Last night’s presidential debate was, in many ways, superfluous: if a U.S. citizen had not already made up their mind who they will vote for (or not already voted), it’s because they haven’t been paying attention.
But there is one factor pollsters and predictors of every stripe have not gotten good at accounting for, which can still have an impact. I call this the “secret ballot factor.” For all the things that went wrong in the 2016 presidential elections—the “horserace” media coverage that enabled a character like Donald Trump to take control of one of the two major parties, the levels of disinformation (from multiple sources) saturating so many levels of public culture and online media, and all the rest—this one factor has not been well understood nor extensively studied.
What I’m referring to is the psychological, emotional, and affective, dimensions underlying the secret ballot. The fact that Americans vote behind a privacy screen, and that no one will ultimately know who you voted for, gives the moment of voting a certain psychological potency: at that moment of (figuratively) “pulling the switch,” what you feel somewhere deeper than at the level of conversational culture can come through to the surface and voice itself through your pen-wielding hand. This is the level where people vote with their gut, not their head. (Mail-in ballots are different in this respect, and I’ll get to them in a minute.)
Most American voters knew who they were going to vote for in 2016, and they went to the voting booth and voted for that person. The role of affect and emotion in deciding whom to vote on this level is better known, albeit not well understood. (Part of this debate has been that over the “shy Trump voter“.) What I’m referring to is more specific than that.
I think that there were enough American voters who felt, on a gut level, that they wanted change from the “establishment,” who might have vacillated or even said they will vote for the establishment candidate (Clinton) before they walked into the voting booth and stared themselves in the face, and who at the last second allowed themselves to give voice to the part of their psyche that speaks only in that void of one, that toilet cubicle of the mind that writes bizarre graffiti when no one is looking and no one will ever know. They voted Trump despite their “better,” more public self. There were enough of them to make a critical difference.
(I know that’s an empirical claim that requires empirical support, which I’m not prepared to give here, and which I’m not sure has been or even could be easily studied.)
This year we need to ask, again, what’s lurking in that mute psychic underbelly of the body politic. How many people who’ve publicly voiced their discontent with Trump will, at the moment of truth, allow themselves to go with him again? And how many people who’ve been publicly supporting him will instead pull the switch to derail his re-election?
Before Thursday’s debate, it was my belief that the latter number—people who will jump ship at the last minute—is much higher than the former number. The last four years have deeply altered the psychic underbelly of America and, however much they publicly avow the same commitments to Trump’s talking points, I believe that a lot of Republicans are tired of doing that. Deep down they know how incredible, how ludicrous, and how deeply embarrassing it is to support someone like that.
But last night’s debate showed a strong Trump—one committed to spouting one lie after another to make his confidently blustering case—and a relatively weak, meek, and aged Biden. That strong performance will give wavering Trump supporters the confidence to go with him another four years. On the psychological level that we are talking about here, Trump’s lies don’t matter for much. Undecided voters will mostly not recognize them, or not be too bothered by them. If they catch any post-debate commentary, it is as likely to be from Fox News (all Trump, all the time, with rarely any questioning of anything he said) as from any other place.
Biden, in his turn, did not radiate the kind of confidence, leadership, or even trustworthiness that appeals on the affective level I am talking about. On the contrary, it radiated weariness–which may reflect a general weariness all of us feel, but which is not a formula for winning the political “id.”
The one factor that protects us, more than ever, from this “secret ballot id” is that so many people are voting by mail. When you do that, you’re more likely to vote according to your public reason, not your private demons. This also means it’s more likely that families and households will vote together, with lights glaring as they prepare to mark their ballots, fold and stamp and mail them. Voting will be less unpredictable. Given what polls are showing (and polls are always public), Trump’s chances don’t look so good there.
All this means that the number of voters this “secret ballot factor” will affect is a relatively small one. But in the electoral system we have, it can still be a significant one. To make a relevant difference with this factor, those who’ve had enough of Trump need to keep talking with their vacillating, undecided, and reason-impaired friends. Talk—genuine, face-to-face conversation (and not ranting)—is the one thing that can make a difference.
