• CIRCLE analysis suggests that young people voted at a similar rate than in 2012 – around 50%. In 11 battleground states, on aggregate, 55% of youth turned out to vote.
• The racial and ethnic composition of the 2016 youth electorate closely mirrored the general population of young citizens, and remained as diverse as it has been since 2008, though this year there was a surge of young, White, male voters.
• Young people without college experience, already historically underrepresented, made up a smaller share of the young people who cast ballots than in recent elections.
• Less than 4 in 10 young voters identified with the Democratic Party and less than 3 in 10 identified with the Republican Party, suggesting that America’s two major parties are having trouble attracting a substantial youth base.

The Youth Vote for Trump and Clinton

• President-elect Trump lost the youth vote overall by 55% to 37%, but he garnered support from some segments of the youth electorate: Whites, evangelicals, and young people in rural areas.
• While Secretary Clinton won by large margins among demographic groups like unmarried young women and youth of color, she lacked key support from young Whites, young men, and young White moderates.
• President-elect Trump drew significant support from young people whose ideas and concerns tracked closely with the key themes of his campaign: the state of the country,stronger immigration controls, and a the perceived untrustworthiness of his opponent.

Implications for the Future

• Young people are clamoring for significant change, though there are deep divisions on what that change should look like. Youth also seem increasingly skeptical of the two major political parties’ ability to bring the change they seek.
• Moderates, Independents, and other young people who eschew the ideological extremes and strong party identification, appear to be a rising force in the youth electorate. They may also be harder to mobilize if they don’t engage with the traditional party—and partisan—organizations that for many youth provide structures and opportunities for political and broader civic engagement.
• There’s another national election in two years! Only one in five young young people voted in the 2014 midterms, and after an election in which many youth were disappointed with both nominees (and most youth voted for the losing candidate) it may be even harder to keep youth politically motivated. Stronger civic education and strategic, intentional youth outreach remains key.

To respond to Trump’s election, we must address who is organized, and how.

Members of organizations are more likely to vote and to take the more costly actions that will be vital during the Trump years, such as protest and resistance. As a quick-and-dirty illustration, consider the correlation between the number of groups that people belong to and the proportion who say they vote.*

This graph combines all kinds of groups. When people belong to organizations that offer them voice and accountability, that address social or political issues, and that encompass at least some diversity, they are not only more likely to vote; they are also more likely to act and choose responsibly. Members of such groups learn to negotiate, to set appropriate expectations for their leaders, and to feel ownership for results.

Before the election, I proposed that Trump mainly appealed to people who lacked accountable organizations, and that’s one reason that they opted for a totally irresponsible (as well as a cruel) celebrity candidate. They behaved as alienated spectators rather than as political agents. I also expected turnout to be relatively weak among people leaning toward Trump.

Theda Skocpol finds that the rural and exurban areas where Trump performed best did have “organized networks – NRA, Christian Right, some RNC and Koch network/AFP presence – that amplified the right media attacks on HRC nonstop and persuaded many non-college women and some college women in those areas to go for Trump because of the Supreme Court.” Skocpol acknowledges that Trump himself “had no organization,” but, she says, he “made deals to get the NRA, Christian right and GOP federated operations on his side. They have real, extensive reach into nonmetro areas.” I’ve also estimated, based on Exit Poll data, that 56% of Trump voters attend church at least monthly. His turnout wasn’t great, but it was sufficient to win the Electoral College.

I was wrong in part. Trump did well because of the traditional mechanism: outreach by groups. However, I would still propose that the groups that reached Trump voters were unaccountable to them. The Koch Network, for instance, is centralized, fueled by two brothers’ money, and undemocratic and opaque in its internal organization. The relationship between such an organization and its target population is transactional and instrumental: it spends money to persuade them to vote. That is consistent with my view that Trump’s voters aren’t authentically organized. Being mobilized is not the same thing.

Meanwhile, Skocpol is definitely right about the other side:

HRC had the typical well-funded presidential-moment machine, an excellent one. We on the center left seem to treat these presidential machines as organization[s], and they are, but they are not as effective as longstanding natural organized networks. … [Off] the coasts, Democrats no longer have such reach beyond what a presidential campaign does on its own. Public sector and private sector unions have been decimated. And most of the rest of the Democratic-aligned infrastructure is metro based and focused. That infrastructure is also fragmented into hundreds of little issue and identity organizations run by professionals. HRC’s narrow loss was grounded in this absent non-metro infrastructure – and Dem Party losses in elections overall even more so.

In areas where progressive voters predominate, we need a much more authentic, democratic, and integrated base of organizations. Instead of parachuting presidential machines into diverse urban areas every four years in search of votes, the left must invest in younger and more diverse local leaders who have real authority and voice and who can work continuously. American democracy has always functioned best when organizations offer a range of goods, of which political power is just one. For instance, churches offer spirituality; unions raise salaries. Their members ultimately vote, but that’s not the main service these organizations advertise. Right now, resources should flow to multipurpose organizations and movements that will turn out voters in 2018 and 2012, but that will do much before then–starting with protecting safety and civil rights against both hateful individuals and government agencies.

The decline in votes in Wayne County (Detroit) between 2012 and 2016 (37,364) will almost certainly be larger than the final margin of victory for Michigan. Milwaukee saw a 41,000-vote decline that was bigger than the state’s margin. I suspect that scarce investment in organizing was as important in Wisconsin as voter-suppression. These statistics should ring loud alarms, if they haven’t already. How many young African American and Arab American organizers can count on paid activist jobs in Detroit in 2017 and 2018?

Meanwhile, we also need organizations in red states and red counties, in rural areas and exurbs. The point of organizing there is not to show empathy to Trump voters or to honor their concerns. The point is to win. Particularly in 2018, anti-Trump votes will be very poorly distributed–far too concentrated in the great cities to win the House and Senate back. Every extra vote in a white non-urban county will matter, and that requires organizations to change minds, to empower the disenfranchised, and to offer real benefits. By the way, although I think the Democratic Party is a necessary component of the opposition, it is not sufficient. Electing or reelecting responsible and caring Republicans in red districts is also essential.

In our October poll of Millennials, we found that just 30% of Clinton supporters had been contacted by a campaign or organization that had urged them to vote; 28% of young Trump supporters had been contacted; and 70% had not been contacted at all.  Young people who had received multiple contacts were 19 points more likely to say they’d vote than those who’d received none. That poll was a warning that young Americans across the spectrum were not being reached by organizations. Young Trump voters were almost as likely to receive outreach as Clinton voters were: another indictment of the left’s investments. The time to change this is now.

*I’m showing General Social Survey data from 1987 about whether people “always vote” and from 2000 about whether they voted in the last presidential election. Unfortunately, I can’t find more recent comparable data, but I hope the graph illustrates an important pattern. Note that the correlation applies to people who have no college experience (the working class) as well as the population as a whole.

I offer this flowchart in case it can help anyone to think about how to respond to the devastating results of the election. I am sure it is incomplete. Also, it doesn’t present stark alternatives: options can be combined. In fact, I suspect we need people working on each and every one of these boxes, and an individual can address more than one. However, we cannot all do everything all the time, and I’m using this flowchart to think about how to allocate my own time and attention. (Click to expand.)

I’m not sure what’s driving the traffic, but since yesterday, more than 2,500 people have visited my March 3, 2016 post entitled “why political science dismissed Trump and political theory predicted him.” I probably should revisit the topic now that the election is over (especially since I subsequently used standard empirical methods to predict a Clinton victory, thus acting like a political scientist instead of a political theorist).

Last March, I argued that mainstream–empirical or positivist–political science research on “American government” (as the specialty is called) has a vulnerability. Aiming to be a science, it uses data that can be amalgamated to produce models and predictions, such as data from modern US elections. The main method of prediction is to run trend lines from the past into the near future. Although normative assessment is always marginal in positivist social science, most of this research has an implied value-stance: our system works, it follows rules and norms, it’s fairly durable, the players are reasonably competent professionals who support the regime, and you should understand and respect it even you want to reform it. Any reform proposals should be informed by empirical evidence, because otherwise the reforms will have unintended consequences that are likely to be bad. As the great Theodore Lowi wrote, “Realistic political science is a rationalization of the present. The political scientist is not necessarily a defender of the status quo, but the result is too often the same, because those who are trying to describe reality tend to reaffirm it.”

In contrast, political theorists spend their time reading critical reflections on politics written in highly diverse and often tragic circumstances. Hannah Arendt’s writings from Nazi Europe and Frantz Fanon’s analysis of colonial Algeria are just two examples. Political theorists are quick to see that regimes can change, that they can be very bad, that they have debatable normative foundations, and that ideas can be revolutionary.

This means that when Trump arrived on the national scene, positivist political scientists were prone to think that he couldn’t get anywhere in our system–because no one like him had–and political theorists were ready to think that he might take over, because they spend their time considering tyrants, fragile regimes, and the power of xenophobia and authoritarianism. Although there were exceptions in both camps, I think these are reasonable generalizations.

What should we conclude now that Trump is president-elect? It’s tempting to say that the theorists were right. But there’s actually a mainstream positivist account of what just happened. Presidential elections in two-party systems tend to settle at a point where each party has a 50% chance of winning. Given the way nominees are selected in multi-candidate primaries, a smallish faction can capture either party. Its nominee will still have very close to a 50% chance of winning: that’s why Trump got about half the votes, and because of the Electoral College, he won. Furthermore, given the constraints built into the regime as a whole, Trump is likely to govern as a Chamber of Commerce Republican rather than an authoritarian. And if he pushes too far, his party will lose the Congress in two years.

The trouble with political theory is that its predictions can be unmoored from empirical reality. Some political theorists have been predicting catastrophe or revolution throughout my lifetime. The fact that regimes sometimes change does not mean that ours is always about to. I think the odds are still against our regime changing fundamentally in the immediate future.

On the other hand, our political economy is problematic in ways that are not immediately evident from empirical data about the recent past. The Constitution does not fit the present society. The document has fundamental flaws, and the society is evolving toward oligarchy. Although empirical evidence is relevant to those claims, one needs a broader, deeper, and more evaluative stance on the regime as a whole to grasp a crisis such as our present one.

Post-War Germany teaches the ideal of Zivilcourage, civil courage. The acid test is whether you would stand up to a tyrant rather than standing by as he takes over. Even when a literal tyranny is not imminent, civil courage means holding sacred ground.

It’s what we need today. And that means, please, no jokes about moving to Canada. No thoughts about giving up on the nation you belong to, even if its majority and its institutions anger you. No opting out. You may have suffered grievous injustices at the hands of the United States: many have. In that case, you owe no gratitude or service to the republic. But you have more leverage over the US government than the billions who live beyond our borders and yet face the consequences of our policies. You owe it to them to stand up: here, now.

It may seem that the large, official institutions of the United States are remote and unresponsive to our actions, yours and mine. But the fundamental premise of my whole career is that our formal institutions reflect the ways that we talk and work together in everyday life. My first job out of graduate school was at Common Cause, helping to lobby Congress for institutional reform. But while I worked there (1991-3), the organization’s membership rolls were in steep and prolonged decline. Common Cause evolved from a grassroots movement for good government (solely dependent on 250,000 members in local and state chapters) into a nonprofit organization that employs talented experts and relies heavily on grants and large gifts. As such, it has lost political influence. I began to think that we can’t have decent political institutions without a base of active, responsible, organized citizens. Robert Putnam’s 1995 “Bowling Alone” article struck a chord for that reason, and everything I’ve worked on since then has been in the service of civic renewal.

This means that you are showing civil courage if you are working to strengthen the associations and networks that connect us as fellow citizens. This theory is also a source of optimism. Despite some deterioration, we have a far better civil society than Italy had in 1922, or Germany in 1932. For just that reason, actual tyranny is highly unlikely here. (Radical Paul Ryanesque neoliberalism is much more of a threat.) But our associations and networks are only as robust as we make them.

By the way, the networks and associations that we build must include Trump voters. This is not a matter of showing empathy to them or trying to achieve reconciliation. Instead, a cold, hard look at the situation tells me that Trump voters are unrepresented by accountable organizations, and that makes them dangerous. If they had organizations, I’d be on the opposite side from them on most issues, but we could negotiate. Absent a functioning civil society, they have opted for a celebrity who will give them nothing, even as he harms others.

Speaking of cold, hard analysis: we should be critical, but avoid anger. There’s plenty of blame to go around, and it’s fine to apportion responsibility if that helps to improve the situation. We can critically assess Clinton and her campaign, the Democratic establishment and its ideology, consultants and pollsters, the media, the FBI, Ted Cruz, Bernie Sanders, white voters, old voters, rural voters, men, and anyone else you like. But not in anger, because anger clouds judgment and promotes error. The situation is complex; nothing but a clear-headed, subtle, multifaceted analysis will suffice.

I am not sure I have anything new to offer to the cacophony of Election Day, but I’ll cite some recent summary articles by our team or by reporters who have delved deeply into our research:

Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg, “Climate change could be a unifying cause of millennials, but will they vote?,” The Conversation, Nov. 7.

Peter Levine with Abby Kiesa, “Why American Urgently Needs to Improve K-12 Civic Education,” The Conversation, Oct 30, 2016

Noorya Hayat and Felicia Sullivan, “Civic Learning and Primary Sources,” The School Library Connection, Nov. 7.

Peter Levine, “Teach Civic Responsibility to High School Students,” The New York Times (“Room for Debate” feature), Oct. 17, 2016

In the Parent Toolkit, “One Week Away: Why You Should Talk to Your Kid About the Election”

Zachary Crockett, “The Case for Allowing 16-Year-Olds to Vote,” Vox, Nov. 7.

Asma Khalid, “Here’s Why Hillary Clinton’s Troubles Aren’t Millennials’ Fault,” NPR News, Nov. 4.

Catherine Rampell, “Parallel Universes, Even Among the Young,” The Washington Post, Oct. 28.