Philippa Kaur

President Joe Biden is strongly reaffirming his commitment to stay in the presidential race – despite a growing number of calls from politicians and voters for him to step down, following a highly criticized debate performance in June 2024.

After Biden said in an ABC news interview that only “the Lord Almighty” could convince him to drop out, he wrote a letter on July 8 to congressional Democrats declaring that “I am firmly committed to staying in this race, to running this race to the end, and to beating Donald Trump.”

This comes as additional prominent Democratic politicians are reportedly – and mostly privately – calling for Biden to exit the race.

Biden has been consistent in saying he’s staying in the race, but that doesn’t necessarily tell the whole story. The Conversation’s Politics and Society Editor Amy Lieberman spoke with Philip Klinkner, a scholar of American politics and the presidency at Hamilton College, to better understand what factors might influence what Biden says and his ultimate decision to stay in the race or not.

President Joe Biden speaks with ABC news anchor George Stephanopoulos on July 5, 2024, in Madison, Wis.
ABC via Getty Images

Can we take Biden’s words about staying in the race at face value? Do they reflect what’s happening behind the scenes?

Biden obviously knows that his support among Democrats – mostly elected Democrats in Congress, governors and others – is slipping. He knows that if he shows signs of indecision, that could lead to less support from Democrat politicians, which would cause even more waffling. He is trying to present a brave front as a way to kind of stem any defections, doubts and bleeding. So far, that hasn’t really had the intended effect.

Each day we see a trickle of Democrats in Congress who have called for Biden to step aside. Biden’s approach may have kept this trickle from becoming a deluge, but it could become a deluge at any time.

What factors are these politicians considering as they decide whether to back Biden or not?

There is a range of considerations. One argument is that Biden is obviously flawed, but is there anyone out there who would be a better nominee against Trump? Another factor is that Biden has been a Washington, D.C. fixture for decades. Many of these people are friends with him and have worked with him. They don’t necessarily want to be the friend who turns on him in the end.

The other factor is that if Biden is not going anywhere, these politicians don’t want to be the one who calls for him to leave. Then, Biden and the folks who work around him could later say, “You abandoned me when I needed you most.”

Have we seen politicians previously who emphatically committed to staying in a race before they abruptly changed their minds?

Politicians are always fully committed to some course of action until they are not, and they often express this in the most absolute terms.

In 1972, Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern selected Thomas Eagleton as his vice president running mate. News then came out that Eagleton had been treated for depression and had electroconvulsive therapy. At the time, attitudes toward mental illness were not as accepting as they are today, and McGovern and Eagleton faced a lot of criticism. McGovern first said he was behind Eagleton “1,000%,” and then a few days later he cut him loose and dropped him from the ticket.

Until a day or two before Richard Nixon resigned as president in August 1974, he said he would never do it. For more than a year, people were calling on Nixon to resign following the Watergate scandal, in which Nixon operatives were caught trying to bug the Democratic National Committee headquarters. These calls amplified after the Saturday Night Massacre in October 1973, when he fired a special prosecutor and accepted the resignations of the two top officials in the Department of Justice – the attorney general and deputy attorney general – who were involved with investigating Watergate.

Richard Nixon gives a farewell speech to his staff and cabinet at the White House on Aug. 9, 1974, after he resigned as president.
Bettmann/Contributor

What was the critical moment in these two cases?

In Nixon’s case – and as Biden could be be facing now – the support of his own party collapsed. Top congressional Republicans went to the White House and said, “Look, you will be impeached if you don’t step down.” Nixon famously asked Senator Barry Goldwater about what his support in the Senate looked like. Goldwater said, “There’s not more than 15 senators for you.”

With Eagleton and McGovern, the lack of support from within their party was also a key factor that led to the switch in vice presidential candidate.

In Biden’s case, I think that having senior Democrats like Congressman Jerry Nadler saying, even in private calls, that he should step down will lead to him quitting the race. Biden can only handle so much of that because the more that goes on, the more it gives room and safety for other Democrats to come out.

Is there more going on behind the scenes that’s convinced Biden and his allies that he should stay in the race?

There has been some exaggeration in how bad Biden’s poll numbers actually are. Yes, Biden has dipped in the polls, but it has not been a free fall and it is still a very close race. Historically, what we tend to see is that if a politician takes a hit in the polls because of a particular incident, it tends to be pretty short-lived. What the Biden people are likely thinking is, ‘Yes, we took a hit in the polls after the debate, but if you give it two weeks, the race will return to where it was before the debate.’

When Trump got convicted on 34 felony counts in May 2024, that just barely moved the poll numbers. People may not be happy with the choice of Trump versus Biden, but most people know who they are going to pick in that circumstance.

Most people running for office are pretty immune to attacks from the other party. What hurts the most is when people in your own party start to criticize you.

That is what is happening here with Biden. The Biden people are saying that if everyone just got on board, we would not see any dip in the polls. More

The US vice president, Kamala Harris, rushed to the defence of Joe Biden after his calamitous debate performance against Donald Trump in late June. In an interview with CNN, she said: “There are three things that were true yesterday before the debate that are still true today … First, the stakes of this race could not be higher. Second, the contrast in this election could not be more stark. And third, we believe in our president Joe Biden, and we believe in what he stands for.”

But one in three Democrats now believe Biden should withdraw from the presidential race. And, in spite of her declaration of support, Harris is emerging as the frontrunner to replace the 81-year-old should he step aside.

A CNN poll published last week shows Harris within “striking distance of Trump in a hypothetical matchup” – 47% of registered voters support Trump compared with 45% for Harris. The vice president’s numbers centre on her broader appeal to women and independents.

As well as having been vetted for national office, and intensely scrutinised by the media and the Republican party, there is a degree of momentum building for Harris to replace Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket. There is also notable congressional backing.

Jim Clyburn, a prominent African-American congressman from South Carolina whose endorsement of Biden was critical to his nomination in 2020, told MSNBC on July 2 that he would support Harris to be the Democratic nominee should Biden quit the race.

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on the Truman Balcony of the White House on July 4 2024.
Tierney L. Cross / Pool / EPA

Born in Oakland, California, on October 20 1964, Harris began her career as an assistant district attorney focusing on sex crimes. She was later recruited to the San Francisco prosecutor’s office, where she focused on tackling teenage prostitution.

After becoming the district attorney for San Francisco, Harris caused controversy by refusing to pursue the death penalty against the murderer of a city police officer in 2004. Despite the political difficulties this caused her, Harris oversaw an increased conviction rate in San Francisco between 2004 and 2007, from 52% to 67%. And in November 2010, she was elected attorney general for California.

A key criminal justice initiative implemented by Harris during this period was the “Open Justice” project. This online platform gave the public open access to criminal justice data as well as collating information on incidents involving individuals held in police custody. She also pursued investigations of police misconduct and opened civil rights investigations into two California police departments.

Harris was elected to the US Senate in November 2016. A little over two years later she announced her bid for the Democratic nomination for president. However, she suspended her campaign in December 2019 citing a lack of financial resources, and was named as Biden’s vice presidential nominee the following year.

Making history

The Biden-Harris victory in the 2020 presidential election was historic. This was the first time a woman had been elected to the second-most powerful position in the nation, let alone a woman of colour.

According to Camille Busette, the interim vice president and director of governance studies at the influential Brookings think tank, Harris’ identity as a black and Asian woman – and all that it has signified about the hopes of ending systemic racism in America – was a “real factor in [the 2020] election”. Busette pointed to exit polls that showed “72% of non-white voters backed Biden and Harris, and 20% of voters listed racial inequality as the most important issue motivating their vote”.

As vice president, Kamala Harris has served the Biden administration as a useful conduit for connecting with key Democratic groups that Biden struggles to reach. In March 2024, she spoke at an event in Selma, Alabama, to mark the 59th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday” – where state troopers attacked demonstrators in what became a seismic moment in America’s civil rights movement.

Harris used her speech to acknowledge the continuing anger felt by many in the US, especially its youth, at the worsening situation in Gaza. She called on Israel to do more for Gazans “dying of malnutrition and dehydration”. She also demanded that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government not “impose any unnecessary restrictions on the delivery of aid”.

Harris, who earlier in the year took on a more focused role in being the administration’s emissary to young American voters, is making a concerted effort to communicate to this key demographic with empathetic statements on the ongoing crisis in Gaza.

She has also assumed a more active role advocating for reproductive rights in America. In early 2024, for instance, Harris embarked on a national tour to highlight the threats posed to these entitlements by a second Trump presidency.

The decision by the US Supreme Court in 2022 to strike down Roe v Wade, the 1973 decision that guaranteed womens’ right to abortion, has ensured the issue will become central to the 2024 presidential campaign and a potential wedge issue for Democrats. As Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow at Brookings, writes: “analysts have underestimated the size of the pro-choice vote. In hindsight, there’s no question that it was instrumental in blocking the expected red wave in the 2022 midterms.”

Pro-choice protesters gathered outside the US Supreme Court in Washington DC to protest the overturning of Roe v Wade in June 2022.
Eli Wilson/Shutterstock

A major advantage Harris would have over any other potential Democratic rival for the party’s presidential nomination is her access to a US$300 million (£234 million) cash-in-hand campaign war chest. Since the Biden-Harris campaign account was registered with the Federal Election Commission in both of their names, the vice president would be able to use these funds.

There was a sense of excitement at the historic ramifications of Biden’s decision in 2020 to select Harris as his running mate. As Kamarck observed at the time: “What Biden knows is that the job of president is too big for any one person; in the White House, as in life, a trusted partner is a great asset.”

The question many are asking now is: if Biden determines the job of president is too much for him, will his “trusted partner” take on the mantle? More

Twenty years before Watergate, then-Sen. Richard Nixon’s national political ambitions were in peril. He was accused of dipping into a private, $18,000 slush fund to cover expenses, and doubts about the propriety of his conduct intensified as the 1952 presidential election campaign unfolded.

Nixon was able to preserve what became a long career in national politics – and kept the vice presidential spot on that year’s Republican national ticket – with a talk on television and radio in which Checkers, his family’s cocker spaniel, figured memorably.

What is known as Nixon’s “Checkers” speech was without precedent, and it came at a moment when television was just beginning to have an impact on American political life.

Although popular memory of the speech has faded, the episode offers a reminder, perhaps loosely relevant these days to President Joe Biden, about how political firestorms – and demands that a controversial candidate quit a national party ticket – can in some circumstances be neutralized.

The “Checkers” case is also a reminder that a whiff of scandal isn’t necessarily destructive to a political campaign.

Then-vice presidential candidate Richard Nixon relaxes at home in Washington with his cocker spaniel, Checkers.
Bettmann/Contributor

Nixon at a crossroads

The 1952 Republican ticket, led by Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, won a 39-state landslide over the Democrats’ presidential nominee, Gov. Adlai E. Stevenson of Illinois. The sweep of the Eisenhower-Nixon victory was an outcome no pollster had anticipated, as I note in my 2024 book, “Lost in a Gallup: Polling Failure in U.S. Presidential Elections.”

But a Republican victory hardly seemed assured in mid-September 1952, when the New York Post reported that Nixon, then 39, had benefited from a private fund set up by supporters to cover expenses incurred as a U.S. senator from California.

The then-liberal Post said the fund was supported by a “millionaire’s club” of Californians and was “devoted exclusively to the financial comfort of Sen. Nixon.” The nest egg allowed Nixon to live in style well beyond what a senator’s salary – $12,500 annually, or about $145,000 these days – could support, the Post alleged.

Nixon was caught unawares and denied wrongdoing. He was slow to realize that the Post’s disclosure threatened his political career. Not only did it raise doubts about the senator’s judgment, the report appeared to contradict Eisenhower’s pledge to crack down on scandal, corruption and unethical conduct in Washington.

Nixon not only seemed to be “damaged goods,” as Tom Wicker wrote in his biography of Nixon. He was suddenly “a liability” to Eisenhower, a five-star general and America’s preeminent military hero of World War II.

Calls for Nixon to vacate the Republican ticket arose quickly, emanating even from within the Republican party and its Eastern establishment wing. Former New York Gov. Thomas E. Dewey, a two-time loser in campaigns for the U.S. presidency, urged Nixon to quit.

Nixon soon was the target of jeering audiences at campaign stops. Many reporters covering the candidate figured he would have to quit. Demands that he do so began appearing in newspapers that supported Eisenhower.

The Washington Post, for example, said Nixon’s quitting “would provide the Republican party an unparalleled opportunity to demonstrate the sincerity of its campaign against loose conduct and corruption in government.” The New York Herald Tribune, a voice of Eastern establishment Republicanism, called for Nixon “to make a formal offer of withdrawal from the ticket.”

Eisenhower, meanwhile, was lukewarm about Nixon’s remaining on the ticket and extended little more than half-hearted support to his running mate as the controversy deepened. He called on Nixon to make full disclosure about the fund.

A turnaround with Checkers

Nixon’s response was to plead his case to Americans by radio and television from a broadcast studio in Los Angeles. His half-hour speech was paid for by the Republican National Committee and aired live on Sept. 23, 1952, five days after the New York Post’s report about the fund.

Nixon during the broadcast was by turns adamant, self-pitying and partisan. His wife, Pat, was seated nearby in an armchair that was mostly out of camera range. She looked stricken the few times the camera turned her way.

Nixon emphasized his modest background and lifestyle, mentioning that his wife did not own a mink coat, an artifact of luxury at the time. Instead, Nixon said, she wore a “respectable Republican cloth coat.”

He described in detail his possessions and liabilities, saying, “It isn’t very much. But Pat and I have the satisfaction that every dime that we’ve got is honestly ours.”

Nixon said he had granted no “special favors” to the 76 contributors who donated as much as $1,000 to the fund, which had been set up two years before. Its singular purpose, Nixon asserted, was to help cover expenses “that I did not think should be charged to the taxpayers of the United States.”

The fund’s single largest expenditures were reported to be $6,100 for stationery and $3,430 for travel. “Not one cent” went for personal use, Nixon said.

Little of what Nixon described seemed to support the New York Post’s claims of a fund set up for his “financial comfort.”

Nearly 20 minutes into his remarks, Nixon invoked Checkers, a passage that helped win for the speech an enduring place in American political lore.

A Nixon supporter in Texas had gifted the pet to Nixon’s family after he heard a radio broadcast in which Pat Nixon said her daughters would like to have a dog.

Not long afterward, Nixon said during the speech, “we got a message from Union Station in Baltimore, saying they had a package for us. We went down to get it. You know what it was?

“It was a little cocker spaniel dog, in a crate … sent all the way from Texas, black and white, spotted. And our little girl Tricia, the six-year-old, named it Checkers,” Nixon said.

“And you know,” he added, “the kids, like all kids, loved the dog, and I just want to say this, right now, that regardless of what they say about it, we are going to keep” Checkers.

Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon in January 1952 in New York.
Bettmann/Contributor

A ‘political masterstroke’

The writer George D. Gopen, in assessing the speech years later, said the reference to Checkers allowed Nixon’s daughters metaphorically to “burst onto the scene, unseen, to dominate our consciousness, playing with their dog.”

“That is great thinking and really good writing,” he wrote.

In the immediate aftermath of the speech, Robert Ruark, a syndicated columnist, wrote that Nixon had effectively “stripped himself naked for all the world to see, and he brought the missus and the kids and the dog … into the act.” Nixon had aligned himself with mainstream Americans in what Wicker described as a “political masterstroke.”

Nixon closed by inviting viewers and listeners to help decide his political fate by sending letters and telegrams not to Eisenhower but to members of the Republican National Committee. Tell them, Nixon said, “whether you think I should stay on or whether I should get off. And whatever their decision is, I will abide by it.”

Americans responded by the tens of thousands, expressing support for Nixon. Members of the Republican National Committee voted without objection to keep him on the ticket.

The outcome was perhaps encouraged by less-sensational disclosures at the time that Stevenson, the Democratic presidential nominee, had supported supplementary income funds for appointees to state positions in Illinois and that his running mate, Sen. John Sparkman, had kept his wife on his congressional payroll for 10 years.

The day after the speech, Eisenhower met Nixon in West Virginia and declared his running mate vindicated. “Why, you’re my boy!” the Herald Tribune quoted the general as saying.

A political disaster had been averted. Nixon served two terms as vice president in Eisenhower’s administrations and twice won the presidency before resigning in August 1974 over the Watergate scandal.

Nixon’s rescuing himself in the 1952 election was notable and perhaps instructive, suggesting that a creative, high-profile and timely response can prevent sensational allegations from overwhelming a beleaguered candidacy, much as they nearly did to Nixon.

The lessons of 1952, of course, are only superficially germane to Biden’s predicament in the aftermath of his recent disastrous debate with former President Donald Trump. Even though the long-ago Checkers speech offers no sure road map to surviving a political crisis, it does represent intriguing context to 2024.

It is certainly noteworthy that Biden in recent days has sought out a variety of audiences, including those of a television network, in an urgent gambit to preserve his candidacy for reelection.

Although Biden rejects their findings, polls make clear Biden’s not succeeding, that a Checkers-like redux is not in the offing. More

Over the course of Nevada history, no one party has dominated the state’s politics, and its electorate has remained surprisingly balanced in its political leanings. Since becoming a state in 1864, Nevada has had equal representation with its federal delegation: 14 U.S. senators from each of the major parties and 20 U.S. House members from each of the Democratic and Republican parties.

The same parity exists at the state level. There have been 31 governors of Nevada: 15 Republicans, 12 Democrats and two each from the Silver Party – active around the turn of the 20th century – and the Silver Democrat Party. The Silver Democrats were eventually absorbed into the Democratic Party.

While the state Senate has been controlled by Republicans 48 times and Democrats 28 times, the proportional control of the state Assembly is the reverse, with Democrats controlling the chamber 50 times and Republicans in the majority 26 times.

That all adds up to an unusual status for Nevada in today’s politics: It is neither a red state nor a blue state. And that has led some to label it a battleground state for the 2024 presidential election.

However, as a longtime Nevadan and a scholar who studies political systems, I have seen Nevada become more polarized along party lines. Will this growing polarization move the state away from its historic political evenhandedness?

The economy, specifically concerns about inflation, gas prices and housing affordability, is top of mind for Nevada voters. Republicans argue that the economy is getting worse, while Democrats contend it is improving. And controversial issues likely to appear on the November 2024 ballot – abortion rights, requiring voter identification and allowing teachers to strike – have contributed to the polarizing rhetoric of local and statewide races.

Control over the Nevada Legislature has been shared – and has swung – between parties over the decades.
AP Photo/Tom R. Smedes

Balanced from the widest angle

Taking a wide view of Nevada politics, political representation from both of the major parties appears balanced. However, a closer look reveals a shifting landscape over the past couple of decades.

Culturally, Nevada has been associated with easy marriage and divorce, casino gambling, legal prostitution and a loose, anything-goes mentality – all captured by the famous slogan “What happens here, stays here.”

In reality, Nevada has also been politically conservative, even among Democrats. This cauldron of conflicting images has resulted in a political landscape that has shifted between Republican and Democratic domination at both the federal and state levels.

From Nevada’s ascension to statehood in 1864 until 1890, Republicans led the state. All federal and state representatives except for two legislators were Republican in 1864, when Nevada became the 36th state.

From 1890 to 1908, Nevada was governed by the Silver Party, which advocated for the unlimited coinage of silver, a major economic issue in the U.S. in the late 19th century. By 1902, most pro-silver factions in Nevada had been absorbed by the state Democratic Party.

From 1908 until 1930s, Republican and Democratic control were roughly equally divided, with Democrats winning more positions but Republicans securing more top-of-the-ticket victories at the presidential and gubernatorial levels.

After the election of Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932, Democrats dominated Nevada politics until the 1980s, when Republicans reemerged; by late 1995, Republican voter registrations outnumbered Democrats in Nevada for the first time since the 1930s.

However, by 2004, the political tides had shifted back to Democrats due to strong get-out-the-vote efforts by the Democratic Party.

Nevada is a really strong union state. The Culinary Union, which represents over 60,000 Nevada hospitality workers, is particularly influential. The “Reid machine,” a loose coalition of progressive groups named after the late U.S. Senate majority leader Harry Reid, began working in the mid 1990s, with the Culinary Union pushing to register its working class, young, Latino, Black and Asian members as voters. These efforts intensified after losses by the Democrats in 2002. Together, the union and the progressives then worked to make sure that people voted – by early voting, in-person on Election Day or by mail.

These efforts have most noticeably affected the state Legislature, where Democrats have almost always been in control of the state Assembly since 1997, save for one two-year session in 2015, and have led the state Senate since 2009, except for that 2015 session.

The Culinary Union, whose members are seen here protesting for higher wages in 2023, is Nevada’s largest union and wields significant political power.
AP Photo/John Locher

Splitting the ticket

Nevada’s federal delegation since 2019 has been dominated by Democrats, who have held three of the four U.S. House of Representatives seats and both U.S. Senate seats. However, despite the increase in Democratic registration and the efforts of the “Reid machine,” nearly all governors elected since 1998 have been Republicans. The lone exception was the election of Democrat Steve Sisolak for one four-year term in 2018.

These party differences among federal and state officeholders happen because Nevadans are well-known ticket splitters, priding themselves for voting more on the basis of issues and personalities over party loyalties or identity.

And to demonstrate Nevadans’ political independence, in 1976 the state added “None of These Candidates” as a choice for all statewide and federal offices. It is the only state in the U.S. with this option.

Nevada’s voting patterns have meant the state’s voters have fairly reliably chosen the winner in presidential elections. Of the 40 presidential elections in which Nevada has participated from 1864 to 2020, the state voted for the winning candidate 33 times. And in the 23 presidential elections since 1912, its electoral votes have gone to the winning presidential candidate in all but two elections – in 1976 and 2016.

Looking to the coming election

At the federal level, current polling has Nevadans splitting their votes in November 2024. Former President Donald Trump is ahead of Joe Biden by about 5 percentage points, while U.S. Senator Jacky Rosen, the Democratic incumbent, is leading her challenger, Republican Sam Brown, by over 10 percentage points.

The “Reid machine” still exists, but its power has been waning since the former senator’s death in 2021. The Culinary Union, which customarily has been aligned with Democrats, is feuding with the Nevada Democratic Party over its 2023 support for repealing a 2020 COVID-era state law that mandated frequent room cleaning. This has led to the union’s refusal to endorse a number of Democratic state representatives. While this does not mean the union will support Republicans, the dispute could reduce the union’s get-out-the-vote efforts.

In addition, nonpartisans now outnumber registered voters in both the Democratic and Republican parties in Nevada. Data from the Nevada Secretary of State’s office shows that nonpartisans comprise 33.8% of active registered voters, compared with 30.3% who are Democrats and 28.8% who are Republicans. As my research has confirmed, independents are notoriously unpredictable with their votes.

Nevada is unique in that it is one of the most working-class states in the country. Demographically, it is reasonably reflective of the country as a whole. It has high populations of Latino and Asian American people, and both parties are in competition for these voters.

The growing number of voters leaving the two major parties and identifying as independent, coupled with the expanding divide of the two major political parties and polarizing political rhetoric, may be more reflective of where the rest of the states are heading.

Nevada may remain a battleground state due to its political divide, but the rise of nonpartisan voters in the state may signal where the national electorate is heading. More

There’s a widespread view that populism is on the rise, from the United States and Turkey to India and Hungary.

What is fueling this movement?

Populism is a political ideology that positions “the people” as a morally just, good group in society, in contrast with other people who are elitist and out of touch with society. Politicians such as former President Donald Trump have used this general approach to help propel their rise to power – and maintain their popularity among their supporters.

Trump, for example, described his political campaign in June 2024 as an “epic struggle to liberate our nations from all of the sinister forces who want to destroy them.” These “sinister forces” typically include everything from the media and international organizations to mainstream science and immigrants.

And Viktor Orbán, the populist prime minister of Hungary since 2010, often blames international groups such as foreign nonprofits for interfering in Hungarian politics and acting against the country’s interests.

The European Parliament determined in 2022 that Hungary could no longer be considered a democracy.

In its most radical, authoritarian form, populism poses a threat to democracy. It polarizes societies and erodes trust in experts.

But populist leaders still hold appeal, as they promise to return power to the people.

Yet they often deliver something very different from what they promise. They tend to worsen problems such as gender and ethnic inequality, without addressing the gap between the rich and the poor.

I have dedicated much of my career to analyzing populist movements, both as a politician serving in the Hungarian Parliament in opposition to Orbán’s regime and now as a scholar.

This unique experience has taught me one thing: Protecting democracy from populism requires first understanding its root causes.

Supporters of presidential candidate Donald Trump listen to him speak during a rally in Vandalia, Ohio, in March 2024.
Scott Olson/Getty Images

What’s behind populism

Many journalists and political scientists view populism as a “cultural backlash” of conservative white men who fear the loss of their privilege in a diversifying world.

Immigration, race and religion are three issues that are often central to many populists’ politics. There are also economic factors such as a poor economy, international trade, industrial robots and artificial intelligence that some experts think also contribute to the rise of populism.

This is because the growth of artificial intelligence, for example, has led to the reduction of stable jobs in sectors such as manufacturing, which once gave working-class people a pathway to social mobility.

Many pundits and scholars still question whether the economy plays a significant role in populism. This argument takes various forms, but it typically boils down to statements like this one, made by a prominent political scientist about the 2016 U.S. presidential election: “Status threat, not economic hardship, explains the 2016 presidential vote.”

In other words, the 2016 presidential vote was influenced by white voters’ fears about losing their dominant status in society rather than because of their financial struggles – at least according to this argument.

It’s the economy

My recent research shows a different source of anxiety behind growing support for populism: people’s concerns about economic insecurity are a crucial factor driving populism in Europe, North America and Latin America.

For example, Americans who lost their jobs in the manufacturing industry in the 2010s were especially likely to abandon the Democratic Party and vote for Trumpin 2016.

There is evidence that people’s anti-immigration attitudes are also fueled by their anxiety about their own jobs.

Research also shows that Europeans who lost their jobs or whose earnings were reduced because of competition with low-wage immigrant workers, for example, were more likely to feel threatened by globalization. They were also especially likely to embrace nationalism and vote for populist right-wing candidates throughout Western Europe.

Populist voters in the US

Still, research shows that not all populist voters can be lumped under the same umbrella. Populist voters are a diverse group with various motivations and concerns.

For example, artificial intelligence threatens jobs more in the U.S. and in Western Europe than in Eastern Europe, making Americans and Western Europeans more concerned about this issue than Eastern Europeans.

Race is another factor. Some white voters facing financial hardship may feel as if immigrants and people of color are responsible for taking the available jobs – and are to blame for their economic woes.

Populism is not just about conservative white men, however, despite the popular support Trump holds among many in this group. For example, Democratic politicians in the U.S. have increasingly struggled to win the support of working-class voters without a college degree, including a growing number of Black voters.

Black voters still generally vote for Democrats. But the Democratic Party has seen about a 28 percentage point decrease in Black voters between 2020 and 2024. Most of them switched to become Republicans.

This voter realignment has been occurring since 2008. When Trump was elected in 2016, he not only increased his party’s support among the white working class by four percentage points from GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s 2012 defeat, he also increased support among Black working-class voters by the same amount. This shift suggests that the Democrats have a working-class problem and not a white working-class problem. Economic factors, rather than just racial identity, are a major factor driving voters away from the Democratic Party.

Not all populist voters are extremists

Many media outlets tend to focus on core populist voters, who are masters of causing outrage with what one populism scholar calls “bad manners.” In this context, that means using inflammatory language or making politically incorrect statements, among other tactics, to draw attention to their cause.

The most successful populist political movements in places such as Italy and Poland, however, have grown by appealing to voters concerned with bread-and-butter issues. They combine the core group of populist voters, who are motivated by culture and racism, and an outer group of voters who are not primarily motivated by these issues.

Finally, voters’ support for populist leaders also depends on how nonpopulist, mainstream politicians appeal to them. Inclusive socioeconomic policies, such as expanding unemployment insurance, for example, can help stave off a populist surge.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban speaks to supporters in Budapest in June 2024.
Arpad Kurucz/Anadolu via Getty Image

The way ahead

There is no one-size-fits-all answer to the challenge of populism. For example, job guarantee programs help provide stable work, reducing the economic insecurity that often fuels populist sentiment.

In an economy characterized by gig work and people frequently moving from one job to another, portable benefits that workers carry from job to job – giving them continuous access to health care, retirement savings and other benefits – may help alleviate the anxieties that drive people to populism.

Boosting affordable housing and controlling rents can also promote more stable living conditions.

I think countering right-wing populism demands a concerted effort to tackle the economic insecurity that fuels this global phenomenon. The path forward may be challenging, but the alternative, a world where democracy is eroded and societies are polarized, is even more frightening. More

Rodrigo Salazar is a man who entered the U.S. without a visa and has been living in the country without legal status ever since. Because of this, Rodrigo, who asked that we not use his or his wife’s real names in order to protect their identity, cannot advance from low-paying jobs at restaurants and car washes.

His wife, Carmela, is a U.S. citizen, but she is also facing career limitations. Carmela doesn’t feel safe moving to a place where she could get a higher-paying job. She worries that Rodrigo’s lack of legal status would be more obvious in a city with a smaller Latino population, which would put him at risk for arrest and deportation.

The entire Salazar family, including their two children, live with the constant fear of family separation if Rodrigo is deported.

Immigrants like Rodrigo, who are living in the U.S. without legal status but are married to U.S. citizens, will now have protection from deportation, President Joe Biden announced on June 18, 2024. In order to qualify, they must have arrived 10 or more years ago and be married to a U.S. citizen. Those who meet these criteria will be able to get work permits and can get on the pathway to citizenship while working and living in the U.S. legally.

The Biden administration estimates that about 500,000 immigrant spouses of citizens will be protected from deportation with this policy change. The policy will also apply to approximately 50,000 U.S. citizens’ stepchildren who are living in the U.S. without legal immigration status.

We are migration scholars who study mixed-citizenship marriages – meaning some family members are citizens or have the legal right to stay in the U.S., while others do not – and the consequences of being undocumented. Our research shows that when one family member lacks legal immigration status in the U.S., the family as a whole assumes an undocumented status.

When one family member cannot safely travel, work or access health care, all family members suffer. The opposite is also true. When a family member is able to shift from living without legal status in the U.S. to getting legal status, the lives of the entire family improve.

President Joe Biden prepares to board Air Force One in California on June 16, 2024.
Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

A shift in immigration policy in the 1990s

Generally, having an immediate family member who is a U.S. citizen gives a foreign citizen the chance to live legally in the U.S. with permanent residency and a pathway to citizenship.

For most of the 20th century, all spouses of U.S. citizens who met the legal standards for qualified marital relationships were able to become citizens through a relatively straightforward process, but that changed in 1996.

A 1996 law called the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act imposed harsh penalties for people living in the U.S. without legal immigration status. One of the penalties is a 10-year “bar to re-entry” for anyone who has lived without a visa in the U.S. for one year or more. This ban goes into effect as soon as that individual leaves U.S. territory.

Technicalities create a divide

A consequence of this 1996 law was that getting a green card, which is an identity document that gives someone legal permanent residency in the country, became dependent on whether an immigrant entered – and remained in – the U.S. with or without a visa.

This change in the law produced a stark inequality in U.S. citizens’ ability to legally sponsor their immigrant spouses for permanent residency.

If an immigrant spouse of a U.S. citizen has overstayed a visa, this person can apply for legal immigration status – through their spouse – from within the U.S. In these cases, the spouse does not have to leave U.S. territory and is not subject to the 10-year ban.

In contrast, if a U.S. citizen’s spouse entered the U.S. without a visa or other legal permission, they must leave the country for the final step in their legal immigration application process. But when they leave the country, their 10-year ban automatically goes into effect.

This means that although every U.S. citizen’s spouse, including those lacking legal immigration status, technically qualifies for legal permanent residency, some of them will have to spend a decade or more outside the country before they can actually get a green card.

As a result, over the past few decades, millions of immigrants who were living in the U.S. without legal permission but were married to U.S. citizens have not gotten legal immigration status.

While the 10-year bar applies only to immigrants without legal status, in practice it also profoundly affects their citizen spouses, too.

In these cases, citizens married to immigrants without legal permission to be in the U.S. have two difficult options. They can resign themselves to a life of fear and limitations in the U.S., including the ever-present threat of their spouse’s deportation, or they can give up living in the U.S. altogether for a decade or more.

A new U.S. citizen, originally from Mexico, poses with his family after a naturalization ceremony in November 2023 in Long Beach, Calif. Biden’s new policy will make it easier for undocumented immigrants with citizen spouses to become citizens.
Mario Tama/Getty Images

The impacts of Biden’s immigration policy changes

The Biden administration has connected this new executive action on families to its recent announcement that it will heighten restrictions for seeking asylum, which scholars have called a ban on asylum.

The administration said in a press release that it both wants to “secure the border” and expand “lawful pathways to keep families together.”

Under this new policy, immigrant spouses who entered the country without a visa before June 17, 2014, will be allowed to “parole in place,” which is similar to a policy that benefits military veterans’ immigrant spouses who lack legal immigration status in the U.S. Parole in place means that these immigrants will have authorization to work and increased protection from deportation.

Parole in place will also allow immigrant spouses of U.S. citizens to have their immigration applications processed within the U.S., whether they arrived with or without a visa. This means they will no longer need to leave the country for 10 years or more if they entered the U.S. without a visa.

Having the legal right to work in the U.S. will allow these immigrant spouses to find jobs that better match their education and skills. Some estimates suggest that this could increase an immigrant’s wages anywhere from 14% to 40% more than what they currently earn.

The executive action will also yield economic benefits for the communities where mixed-citizenship families live.

Economic analyses measuring the impact of expanding work authorization and access to citizenship predict that this will create new jobs, boost incomes across communities, increase local and federal tax revenues and encourage ongoing economic growth.

As scholars of migration, we believe that this executive action is an important step toward guaranteeing that U.S. citizens who marry immigrants do not end up experiencing negative consequences because their spouses cannot legally live, work or vote in the U.S. It will also prevent the de facto deportation of U.S. citizens alongside their noncitizen spouses.

In essence, this policy change benefits American families and protects the rights of U.S. citizens to marry the person they love, keep their families together and even live in their own country. Beyond helping families, this change will have far-reaching economic benefits for the communities – and country – where they live. More

Choices about political candidates and issues are inherently limited and imperfect, leading many people to feel mixed emotions, and even conflicting opinions, about which candidate or position they prefer.

In general, being ambivalent reduces political participation. For example, the more ambivalent a person is about candidates in an election, the less likely that person is to vote.

We are social psychologists who study how people’s beliefs affect their behavior.

In a new article in the journal Science Advances, we find something that runs counter to that trend of uninvolved ambivalence: The more ambivalent a person is about a political issue, the more likely they are to support violence and other extreme actions relating to that topic.

Ambivalent people are more supportive of extreme actions

In one study in a series we conducted, we measured the opinions of several thousand people across several surveys on one of several topics, such as abortion, gun control or COVID-19 policies. We also measured how ambivalent they were about that opinion. Then we asked about their willingness to potentially engage in various actions in support of their opinion. Some of the actions were ordinary, such as voting for candidates whom the participants agreed with, donating money or volunteering. Other actions were more extreme, such as engaging in violence against their partisan opponents.

In other studies, we examined national data collected by researchers at the Democracy Fund Voter Study Group and the Cooperative Election Study that included similar questions.

When we analyzed the links between people’s ambivalence and their willingness to engage in or support each behavior, we found that the results in all the studies depended on the behaviors’ extremity. As expected, more ambivalent people were less willing to support or engage in the moderate actions, such as voting. But contrary to our initial expectations, people who felt more ambivalent were also more willing to support or engage in the extreme actions, especially if they felt strongly about the issue.

People who wrestle with political views often feel uncomfortable with their ambivalence.
Povozniuk/iStock/Getty Images Plus

Handling discomfort

In subsequent studies, we tried to understand why more ambivalent people express more support for extreme political actions, from confronting one’s political opponents or campaigning to get them fired to even more extreme acts, including violence.

We thought one factor might be the psychological discomfort that ambivalent people experience: When people feel uncomfortable about their beliefs, they often look for ways to compensate by signaling strength. For instance, when their beliefs are challenged, people sometimes respond by supporting them even more strongly.

Similarly, we thought ambivalent people might support extreme actions because they feel uneasy and want to signal clarity and conviction about their beliefs.

Our results were consistent with this idea that people might compensate for their discomfort by supporting extreme actions: When we asked how uncomfortable participants felt about the opinions they held on the issue, more ambivalent people reported feeling less comfortable with their views, which was also related to them supporting extreme behaviors more.

Extreme actions with real stakes

These are hypothetical behaviors, though. Are more ambivalent people actually more willing to take extreme actions?

We tested this by asking people about specific actions with real consequences. We gave participants a chance to allocate money to pro-environmental organizations known for their radical ideologies and tactics, such as sabotaging energy infrastructure and obstructing traffic – JustStopOil and EarthFirst! Alternatively, participants could opt for a chance to win some of or all the money themselves.

We found that people who were ambivalent about environmentalism allocated more money to JustStopOil and EarthFirst! than people who were not ambivalent, especially if they felt strongly about environmental issues. And this was specific to the radical charities. When given the same opportunity to donate to mainstream organizations – the Sierra Club and The Nature Conservancy – ambivalent people did not allocate more money than nonambivalent people.

We didn’t directly test why people would strongly support environmentalism despite feeling ambivalent about environmental issues. But perhaps it’s that people who worry about climate change also are concerned about the economic consequences of addressing it. Or people who struggle to make environmentally friendly choices and feel like they are not living up to their own standards. Or maybe people with a more general type of political ambivalence, such as a belief that even good policies have trade-offs.

A bigger picture

The link between ambivalence and supporting extreme actions in our studies was one of correlation – where two items are connected but the cause of that connection is not determined. So we can’t be sure ambivalence is the cause of that support. Maybe the relationship goes the other way, and supporting extreme actions makes people more ambivalent. Or maybe some other factor that we overlooked affects both.

But when we looked for evidence for these alternative explanations, we didn’t find much. For example, changing whether we asked about ambivalence before or after asking about support for the extreme actions didn’t affect the results. And although extreme behavior is related to other factors, such as tendency toward aggressiveness, even when we compared people who were equal on those other factors, ambivalence still mattered. Still, we don’t know everything about the relationship between ambivalence and extreme action.

The psychology of extreme behavior is complex. To explain its causes, many studies highlight that some people are especially susceptible to extremism, including those who struggle to regulate their emotions. Our research suggests another possibility: that some beliefs themselves have characteristics – especially ambivalence – that promote support for extreme actions. More

Independent voters who live in communities with lots of gun violence are very concerned about gun safety and gun regulations, our research has found. That should not be surprising.

But what is surprising is our companion finding: Democrats and Republicans who live in those same communities have views on gun violence and gun regulations that line up more closely with their party leaders’ views than with the experiences of their daily lives.

The same is true for other significant political questions: Independents’ political views and perspectives on key issues also reflect the economic and social conditions they see and experience every day.

In contrast, Democrats’ and Republicans’ ideas of what problems deserve government attention and how to solve them are much less likely to be based on their own life experiences, and instead simply mirror the information they have gained from leading political figures on social media, on cable news networks or through other partisan information outlets.

Being independent is desirable

The United States’ two-party system means the political party that controls the government is more of an influence on what laws and policies get passed than just about any other factor. Yet, Americans strongly dislike political parties. Being politically independent is a large part of the American political DNA.

Being politically independent, indeed, is seen by most Americans as a desirable social attribute. Broadly, many Americans see eschewing party identification as a way to demonstrate that they are freethinkers, untethered to the restrictive confines of America’s two-party system and above the political fray.

However, when pressed, most people admit to preferring, and largely voting for, one of the two political parties. Only about one-fifth of Americans are so independent that they do not vote consistently for one party or the other.

How political independents decide

We collected a series of national surveys of Americans over the last 10 years and have repeatedly found that only independents are responsive to the information they gain through their lived experience.

For example, we found that an independent living in a neighborhood with the highest levels of gun violence in the U.S. is 70 percentage points more likely to say that they are very concerned about gun violence than an independent who lives in the safest U.S. neighborhood. That makes sense.

But for Democrats and Republicans, there is no relationship between where they live and their level of concern about gun violence: Whether they live in a relatively dangerous community or a relatively safe one, their views on gun violence reflect their party’s messages on the issue.

Similarly, we found that independents’ personal financial situations factor greatly into their views on policies like the minimum wage and affordable housing. Independents who struggle to afford their basic essentials are almost twice as likely to support government investment in affordable housing in their neighborhoods and more than twice as likely to support increasing the minimum wage than independents who never struggle to afford their basic needs.

For Republicans and Democrats, their personal financial situations don’t influence their policy views – only the party they associate with matters. On average, Republicans and Democrats who regularly struggle to afford basic essentials have the same views on affordable housing and the minimum wage as their fellow party members who never face financial stress.

Though there is a lot of research documenting the growing polarization and nationalization of American politics, our research indicates that some politics is still local and personal, rooted in communities and people’s own life experiences – but only among political independents.

But that’s only about 20% of the nation’s electorate, though it varies considerably by state. Our research indicates that the remaining 80% may still walk around their communities, talk with their neighbors and pay their bills – but they are less likely to use those experiences to determine their political preferences and decisions.

Instead, they’re paying more attention to the strategic, partisan information streaming from their phones, computers, televisions and radios about what partisan elites have decided they should think and prioritize. More