Program transcript:
Grant Reeher: Welcome to the Campbell Conversations, I'm Grant Reeher. With our historic levels of political polarization and the hard political feelings that have been generated during the Trump era, each side tends to see the other in the worst possible and the most extreme light. My guest today has written a new book arguing that Democratic and media misperceptions of Republican voters have been especially pronounced. George Hawley is a professor of political science at the University of Alabama and the author of, “The Moderate Majority: Real GOP Voters and the Myth of Mass Republican Radicalization”. Professor Hawley, welcome to the program and congratulations on the new book.
George Hawley: Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
GR: We appreciate you making the time. So let me just start with a real basic question, what prompted you to write this book?
GH: Well, a couple of things. One was just feeling like there was a, sort of an incongruence between how people were talking about the Republican Party, at least in terms of ordinary Republican voters as this increasingly radicalized element of society and my own experiences and actually interacting with them. So broadly speaking, that would be part of it. Another issue, not to put it on a more social science-y level, I think there's been a ton of really excellent research over the last ten years on what's going on inside the Republican electorate. But my frustration with so much of it was that it was, so much of it was reliant on single snapshots in time, what we would call cross-sectional studies. Either looking at just a single example of the American National Election Study or, you know, some really good and clever experimental studies done. But there wasn't that much just looking at, okay, well, what is going on with the Republican Party over time? And, you know, things that don't require a lot of methodological sophistication but looking at, you know, what are some survey questions that have been asked again and again over the last couple of decades, and can we see has there been this great sea change among Republican voters? And if so, where do we find them? And, you know, as I took a, you know, a deep dove into as many different types of questions and as many different types of surveys as I could find, that we're doing this kind of, you know, over time, taking the temperature over and over again, I was finding more often than not a greater amount of continuity rather than difference over time. I saw that this, you know, this is worth talking about and saying, look, to have a question about polarization and radicalization, but we should also note where we see less change and that's largely what I emphasize in this project.
GR: And you mentioned methods there as you were talking about surveys, talking about social science experiments, the methods that you used in this book, we don't need to go into terribly great detail about this, but you went beyond public opinion surveys. You, I think you did some interviewing and like you said before, you have your own observations. So what did you draw on in writing the book?
GH: Well, quantitatively, I relied predominantly on, you know, the standard big surveys, you know, the General Social Survey, American National Election Survey, Cooperative Election Study, Baylor Religion Study, those that have been done consistently over time that are publicly available so that anybody can check my work and see that it's solid. But I also think that survey data can sometimes be a little bit misleading or at least incomplete. So to supplement that, I also went out of my way to have as many interviews as I could with really just ordinary Republican voters. And I did a fair amount of traveling for this, so I go out and I have a, essentially a focus group in an evangelical church in the Midwest, or I travel up to Nashville to meet with people there. I mean, I did a fair amount of interviews here in Alabama just because it's where I am. But I also went out to the West Coast and elsewhere just to try and get at least some broader geographic representation. So this was, you know, and the people I interviewed, you know, they varied a lot in terms of their levels of political interest and activities. So some of it was people who really don't think about politics very much more than, you know, going out and voting every four years and people who are, you know, rather dedicated activists. I went out of my way to avoid, you know, professional conservatives, so to speak, that I've done, you know, or, and I wasn't going out of my way to try and find people who would have identified with the radical right, which I've done in previous research, looked into that element of society. But that wasn't my main focus here, though, if I did encounter somebody who had far right sentiments, I didn't disregard them either. So those were sort of a mixed methods of quantitative and qualitative. So the quantitative stuff, as I said, is not examples of, you know, tremendous methodological sophistication. There's not a ton of, you know, regression tables in this book.
GR: Right, right. And so briefly, what's the reality that you found among the Republicans that you spoke to and looking at, as you say, the continuity in the survey data? How is the actual typical Republican different from the current stereotype of the typical Republican?
GH: Well, one thing that is true when we talk about polarization is that there is a lot of anger in the Republican electorate. But it tends to be more ideological and partisan than, say, racist or anti-Semitic, which is where a lot of the other focus has been. That is, if we look at attitudes using things like, say, feeling thermometers or attitudes such as racial resentment, which is a term political scientists use a lot. I don't find much compelling evidence that Republicans have gotten say, more racist or more nativist. And the evidence of greater anti-Semitism is almost impossible to find in large data sets. But the degree to which the anger is there, what we've seen, especially since 2000, is this dramatic increase in really just kind of loathing for Democrats and for liberals, but not necessarily for racial or ethnic or sexual minorities, where in fact, over the last couple of decades, feelings have gotten somewhat warmer rather than cooler.
GR: And certainly that loathing goes both ways as far as my experience goes. You're listening to The Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and I'm speaking with George Hawley. He's a professor at the University of Alabama and the author of, “The Moderate Majority: Real GOP Voters and the Myth of Mass Republican Radicalization”. Okay, do you think there are certain, let's think about the misperceptions, do you think there are certain kinds of issues on which the misperceptions are most pronounced? You mentioned nativism, anti-Semitism, racism. Are there other things where the misperceptions are most pronounced, or is that where they are?
GH: I think that's where the biggest gap we find is. And I want to be very clear, I am not in any way downplaying the problems of racism, really aggressive nativism, or anti-Semitism. Those are real phenomenon. And if you spend all your time online, particularly on social media, you'll think that this is a widespread massive problem among your ordinary voters. But my takeaway lesson from this is that the type of people who are sitting on X, formally Twitter, all day posting really just nasty, racist, anti-Semitic or otherwise exclusionary stuff are not well representative of the Republican Party overall. And I think that that's an important thing to remember. And I think this is can be a problem in multiple senses because I think that the degree to which people have misperceptions of the Republican Party, it can also perhaps be something of a self-fulfilling prophecy, because my fear is that a lot of pro-Republican or, you know, conservative nonprofits and other groups, they are perhaps just as mistaken as others and think that, oh, well, where the party is going, where the voters are going is in this really far right direction and so in order to stay relevant, we have to keep up with that. We need to maintain at least as far right of a sentiment as the average person out there. And I'm here to say that I think that would probably be a mistake. I mean, both a moral mistake, but also perhaps a long term tactical or strategic mistake on the part of these parties and these elements of the right broadly conceived. And so I hope that reading this might cause some people to rethink a few things and perhaps, you know, dial back some of the extremism that we do see in other elements of the right.
GR: Yeah, that was I thought, in some ways ,that was the most intriguing part of your book. And you do have a lot of thought provoking arguments that that misperception that you're just talking about, it actually helps the minority on the far right. And you said, you know, you use the word self-fulfilling prophecy, but it actually strengthens their position because they appear to be more of the mainstream than perhaps they are.
GH: Yes, that's my position. And, you know, as I've been working through this project, you know, one thing that has been coming up to my mind is actually a comment that Peter Viereck made back in the 1950’s. He was a sort of moderate to conservative thinker at the time, and he was noting at the height of McCarthyism that a lot of people were making the mistake of thinking that all forms of prejudice and bigotry tend to move together. But he was saying in the context of McCarthyism that that was really not what was happening. Because what he found actually that was that sort of the McCarthy sentiments were strongest among those conservatives who tended to be most anti-segregation and similarly, the place where McCarthyism was weakest tended to be in the white supremacist south where people were actually coming out, including conservatives, pretty strongly against McCarthy was the argument he made. And he said, look, ideological polarization or ideological bigotry and hostility does not necessarily move in tandem with other types of hostility and bigotry. And so the fact that we see a lot of Republicans become intensely hostile towards Democrats and liberals and the left more broadly does not necessarily indicate that other types of hostility are also on the rise. So I think it's important that we be able to disaggregate different types of negative attitudes within different portions of the electorate rather than just assume that if we see one negative trend, that it means that other trends are going to be necessarily correlated with that.
GR: So what do you think is most responsible for the misperception and the stereotype?
GH: Well, I mean, to be honest, a lot of it is to be blamed on the Republican leadership. Look, the fact of the matter is, is that the, and particularly I think President Trump has certainly fed into this. Look, the reality is, is that Trump did run, especially in 2016 and then again in 2024, very aggressively nativist campaign. There are a lot of people, sort of, at least on the periphery of Trump world who say some, have a history of saying some really negative and hostile things. And the fact that Republican voters came out and enthusiastically supported him anyway, you know, on its face seems to provide evidence that at the very least they're not uncomfortable with that style of politics. But does that necessarily mean that they endorse it and want to see the party move in a far right direction? I'm not so sure that that's true. So I'm not making the case that, you know, the people who have these misperceptions, you know, don't have any good reason for developing them. But I think that it is worth following up and saying, hey, you know, what is the actual data? Show us. And that's what I tried to do here.
GR: I want to pursue that line of inquiry when we get back after the break. You're listening to The Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and I'm talking with George Hawley. The University of Alabama political science professor has recently written a book titled, “The Moderate Majority: Real GOP Voters and the Myth of Mass Republican Radicalization” and we've been discussing the issues that he raises in his book. Well, you were talking about some of the sources of the misperceptions and in particular, you were talking about Republican leadership, President Trump. I wanted to ask you flip that to the other side. Certainly, it would seem that the Democratic Party has decided that it tactically benefits from painting Republicans as an extreme way as possible. Do you have any thoughts about that?
GH: Well, sure. And you know, that's just the nature of partisan politics, right? You need to build up as much fear as possible to get your voters motivated. And so I'm actually not, you know, necessarily too critical of Democrats for doing this because Republicans do the same thing, right? This notion that Democrats are all a bunch of socialists who wish to, you know, destroy the West has been, you know, a common theme in conservative media and from Republican politicians, at least the more irresponsible ones for some time. So, yes, I think that just the nature of partisan politics does incentivize leaders to promote what I would consider to be misleading narratives about voters on both sides of things. And that's unfortunate. I wish it wasn't the case, but it's probably not going to go away. And again, this is not a problem that is localized on either one, more on one side than the other, in my view.
GR: Right. I wanted to also ask you about for lack of a better word, legacy media, mainstream media. It's my sense that they've bought into this a little bit, this sense of misperception particularly on the Republican side. Do you have the same sense?
GH: Yes. And I think part of that is just sort of the nature of what makes for an interesting story like the far right, the radical right is a, you know, makes for a compelling magazine article or newspaper piece or, you know, or makes for good television, you know, the people who are out in outlandish costumes and, you know, carrying swastikas and saying just the most awful things is, you know, is good media. You know, it's popular and it gets people interested much more so than, oh, here's what, you know, that an average guy who doesn't think about politics very much is really like. And, you know, luckily, you know, as an academic, I have a different set of incentives. You know, it's not that important that I sell a ton of books, even if my subject is less interesting to a lot of readers than the, say, the far right would be. And then the other issue of course is that the far right, you know, loves media attention as much as they say they dislike journalists, you know, they want to get that attention. And so it ends up being a system in which both sides, you know, in a way kind of benefits. And so I think this is a way in which the radical right can project power in a way that is outsized compared to their actual representation in the overall electorate.
GR: Yeah, that's a really good point. And then finally, on sort of who's to blame on this, I wonder about academia, too. And so you and I are teaching in completely different areas of the country. I can say that in my area, it's pretty obvious, you'd have to almost be blind and deaf not to think that that academia as a whole has bought into this view of the Republicans as a general stereotype. Do you have a different sense of academia in the South?
GH: No, I would say that we are, even down here in the Deep South academia, professors tend to live in something of a bit of a bubble. I would say that you know, the social worlds of academics, you know, it isn't necessarily going to overlap with, you know, your typical red state experience, even when you're living in a place like Alabama. So I do think that there is a sense in which a lot of academics, even those who study these things very carefully, are socially disconnected from the subjects that they're studying, which I think can create some problems of its own. You know, a lot of the qualitative work, even very good qualitative work that I see among academics who go out and try and study, you know, Republican parties, there's kind of almost like a Gorillas in the Mist style aspect to it. But look at these really strange, exotic people that I've managed to find and I’m studying. And so I think that can be a little bit off putting and can sometimes lead to misperceptions as well.
GR: Yeah, yeah, I'm going on safari in North Dakota or something like that. I understand that since the book's writing, you've begun to have some second thoughts about some of the arguments that are in the book more recently. Could you tell us a little bit about that?
GH: Sure. Well, just by the nature of academic publishing this project, the final draft was completed in 2023, so before the 2024 election it really begun in earnest. And at this point I'm just not sure if maybe we have finally reached an inflection point where perhaps the radical right, the views and preferences and talking points have started to permeate the broader population. I think that if that's the case, I think a probably an important moment was when Elon Musk took over Twitter and made it X and not only made it a place for basically untrammeled free speech, but also seems to be putting his thumb on the scale in favor of voices that I would consider to be fairly far right and radical. And I think it would be naive to say that that couldn't have any possible consequences. So I wouldn't be surprised if some of the things I've been hearing from some of the more irresponsible voices on the right start to become more pervasive. Another thing I noticed in the 2024 election that was quite striking in comparison to 2020 was how the Trump campaign dealt with the immigration question. Because what I found very fascinating about the 2020 election for all of the bad things that occurred there, particularly of course in the refusal to acknowledge Biden's win, but despite all that, what I found perhaps most interesting was the degree to which immigration was really just not an issue at all that year. And I was starting to draw the conclusion that, you know, to the degree to which everyone said that nativism was absolutely essential to the Make America Great Again movement to Trump, they'd be saying, hey, maybe a less aggressively nativist Trumpism could do just as well. Because after all, Trump's diehard supporters, they didn't stop supporting him because he stopped showing very much interest in immigration. So I thought that perhaps kind of the nativist element of Trumpism might start to be downplayed. But then, of course, this most recent election happens after the book is completed. And they very much went back to sort of the 2015-2016 talking points and perhaps even went farther with that when we saw the, you know, the rather ridiculous claims about, you know, Haitians eating pets and that sort of thing. And the degree to which that is becoming a sort of pervasive sentiment within conservative media and elsewhere, I wonder if we might be starting to see in the future a sharper turn to the right. So I can't, unfortunately at this point I'm still waiting for all the best data sets from the 2024 election to come out. So until they do, it's purely speculative on my part. I'm not able to say, one way or the other whether or not my intuitions and the things that I found writing this book still hold today.
GR: If you've just joined us, you're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and my guest is University of Alabama Professor George Hawley. What are some the, you mentioned when we were talking off microphone about some of the issues, policy areas that are most important to understand some of the nuance, I think in the Republican position. Do you have a few things you want to add about that?
GH: Sure. One thing that people were talking about a lot, especially in 2015, 2016 and beyond, was that Trump isn't kind of represents a repudiation of Reaganism, right? And sort of the default Republican position that, you know, markets are good, trade is good we want a less regulated economy. And with the rise of this populist movement, perhaps those sentiments were going away. And what I did find was that sort of doctrinaire economic conservatism was not popular among Trump voters. However, if you look at similar questions asked again and again and again, the reality is, is that economic conservatism in particular has really never been that popular, at least even among Republican voters, like the notion that you should raise taxes on high earners. It actually, it polls pretty well among ordinary Republican voters, and it always has. So the degree to which the previous iterations of the Republican Party were sort of pro-free market, anti-regulation in favor of, you know, supply side tax cuts and that sort of thing, that was always at odds with what Republican voters said they wanted in polls. So the degree to which we see an economic populism becoming any type of force within the Republican Party, that is more the party actually being aligned with its own voters as opposed to, you know, representing some major sea change from the bottom up.
GR: And maybe even in an indirect way explains some of what was surprising at the time, anyway, Bernie Sanders popularity when he ran because it sort of speaks to those themes of taxing the rich and taking a little more skeptical view of some of the free market doctrines. I wanted to ask you a question about the effects of polarization. And this is more speculative probably for you, but the effects of polarization on what and how people think and how that might be driving part of the change that you might be perceiving since you've written the book. I mean, and maybe you got a sense of this in your in your focus groups, but let me just take like, you know, a more moderate Republican, for example. They know that other people view them as you know, populist, a particularly right wing Trump supporter. And so perhaps maybe they begin to take on some of those views almost out of a reaction or a frustration. I mean, maybe it's a little bit of, you know, like up yours kind of sentiment. You know, if you're going to paint me in a certain way, all right, I'll just go there. Do you think there's any kind of that dynamic driving the two sides?
GH: Yeah, that strikes me as plausible. I mean, people like to, partisanship has become an increasingly important part of people's social identity, even as you know, we don't necessarily see an uptick in interest in policy or ideology. People take their partisan identities, you know, I'm a Republican or I'm a Democrat, they take that very seriously. And people like to feel like they're team players. So the degree to which people you know, want to demonstrate, know the degree to which I'm on team Republican, I think probably could drive people to just kind of adopt the norms that they perceive within that party. I think that's entirely plausible.
GR: And we've got about a minute and a half left or so and I wanted to leave you some time to speculate on this or provide at least your sense from talking to folks what your experience tells you. But how (are) we ever going to climb out of this hole of mutual misperception and political hyperbole regarding the other side? Do you have any clues that you could impart to us for where the glimmers of light are here?
GH: Oh, that's very difficult. I don't think I even, you know, speculated one sentence about that in the book itself. But I do think that one of our problems is a high degree of, at least ideological and political homogeneity within our social networks. I think that there is too little dialog across the partisan divide. I think that the degree to which people would be willing to do that, I think would help to alleviate a lot of the misperceptions out there. And, you know, you can see small studies showing that this can, in fact, be effective. The real challenge is you know, how do you scale it up? How do you force or at least encourage greater amounts of bipartisan dialog? And to my knowledge, no one has yet, even people who are working very hard at this has yet to figure out how you can do this at scale in a way that would move the needle for society. I encourage more of that sort of work, but as of now, I have no panacea, unfortunately, to offer.
GR: Well, we'll have to end on that ambivalent note. That was George Hawley and again, his new book, and it's nuanced and it's well worth reading, especially if you are suspicious about the title is called, “The Moderate Majority: Real GOP Voters and the Myth of Mass Republican Radicalization”. George, thanks so much for taking the time to talk with me, I really learned a lot in this conversation and it was very interesting.
GH: Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.
GR: You've been listening to Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media, conversations and the public interest.
