Such was the lesson at “Political Discourse in a Polarized Age,” a panel discussion that took place Thursday, Oct. 7, at the Lincoln Center campus. The gathering, which was the first of eight that Fordham will hold this year, featured television journalist George Stephanopoulos; pollster and author Kristen Soltis Anderson; Robert Talisse, Ph.D., professor of philosophy at Vanderbilt University; and Roshni Nedungadi, a partner at HIT Strategies.

Monika McDermott, Ph.D., professor of political science, moderated the afternoon discussion.

Talisse said political polarization, which is the ideological distance between the two major political parties, is the best-known form of polarization. There’s also belief polarization, which happens between like-minded people and causes them to become more extreme versions of themselves.

“As we shift into our more extreme selves with our allies, our views about our partisan opponents also shift. We come to see them as incomprehensible, irrational, untrustworthy, dangerous, unpatriotic, lazy, benighted, ill, and in need of diagnosis rather than argument,” he said.

We also adopt more demanding standards for authentic membership in our group and expel members for reasons of impurity. Representative Liz Cheney, who was ousted from her leadership role in the Republican Party in May, is a perfect example of this, he said.

Stephanopoulos agreed that there is more emphasis on politicians catering exclusively to the most extreme elements of their base.

‘It used to be a common technique to point out to a politician or policymaker, ‘Here’s what you said six months ago,’ or ‘What you just said is not true,” he said.

“They don’t care anymore. It doesn’t matter at all. They don’t feel the need to respond in a way that addresses the other side; they just go ahead and play to their own. “

Anderson said the research shows that on policy issues, there is more agreement among liberal voters and conservative ones than one might expect.

“There are quite a number of Americans who take a little from column A and a little from column B and construct their worldview,” she said.

The problem is the deep fear each side has for each other.

“Both sides fundamentally misunderstand the other side’s capabilities and intentions,” she said, noting that Republicans and Democrats both believe the other is bent on making the country a worse place. Equally importantly, both believe the other has the ability to make it happen, be it through Republicans’ control of their state governments and the Supreme Court, or Democrats’ control of Congress and the Presidency, as well as alliances in the entertainment and media industry.

“If you believe the other side has bad intentions and a ton of power to make good on them, you suddenly begin to justify an “ends justifies the means” attitude,” she said.

Nedungadi focused on research on 18- to 40-year-olds, which shows they have not embraced partisanship as much as their elders. Only 8% of millennials considered themselves strong Republicans, and only 16% are strong Democrats.

They may seem polarized because they are involved in protest and activism, she said, but that’s because they’re poorly represented in Congress—millennials make up about 6% of Congress, but millennials and Generation Z are 37% of the electorate. Baby boomers make up 28% of the eligible voting population but represent 56% of Congress.

She agreed with Anderson that 18- to 40-year olds do not form an identity around specific policies.

“We ran a focus group with young folks earlier this week asking about Joe Biden’s “Build Back Better” agenda, and none of them could point to any provisions within that bill could help them,” she said.

“They just knew either they were for or against it, based on whatever politician they were following at the time.”

Stephanopoulos was skeptical that the “feedback loops” that are generated by politicians and the media can be overcome.

“Even though I completely agree with advocating the need for listening, right now we can’t even come to an agreement on a common set of facts around which to have a conversation,” he said.

He noted that a recent survey found that 61% of white Republicans believe that the last presidential election was stolen. That included 35 percent with college degrees.

“That’s a stunning number for something that is completely untrue. Are these people who are incapable of telling fact from fiction? I don’t think so, but it’s what they’re being told every single day, and it’s being reinforced by the political and the media culture. I don’t know how to break that,” he said.

A common lament was that there are few places left for Americans of different ideological stripes to get to know one another. Stephanopoulos noted that schools and churches do not bring people together, as Americans now live in more ideologically homogenous towns.

Media is incentivized to divide as well, he said, and although the partisan tilts of cable networks are well known, social networks are part of the problem as well. Whether it’s Facebook or Tik Tok, panelists agreed that users are more likely to receive tailored news that’s been created just to reinforce their opinions.

Talisse bemoaned the way the phrase “do the research” has taken root on social media in response to things like the COVID vaccine, and is indicative of a vicious, closed feedback loop.

“What does that word “research” mean on social media? It means that you’ve scrolled through enough Google results or through your timeline, to find enough people to affirm the thing you are already inclined to believe so that now you feel justified in escalating your confidence in that thing,” he said.

“It’s not research, it’s me-search.”

Guests for the panel were allowed to remove their masks provided they were vaccinated and had received a negative COVID 19 test within 24 hours of the event. 

In a new Fordham News podcast, political science professor Monika McDermott, Ph.D., explains why it’s essential that we make plans to vote right now. McDermott, Ph.D., the director of Fordham’s master’s program in elections and campaign management. taught the first cohort of students enrolled in the Graduate School of Arts and Science’ advanced certificate in public opinion and survey research this past spring. Their capstone project was the Fordham poll, a survey designed to address areas of American life that had been overlooked by most pollsters and was retooled to reflect life during the pandemic.

For information about early voting and absentee voting in your state, visit USA.gov/absentee-voting.
For information on early voting in New York City, visit vote.nyc/page/early-voting-information.
To learn about provisional ballots, visit this explainer at the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Listen below

Full transcript below:

Monika McDermott: It’s really going to be a trial for our democratic system, and how much confidence people have in our government and how much confidence people have in our voting system. And that’s what we’re waiting to see, is how it all plays out.

Patrick Verel: This fall was always going to be a tumultuous time for the United States thanks to a nationwide election on November 3rd that will determine who will be president next year. But with less than 40 days left until election day, the COVID-19 pandemic is still raging, making it even more challenging. It’s not clear how safe it will be for most Americans to vote in person, and although many states have successfully held elections via mail and vote, there are real questions about how to expand it to the rest of the nation. To get a handle on this problem we sat down with Monika McDermott, a professor of political science and the director of Fordham’s master’s program in elections and campaign management. This spring, McDermott taught the first cohort of students enrolled in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences’ advanced certificate in public opinion and survey research. Their capstone project was the Fordham Poll, a survey designed to address areas of American life that had been overlooked by most pollsters and was retooled to reflect life during the pandemic. I’m Patrick Verel, and this is Fordham news.

How confident are you that the upcoming election will go smoothly?

MM: I would like to say I’m confident, but in reality I don’t think I have a lot of confidence at this point that it’s going to go smoothly.

PV: What worries you most?

MM: Well, we’re in the middle of this perfect storm of everything coming together at once, and obviously the coronavirus is the number one problem that we’re facing. You’ve got the tightness of the presidential race in some states, and added to that you’ve got issues with mailing balloting and the differences in rules and regulations across the state. And you’ve got concerns about the postal service, and you’ve got CIA warnings of Russian influence in the election, and also China and Iran meddling in the election. And then to add to that, you’ve got what’s been happening over the past, since about 2012, you’ve got closing of polling stations in high minority areas that are potentially suppressing the vote for some people. And that’s also coming to a head in this election.

PV: Even before the pandemic, five states actually conducted all their elections primarily by mail. Yet many have raised concerns about the validity of mail-in and absentee ballots, including the president. Is there an actual difference between mail-in voting and absentee voting?

MM: So yeah, there is a technical difference between those two. So the states that do mail-in voting, all-mail voting, those states send out ballots to everyone who is registered to vote automatically. If you’re talking absentee voting that technically is people have to request a ballot from the state and receive it. And they have to supposedly have an excuse, although some states are waving that this year, such as New York, they’re saying COVID is a good enough excuse. And so you have to actually take the active step to request a ballot, whereas in mail-in voting, basically, they’re giving you, they’re sending it out to everybody and that’s Trump’s complaint here.

PV: But I mean, is there a difference in terms of one being more prone to being ripe for fraud?

MM: There’s no evidence of that. Places like Washington and Oregon say that they have no more fraud with their mail-in systems that they had before mailing systems. So, no, there’s actually no quantitative evidence that there is a difference.

PV: Now, last month the House passed a bill that would provide the post office with $25 billion in funds to help it deal with an unexpected increase in mail-in ballots this fall, the Senate opted not to pass it. That same week or roughly around that same time, postmaster general Louis DeJoy told the house oversight committee that the post office “we’ll do everything in our power and structure to deliver the ballots on time”. What do you make of all this? Is this something we should be concerned with at all?

MM: I think, yeah, there are reasons to be concerned. I do. There’s been mostly anecdotal evidence of slowdown of the mail service and given how much they’re going to need to be on the ball for this election, given the increase in mail balloting it’s concerning, it should concern everyone. Like I said, there’s anecdotal evidence that there could be problems just handling the regular mail delivery right now. And so when you think about the impact that all of these absentee ballots or mail-in ballots are going to have on the US postal service, it really is a little bit frightening.

PV:  The thing that I’ve heard that could be problematic is where you have ballots that are cast in person, that are counted earlier. And then you have the mail-in ballots, which will be counted later. And so you run the risk that one candidate basically declares victory before all the ballots have been fully counted and then questions the validity of the mail-ins.

MM: That’s why there’s going to be conflict after this election, no doubt, because unless you do have a strong winner on election night, which there’s no reason to believe there will be one, unless you do have that, you’re going to have court cases and accusations of fraud and mistrust on both sides. And questions about the legitimacy of the next president. It’s really going to be a trial for our democratic system and how people, how much confidence people have in our government and how much confidence people have in our voting system. And that’s what we’re waiting to see is how it all plays out.

PV: A lot of the talk when it comes to these ballots is focused on the delivery, right? That some of them might not make it in time and there’s different levels of like, okay, it gets counted if it’s postmarked by a day, versus it gets a rise by a certain date. So there’s been a lot of focus on that. Are there any other things that you can think of that people should know about when it comes to these absentee ballots that might be areas of concern?

MM: Well, the problem with the system of absentee balloting in the United States is that every state has its own rules. And so the thing voters have to worry about is informing themselves of the rules of their state and abiding by those rules. And that means acting in time, allowing plenty of time for the whole process to happen for you to get your ballot and return it and then have it received by the government and then have it counted. So really it’s just a question of informing yourself about what the rules are. And we know from a lot of political science research that’s been done in the past, American voters aren’t good at informing themselves on rules. That’s not what they do. They’re used to habits, habituated behavior. And if we change it up on them, they’re going to be ballots that are returned after the date, they’re going to be postmarked late. And then they’re going to be questions about whether they’re valid and yeah, it’s going to look like Florida 2000 all over, but with a mail-in system, rather than with the hanging CHADS that we saw at that point in time.

PV: Yeah. I mean, I think I heard that as a percentage-wise, absentee ballots are rejected by a larger margin than votes cast in person. That’s just a fact because people just don’t do things right.

MM: And it’s not just the voters, it’s also the states. Sometimes the states, the post office actually, gets ballots that don’t have the scan codes that they need to have on them for them to process them appropriately. And so that’s a problem that a state might have. They might have envelopes, return envelopes that weren’t printed correctly. Or we actually had friends of ours who voted in the Democratic primary this year and they voted absentee and their envelope, their return envelope was too small for their ballot. So they actually had to call up the government and get another ballot or another return envelope sent to them. And so luckily they were doing this all in time and as far as they know their vote counted, but it was last moment and very frustrating for them.

PV: Do you think the accuracy of polls is affected in any way by the fact that so many people will be voting by mail?

MM: Well, it doesn’t really affect the day-to-day polling that pollsters do because they’re still running likely voter models and trying to estimate who’s likely to vote, which they’re taking into account absentee voting and mail-in voting. So they’re working with new models for that. So that is a little bit tricky, but they’ve been doing this for years and they’re very smart people and they know what they’re doing. I think the main problem, although this is being accounted for as well, are the exit polls that we’re used to getting on election day themselves, which are polls that come as people leave their polling places. Those are going to have to switch over to a lot of telephone polling of mail voters before the election. Now, they’ve already been doing this for years with places like Oregon and Washington, because they’ve had to, so they’re incorporating that into what they’re doing this year, but there could be some glitches there. That’s going to be interesting to watch.

PV: Wow. So this is really going to be unpredictable on November 3rd. It sounds like?

MM: Oh yeah. There’s very little chance that we’ll know any winner on November 3rd.

PV: Best case scenario, what do you think it’ll be announced? We’ll actually have a clear winner?

MM: Best case scenario, I would say within a few days of the election or inside a week, but that’s being a little bit optimistic. I think. So, I just think that a lot of states that aren’t used to dealing with the number of absentee ballots that they’re going to get, are going to have trouble counting them in time and that’s going to be what delays things. And it’s fine, it should be delayed. I mean, we want these votes counted and we want them counted accurately. The problem is going to be that, as you said, if there’s a red wave or even a blue wave and someone decides to claim victory before all the votes are actually counted, then that’s going to call into question the legitimacy of the election. And that’s going to be a major problem for us. But if we can just sit tight and wait for the election results to come in and wait for all the votes to be counted, then I think we’ll be okay.

PV: Has there been any polling done on what people’s expectations are for when the results will be revealed?

MM: I haven’t seen any polling on that. There’s some really interesting polling on how people are going to vote and how they feel about going to an all-mail system and things like that. And they’re very supportive of letting people vote by mail if they want to. But most people themselves say they’re going to vote in person.

PV: Really? In general, still?

MM: Yep. Either early voting. Yes. Those were August numbers I think I saw. Yeah. So they either vote early in person in states that allow it or in-person on election day.

PV: Well, what is the percentage of people in the United States who are actually planning to vote in person or in early voting?

MM: So according to the most recent numbers, I saw 48% of people plan on voting on election day and another 13% plan on voting in-person early voting.

PV: What do the polls tell us about American’s confidence in mail-in voting?

MM: As a general rule, people are skeptical. Almost half of people say that they think there’s going to be some kind of fraud involved in absentee voting. So it’s pretty split and of course, there’s a huge partisan split here, but slightly more believe that there will be fraud than believe that there will be very minimal or no fraud at all. The interesting thing though, is that you actually have, when you ask people, if they’re confident, if they vote by mail that their own vote will count, they say that they’re confident in that. So they’re confident that their own vote is fine, but they’re also convinced by the messaging that they’re getting from above that there will be some fraud involved if there are large numbers of absentee votes.

PV: That’s so interesting. So they believe their own votes will be counted correctly if they mail them in, but they believe everybody else who’s mailing in their votes are highly at risk for fraud?

MM: Yeah. This phenomenon we see with all kinds of things in the political science research. It’s an, I’m okay, but my neighbor’s not kind of thing. And what I think is happening is that people in red states are confident their vote will be counted because they’re confident that their government is doing a good job. But they believe there’s fraud overall, they just believe that fraud is going to happen in the blue states. And so they’re setting themselves up for a situation in which they can say all of Biden’s votes that came in after the fact, after November 3rd, those are fraudulent because there was fraud in those states because there’s a very big partisan split there. And I would imagine that’s what’s going on, is that people are thinking that their own absentee voting will be counted well in their state, but they don’t trust other states.

PV: What should people do to make sure their votes count?

MM: If you’re voting by mail or absentee, a lot of states that you can actually online track the status of your absentee ballot. So if you send it in, you can track it there online and make sure that it goes in and gets counted. So I would say, definitely do that, track your ballot, make sure it goes in. And if it doesn’t seem to have gone in by election day, then go in, if you feel like it and cast a provisional ballot at your polling place. Other than that, the only sure way to make sure your vote is candid is to actually vote in person. I hate to say that because I know there are people who are susceptible to the virus and who have underlying health symptoms and things like that, but that is the one certain way to make sure your vote counts.

PV: One thing that came up was this idea of casting a absentee ballot, and then going into the polling place and also casting a ballot. That was something that Trump had suggested in, I believe it was North Carolina and everybody said, “Oh, you’re suggesting that they all break the law.” But then I heard from a friend, a colleague, that you can do that kind of thing in New York State that that’s not considered breaking the law. What do voters need to know about casting a second ballot in person if they’ve already sent one in by mail?

MM: My understanding is that at least in New York and I don’t know about all the other states, my understanding is that if you have reason to believe your absentee ballot didn’t make it in on time, that you have a right to cast an in-person provisional ballot that will only be counted if your absentee ballot wasn’t counted. And so if they find two ballots for you, they will throw out the provisional ballot and they will count your absentee vote. But you can’t actually vote twice. Now, in all mail voting states, obviously you can’t do that. Those are completely reliant, but I would worry much less about votes not being counted in those states because there are systems that are set up and ready to deal with the influx of mail that they get. I’m just afraid that other states aren’t ready for it.

PV: It seems like that early voting is going to be a much more important factor in the election this time around, because you can be sure your vote will count because you’re going in person. But you can also minimize the risk of being exposed to the virus by going when there won’t be nearly as many people around, that seems like that’s the sweet spot right now.

MM: Absolutely. And yet you’ve only got 13% saying that they’re going to do early voting. So people seem to like the tradition of election day. And that’s the only thing I can think of is that they want to go in and vote on November 3rd and that’s the way they’ve done it and that’s the way they’re going to continue to do it. So yeah, we’ll see what the numbers actually show and how many people do vote early. But at this point, it’s a pretty small proportion.

PV: Is there anything that gives you hope when it comes to the election?

MM: Yes, I have hope in the American, I have faith in the American people. I believe that despite the coronavirus, despite all the problems we’ve seen this year and the disasters that have befallen on us from coast to coast, I believe that people will turn out to vote. I believe they care about who wins the election and I believe that they will make it happen in whatever way, shape or form they have to. If they have to stand in line forever, I think they’ll stand in line. If they have to do absentee voting, they’ll do it. I think I have faith that Americans will stand up for their democracy.

PV: For more information about your state’s rules on voting, including provisional votes in New York State visit fordham.edu/vote2020.

“You need to go with what’s newsworthy and with what’s going to garner the public interest and inform people, because that’s the whole reason for doing this,” she told the students, who were designing a survey on major issues facing Americans today.

She had no idea at the time—weeks before the COVID-19 outbreak forced the University to close its campuses—that the lesson would be so timely.

“I never in my wildest dreams imagined this scenario, in these extreme circumstances,” said McDermott, professor of political science and director of the Elections and Campaign Management master’s program.

Working remotely, McDermott and the four students ripped up the poll they’d spent a third of the semester working on and drafted 23 brand new questions that examine American society in the time of COVID-19.

The result is the Fordham Poll, a survey that was originally designed to address areas of American life that have been overlooked by most pollsters today but was retooled to reflect the life during a pandemic. The results of the poll, which was conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago, were published the last week of April.

It covered areas such as the upcoming presidential election, how the pandemic has affected black Americans, the role that faith is playing in American’s lives, and people’s attitudes toward health care. It took place between April 16 and April 20 among 1,003 respondents nationwide by phone and has a margin of sampling error of 4.33 percentage points.

Faith in Governors, Not President

The first group of questions, detailed in The Coronavirus, the Election, and Daily Life section, revealed that Americans are most likely to turn to public health officials, their state governors, or friends and families for guidance during the coronavirus pandemic. Only 43% of Americans say President Trump is a very or somewhat important source of guidance at this time. McDermott said that perhaps as a result, he trails his presumptive challenger in the November presidential election polls, Joe Biden.

A Nation Divided by Illness

Questions grouped together in the Black Americans Bear the Burden of Coronavirus section showed the emotional toll the virus is taking on black and Latinx Americans, as evidence has emerged showing that coronavirus infections are disproportionately higher in areas with high minority populations.

Nearly half of black and Latinx Americans surveyed reported being extremely or very worried that they or someone in their family will contract the virus, compared to only 38% of whites. Additionally, black Americans are more likely than either white or Latinx Americans to be on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic, with higher proportions still required to show up to a workplace. They also reported higher rates of personal infection, and of the death of someone they personally know.

McDermott said she considered these findings to be the most significant in the poll.

“The experiences of white and black Americans, and the disparity between those two groups, was not shocking, because we knew they would be there, but they really were so different. The disparity is so huge,” she said.

“It was very sobering to see those numbers and to realize it’s not uniformly affecting people. To get a sense of that in a public opinion poll was really important.”

The Role of Faith

And how are Americans in general coping? In a section titled Faith and Coping with the Coronavirus Outbreak, pollsters learned that a large majority has found consolation in their religious or spiritual faith.

Sixty-four percent of Americans have been helped by their religious or spiritual faith during the coronavirus outbreak–including 35% who have been helped a lot and 29% who have been helped somewhat. Those numbers are higher among regular churchgoers.

White evangelical Protestants reported being helped the most by their faith, while three-quarters of mainline Protestants and 62% of Catholics reported that faith has somewhat helped them during the pandemic.

“Religious and spiritual faith is important sustenance for most Americans during this time of crisis,” said McDermott. “Faith is helping them get through.”

Attitudes on Health Care

The last section, The Coronavirus and Attitudes towards Healthcare in America, found that despite apparent gaps in the U.S. health care system during the coronavirus outbreak, Americans are generally satisfied with the system’s performance.

More than seven in 10 Americans reported being satisfied with how the American health care system is working during the coronavirus pandemic—including 26% who are very satisfied— while only 28% are dissatisfied. Satisfaction transcends partisan affiliation, with 64% of self-described Democrats, 69% of independents, and 80% of Republicans expressing satisfaction.

That said, McDermott noted that the findings indicate that the crisis may be driving more Americans to support a government-run health care system. That’s because respondents also expressed support for guaranteed quality health care for all Americans, those infected with the coronavirus, and other groups, regardless of party affiliation. Support for access to quality care regardless of citizenship status was also high.

McDermott said the poll results were by and large in line with what the class expected.

“We found them interesting, just to see how people were coping, and in some ways it was nice to see that people were coping, that they had adjusted, they were following the rules, doing what was advised, and just surviving as Americans,” she said.

On the other hand, the experience the class had is unlikely to ever be replicated.

“Coming up with questionnaires is the most labor-intensive part of polling. Designing questions in a way that you get the answers that accurately measure people’s true attitudes and behaviors is one of the harder things to learn in polling,” she said.

“Going through that with the students was in way, a really special semester, because they got to go through it twice with two different surveys.”

This fall, Fordham’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences will offer students the opportunity to master polling’s unique blend of science and art with an advanced certificate in public opinion and survey research. The certificate, which is being offered through the Department of Political Science, is an extension of the Elections and Campaign Management master’s program.

Registration for the certificate program is currently open; students can complete it in a year with a full-time course load or in two years on a part-time basis. The curriculum comprises five courses: Introduction to Quantitative Analysis, Political Survey Research, American Political Behavior, Survey Research Data Analysis, and Public Opinion Certificate Practicum.

The last two courses have been created specifically for the certificate program.

For the practicum, students will be designing and analyzing a new annual survey, called the Fordham American Faith Poll.

Monika McDermott, Ph.D., professor of political science and director of the Elections and Campaign Management program, said the faith poll is what really distinguishes this certificate program from others that are similar.

“Each year, the students will decide exactly what the poll will be on, they will write the questions, it will be fielded by a professional calling house, and then the students will do data analysis, and we’ll release the results publicly,” she said.

“This certificate is designed to teach students a specific skillset, one that is useful in a whole range of fields.”

In addition to giving students hands-on experience creating, executing, and analyzing a poll, McDermott said the Fordham American Faith Poll will address an area of American life that she says has been overlooked by most pollsters today.

“Most polling is just horse race polling about politics, and doesn’t delve into the deep belief structures and aspects of American faith and culture that we’d like the poll to do,” she said.

That’s true even of the high-profile polls conducted by Monmouth University and Quinnipiac University, she said, which focus a great deal of time on the presidential race.

“This is going to be up to the students, but if it were to be about politics, it would probably be more about how Americans relate their faith to politics,” McDermott said.

“It could also be just about faith in Americans’ lives. How do Americans worship? How much do they worship? How important is it to them? These are questions we don’t really have in-depth answers to.”

McDermott acknowledged that the polling industry’s reputation took a bit of a hit when Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016, but she said it was undeserved. After all, she said, most polls had Hillary Clinton up by 2 to 3 percentage points, and in the end, she won the popular vote while losing the Electoral College. One thing she said students who earn this certificate will come away with is a better understanding of not only what polls can do, but what they can’t do.

“People like to use polls to predict things, when that’s not what polling is supposed to do. I think we’ve gotten so wrapped up in wanting to know what’s going to happen in an election that we expect polls to be a magical predictor,” she said.

“I teach students that polling is only of the moment. It only tells you what people are thinking when you ask your question, and their opinion could change tomorrow. It could change for very good reasons, or it could change for idiosyncratic reasons.”

Since courses such as Survey Research Data Analysis and Quantitative Analysis are not exclusively concerned with politics, McDermott said the certificate will also be of interest to anyone looking to work in market research and data analytics.

“There’s whole host of fields that want people who can measure public opinion. That’s what we’re looking to train students in,” she said.

“It’ll still have a focus on political polling just because it’s tied to the elections and campaigns management program, but it’s not going to be limited to that in any way.”

She chose Fordham College at Rose Hill and never looked back.

“I knew I would be happy at either school, but I wanted something different for college. I wanted to branch out and I thought, ‘What better place than New York City?’”

Porter majored in political science and was so taken with it that she stayed on another year to earn a master’s in election and campaign management at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. A member of the graduate student council, she will serve as the school’s beadle at commencement in May, though she’ll technically graduate in August.

An Interest in Polarization

Then it’s off to help alleviate the yawning partisan gap in U.S. politics. Inspired by classes such as Polarization in American Politics, which she took with professor Richard Fleisher, Ph.D., and informed by her own background growing up in a conservative area of the country, Porter hopes to find ways to bring Americans of different backgrounds together.

“The question at the end of our polarization class was, ‘What does this mean for our democracy? Is this detrimental?’ The answer was, not yet, but it really could be. That’s something that I think has really stayed with me,” she said.

“It sounds cliché to say, but I want to do something to bridge the gap between the parties. It gets really hard because you’re asking people to give up their beliefs to compromise, which isn’t gonna happen realistically. I think bipartisanship is understanding that there’s still partisanship involved, but you’re figuring out a way that it can work.”

She has no delusions about the challenges ahead. But research she’s conducted at Fordham has convinced her that some partisanship can be blamed on structural problems. In a paper she wrote about campaign finance laws, for instance, she found that a majority of Political Action Campaigns (PACs) are associated with corporations or membership and trade groups, and support centrist political positions. So the common perception that corporations and special interests are polarizing agents in politics today is not entirely accurate, she said. Individual donors, on the other hand, tend to reside at the ideological extremes, she noted. And those donors’ influence has grown in in recent years.

“We can see that candidates that position themselves further towards the extremes raise more money from individual contributors. So, limits on contributions change the types of donors that candidates can focus on and raise money from,” she said.

“Who candidates raise money from can effect which types of candidates get elected—either more centrist or more ideologically extreme. I’m trying to avoid a value judgment on which one is better, just trying to understand how the change can happen. It’s not about public policy. It’s about the rules and how they kind of shape what can happen in the public policy sphere.”

From the Theoretical to the Practical

If her undergraduate degree gave her a theoretical grounding, the master’s has given her practical training needed to work in the field. Porter has been interning at the political consulting firm the Advance Group this spring, and for her capstone project, her class is designing from scratch a political campaign for Martha McSally, the junior senator from Arizona. Voter profiles, polling questions, television scripts, a fundraising plan, phone banking—they’re designing all of it, using the knowledge they’ve learned from classes such as Survey Research, which is taught by Monika McDermott, Ph.D.

McDermott, who also taught Porter as an undergraduate, said she was an outstanding student, a fun person to have in class, and someone who was obviously actively thinking about the material being discussed.

“Whit’s got a passion for politics that is very important when you’re going into the political world, because it’s a really rough and tumble world and it’s not for the faint at heart,” she said.

“She’s got the sharp, and I would say, natural instincts of what works and what doesn’t in the political world. Some of that comes from learning, and some of it comes naturally. I think that’s what’s going to make her a success when she lands a job and starts working full time.”

Getting Ready for 2020

Porter’s not sure what she’ll do after graduation yet, but is attracted to consulting, for which there will likely be a great need as the 2020 presidential election approaches. Even if she doesn’t work directly with a 2020 presidential candidate, she anticipates that lower-level political races will also be affected, as voters tend to vote straight Democratic or Republican tickets, creating a coattail effect.

Moving to New York definitely prepared her to confront differing opinions, she said, and even caused her to change some of her own.

“I am not leaving Fordham with the same political beliefs I was brought up with. Coming to New York, you’re just opened up to an entirely different perspective and a different worldview,” she said.

“It’s interesting, because I can also see how people here have no idea what it’s like to grow up in the South, or in a place where conservative values are the norm, and it’s not always a bad thing. I feel like I have this really interesting perspective of both ideologies and how they’re so different. They kind of just shoot past each other without ever really intersecting.”

“The first thing to know is that these are two different words with two different meanings,” Rather told an audience at a Q&A event organized by Fordham’s Francis and Ann Curran Center for American Catholic Studies on Feb. 15. “The heart of patriotism is humility. The heart of nationalism, though, is a breast-beating conceit or arrogance.”

The Emmy Award-winning journalist said some of the values that are rooted in America’s national identity include public education, freedom of the press, and inclusion.

“The appeal of America worldwide is the essence of the idea and the ideal,” said Rather. He recently published What Unites Us (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2017), a book of essays on American values.

A Voice of Reason

Though he stepped down from his CBS Evening News post 13 years ago, Rather continues to weigh in on the issues he feels are shaping the United States and the world at large. He has more than 2.5 million followers on Facebook, a platform he said is allowing him to remain a “steady, reliable voice of reason that can put events into context and historical perspective.”

Now 86 years old, the veteran journalist said one of the major divisions among American citizens today revolves around race. He described his first major news assignment covering the beginnings of the civil rights movement of the 1960s. He said the first time he saw a KKK rally, the “hair on the back of my neck stood up.”

“I thought to myself, “If I—a white person with a press tag—if this has this kind of effect on me, what effect could it possibly have on African-American families and their children?” he said.

Having been on the front lines of some of the country’s biggest news events—from John F. Kennedy’s assassination to Watergate to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—Rather said that “every generation is tested.” He maintained, however, that the values that have defined the country for centuries are what has carried it through “bad times.”

“There’s a great struggle going on, a struggle for the soul of our country,” he said. “Who are we as a country? What are we about? [Those are questions that are] being decided now.”

Protecting a ‘Great Historical Experiment’

Rather expressed special concern about the escalating attacks on the free press, which he argued are an attempt to evade checks and balances on people in positions of power.

“We need to see clearly that a truly free and fiercely independent press is the red beating heart of freedom and democracy,” he said.

He said that America has gone through major transitions that have led to fear among some of its citizenry, starting with the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965.

“The demographic of the United States changed so dramatically in the wake of that immigration reform that this country today is not recognizable to a lot of people, particularly those at the lower end of the socioeconomic scale,” he said. “They’re fearful about the jobs at stake, but even more, I think they fear [a]change in the [American] culture.”

Calling the formation of the United States of America a “great historical experiment,” Rather said America’s ability to remain a united front could prove difficult without a firm commitment to its founding principles.

“This idea and ideal is not an empty hope,” he said. “If we put our minds to it, if we stick to this willingness of heart, then we’re going to be okay.”

While psychologists have used the test extensively, it’s never been used by political scientists to gauge how those characteristics might affect the way people vote—until now.

A new book by Monika McDermott, Ph.D., an associate professor of political science, explores the subject in Masculinity, Femininity, and American Political Behavior (Oxford University Press, 2016). Based on part on a study of more than 800 participants, the book delves into how political behavior can be influenced by gendered personality traits. It also demonstrates that biological sex does not necessarily dictate gendered personalities or partisan preferences as traditionally believed.

McDermott had heard the idea that certain gendered traits are associated with particular political parties, with the Democratic Party believed to hold a compassionate, feminine nature to the Republican Party’s tougher, more masculine nature.

“I started thinking of this in 2012 when I taught a class, Women in Politics, and we covered the idea of masculine and feminine voting—as opposed to biological sex,” said McDermott. “Most political science research involves biological sex. This is separate from that.”

Given that the course she was teaching focused on women, McDermott said the class roster skewed toward women. But when she administered the Bem test in class, she found that some of the women possessed more masculine traits, such as aggressiveness and competitiveness, than the feminine traits, such as compassion and gentleness.

“These were college-attending, career driven women in New York City,” said McDermott. “You have to have elements of competitiveness and strength to even come here.”

McDermott acknowledged that there is some criticism of the Bem inventory’s categorizations, but the categories still help define perceived differences between the two dimensions, she said.

With the results of the Women in Politics class in hand, McDermott began to distribute the Bem questionnaire to all of her political science classes—a more biologically diverse group. There she found that masculine characteristics often aligned with Republicans and feminine characteristics aligned with Democrats.

It was then that McDermott began to contemplate a nationwide study. She designed a questionnaire that merged the Bem questions with questions on political attitudes and activities. That questionnaire forms the basis for her book.

“This is completely intuitive stuff, but we applied a quantitative method,” she said, adding that her students helped inspire the research. “It’s amazing that no one has applied it to political activity. Pundits talk about this, but there’s no one who has checked it out.”

McDermott said that her next study would be on how candidates’ gendered personalities may have an effect on voters—a topic she says is ripe for the upcoming election between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

“You have people who have very obvious masculine traits, which is what we look for in a political leader, but there’s a cognitive dissonance for voters if the candidate is a woman,” she said.

The 2008 elections broke new ground in many areas, including fundraising, campaign finance, primary contests and race, the scholars said.

The Internet emerged as a strong force in the race and, in a way, was another winner in this election cycle, said Costas Panagopoulos, Ph.D., professor of political science and director of Fordham’s Center for Electoral Politics and Democracy.

“[The Internet] has really revolutionized the way we think about campaigns in the 21st century,” he said.

Four scholars participated in the event, the Fordham Forum on American Politics, which is run by the Department of Political Science and sponsored by the deans of Fordham College at Rose Hill and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. It was moderated by Richard Fleisher, Ph.D., a Fordham political science professor.

Panagopoulos said one loser of the race was the system of public financing for presidential campaigns, which Obama opted out of so he could rely on his own prodigious fundraising operation. “As it is now, it is basically defunct,” he said of the public financing system for presidential candidates.

The election also showed that racial attitudes are poised to play a greater role in future elections, said Monika McDermott, Ph.D., also a Fordham political science professor.

“We definitely haven’t moved past negative racial attitudes in America,” she said, describing how race cost Obama some votes among late-deciding swing voters and voters who cast their ballots for Democrat John Kerry in 2004.

“Not only was [race]hyperimportant, but it seems like it’s going to be ever more important in future elections,” she said.

The election was also notable for the insurgents that captured each major party’s nomination, said John Coleman, Ph.D., a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin.

Democrat Hillary Clinton started out as the better-organized candidate, but Barack Obama won through smart strategy, such as focusing on states where the nominee is chosen through a party caucuses rather than a public primary, Coleman said.

Clinton lacked a strong strategy for the caucus states, and Obama saw he could turn the tide in those states with relative ease, Coleman said.

“That’s where she lost the Democratic nomination,” he said.

Panagopoulos said Obama’s formidable fundraising doesn’t completely explain his victory. He noted the big financial advantage of one Republican contender, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who lost the nomination to Arizona Sen. John McCain.

“[The 2008 election] showed that there are limited conclusions that we can extract from who these front runners are,” he said.

William Mayer, Ph.D., of Northeastern University said the election was more a reflection on George W. Bush than on Barack Obama. “Voters took their anger out on the Republican Party” on Nov. 4 because Bush wasn’t on the ballot, he said.

Another Fordham political science professor, Jeffrey Cohen, Ph.D., said from the audience that the current economic crisis matters more to the fortunes of the two major parties than does any detailed analysis of their respective strengths and weaknesses.

“The country is in an economic catastrophe. That is going to subsume everything else,” he said. “We’re not going to have positional politics being played between the parties.

“The Democrats running government must prove that they can correct the economy, or their goose is cooked,” he said.

But given the historic volatility of the final weeks of a presidential campaign, and with the issue of race a still wild card, the associate professor of political science is not going to hedge her bets.

McDermott, an expert in political psychology and voter behavior, moonlights as a CBS election consultant who interprets exit polls. After crunching the numbers on Election Night, McDermott’s analysis of who voted for whom, and why, will assist news anchors in explaining why Obama or McCain won or lost a state or region. Election 2008 marks McDermott’s fourth presidential election behind the scenes.

Following the 2000 election in which critical Florida exit polls predicted a win for Democratic candidate Al Gore, McDermott admits she is somewhat “gun shy” about being an exit poll enthusiast. Nevertheless, she sees them as “the most reliable science” for predicting voter behavior.

“Exit polls are one of the few times where you know you are actually talking to people who have voted,” she said. “[Exit voters] are also more likely to be enthusiastic and give honest answers, more honest than someone you just interrupted during dinnertime with a phone call.

“Although [pre-election] polls suggest a win for Obama, I still believe we are in uncharted waters,” McDermott said. “This race has more dynamics than any other at the presidential level, and so many unknowns.”

McDermott has researched the behavior of many voter cohorts, including the Catholic voting bloc. She recently published  “Voting for Catholic Candidates: The Evolution of a Stereotype,” in Social Science Quarterly. According to McDermott, Catholics no longer form a monolithic voting bloc as they did during the 1960 election of John F. Kennedy, the nation’s only Catholic president.

In fact, voting among Catholics has tended, in the last two decades, toward Republicanism, she said, largely based on social issues and on the Reagan revolution. (In 1980 many moderate Democrats switched parties to support the 40th president.)

“Catholics tend to be treated as a swing voting bloc by the media, but they’re really a bellwether group,” McDermott said.“They are just as diverse as the rest of America, so sort of as Catholics go, so goes the rest of the nation, or vice versa.”

The key swing blocs in this election, McDermott said, are independents and new voters. A recent nationwide poll showed that voters in the 18-to-29 age bracket support Obama over McCain by a margin of 61 percent to 30 percent. For an Obama camp, this is the upside.

The downside?

“They flake out, and don’t vote,” McDermott said. “According to current polls, if [young people]don’t turn out, then McCain has close to an even shot.”

Recent negative, tactical campaigning in target Republican and independent markets has put off many pundits, but McDermott said such campaigning is historically effective. The Republican Party, McDermott said, has revolutionized the science of voter targeting in the last two decades. Republican campaign strategist Karl Rove, former deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush (and now a political analyst) has helped to hone the art of micro-targeting.

In micro targeting, political strategists look at consumer databases and measure how consumer behavior affects voting behavior. For example: Are the owners of Jaguars in a certain suburb more likely to be motivated by a positive or negative ad?

Of course, both parties practice micro targeting. But the Republicans, McDermott said, have perfected it.

“Micro-targeting is genius; it’s absolutely a science,” she said. “[They can] target tiny regions based on data that companies have about every American, know what that person’s concerns probably are, and put the right [political]advertisement in that market.”

Since this year’s election could result in the nation’s first African-American president, the question of racism among voters, is an unprecedented, yet hard-to-measure aspect of voter behavior. A phenomenon known as the Bradley/Wilder effect refers to a discrepancy between voter opinion polls and the election outcome when a white candidate and an African-American candidate run against one another.

In 1982, Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, an African American, narrowly lost his bid for governor of California even though he was several points ahead in the polls. Similar polling discrepancies, sometimes in double digits, showed up in the 1989 elections of L. Douglas Wilder, former governor of Virginia, and David Dinkins, former mayor of New York City.

“There is evidence that the [Bradley] effect is diminishing,” McDermott said, “but there is no doubt that it has potential right now. There are a lot of people out there for whom race is a serious issue, and when they go into the voting booths, who knows?”

With the nation’s demographics in shift, the emphasis on large swing states as the key to victory is changing, McDermott said. On Nov. 4, she will be watching the red states of Virginia and Florida as well as New Hampshire, as potential game changers. If Obama takes any or all of these states, she said, it could mean an “early evening.”
If not, McDermott points to the Mountain West states of Colorado, Nevada and Montana as ones that might buck a Republican tradition.

“They’re peripheral states you don’t think of,” she said, “but if you put enough of them together, you get an electoral college victory.”

If current presidential polls hold steady for Sen. Barack Obama, Monika McDermott, Ph.D., may be looking at an early night on Nov. 4.

But given the historic volatility of the final weeks of a presidential campaign, and with the issue of race a still wild card, the associate professor of political science is not going to hedge her bets.

McDermott, an expert in political psychology and voter behavior, moonlights as a CBS election consultant who interprets exit polls. After crunching the numbers on Election Night, McDermott’s analysis of who voted for whom, and why, will assist news anchors in explaining why Obama or McCain won or lost a state or region. Election 2008 marks McDermott’s fourth presidential election behind the scenes.

Following the 2000 election in which critical Florida exit polls predicted a win for Democratic candidate Al Gore, McDermott admits she is somewhat “gun shy” about being an exit poll enthusiast. Nevertheless, she sees them as “the most reliable science” for predicting voter behavior, which generally produce excellent results.

“Exit polls are one of the few times where you know you are actually talking to people who have voted,” she said. “[Exit voters] are also more likely to be enthusiastic and give honest answers, more honest than someone you just interrupted during dinnertime with a phone call.
“Although [pre-election] polls suggest a win for Obama, I still believe we are in uncharted waters,” McDermott said. “This race has more dynamics than any other at the presidential level, and so many unknowns.”

McDermott has researched the behavior of many voter cohorts, including the Catholic voting bloc. She recently published “Voting for Catholic Candidates: The Evolution of a Stereotype,” in Social Science Quarterly. According to McDermott, Catholics no longer form a monolithic voting bloc as they did during the 1960 election of John F. Kennedy, the nation’s only Catholic president.

In fact, voting among Catholics has tended, in the last two decades, toward Republicanism, she said, largely based on social issues and on the Reagan revolution. (In 1980 many moderate Democrats switched parties to support the 40th president.)

“Catholics tend to be treated as a swing voting bloc by the media, but they’re really a bellwether group,” McDermott said. “They are just as diverse as the rest of America, so sort of as Catholics go, so goes the rest of the nation, or vice versa.”

The key swing blocs in this election, McDermott said, are independents and new voters. A recent nationwide poll showed that voters in the 18-to-29 age bracket support Obama over McCain by a margin of 61 percent to 30 percent. For an Obama camp, this is the upside.

The downside?

“They flake out, and don’t vote,” McDermott said. “According to current polls, if [young people]don’t turn out, then McCain has close to an even shot.”

Recent negative, tactical campaigning in target Republican and independent markets has put off many pundits, but McDermott said such campaigning is historically effective. The Republican Party, McDermott said, has revolutionized the science of voter targeting in the last two decades. Republican campaign strategist Karl Rove, former deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush (and now a political analyst) has helped to hone the art of micro-targeting.

In micro targeting, political strategists look at consumer databases and measure how consumer behavior affects voting behavior. For example: Are the owners of Jaguars in a certain suburb more likely to be motivated by a positive or negative ad?

Of course, both parties practice micro targeting. But the Republicans, McDermott said, have perfected it.

“Micro-targeting is genius; it’s absolutely a science,” she said. “[They can] target tiny regions based on data that companies have about every American, know what that person’s concerns probably are, and put the right [political]advertisement in that market.”

Since this year’s election could result in the nation’s first African-American president, the question of racism among voters, is an unprecedented, yet hard-to-measure aspect of voter behavior. A phenomenon known as the Bradley/Wilder effect refers to a discrepancy between voter opinion polls and the election outcome when a white candidate and an African-American candidate run against one another.

In 1982, Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, an African American, narrowly lost his bid for governor of California even though he was several points ahead in the polls. Similar polling discrepancies, sometimes in double digits, showed up in the 1989 elections of L. Douglas Wilder, former governor of Virginia, and David Dinkins, former mayor of New York City.

“There is evidence that the [Bradley] effect is diminishing,” McDermott said, “but there is no doubt that it has potential right now. There are a lot of people out there for whom race is a serious issue, and when they go into the voting booths, who knows?”

With the nation’s demographics in shift, the emphasis on large swing states as the key to victory is changing, McDermott said. On Nov. 4, she will be watching the red states of Virginia and Florida, and the “purple” states of Maine and New Hampshire, as potential game changers. If Obama takes any or all of these states, she said, it could mean an “early evening.”

If not, McDermott points to the Mountain West states of Colorado, Nevada and Montana as ones that might buck a Republican tradition.

“They’re peripheral states you don’t think of,” she said, “but if you put enough of them together, you get an electoral college victory.”

– Janet Sassi