"..partisan Americans treat politics like they treat sports: Winning is the only thing that matters"

[RiverLover]

Lying, cheating, stealing, winning: The shocking motivations of American voters revealed in new study

It turns out that partisan Americans treat politics like they treat sports: Winning is the only thing that matters
SALON
4/16/15

A new study out of the University of Kansas demonstrates that the individuals most likely to vote in elections aren’t worried about policy so much as they are invested in their “team” winning.

In “Red and Blue States of Mind: Partisan Hostility and Voting in the United States,” University of Kansas assistant professor of political science Patrick Miller and Pamela Johnston Conover, a distinguished professor of political science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, argue that in the current polarized political climate, voters behave more like obsessed sports fans than informed citizens.

“For too many of them,” Miller told the University of Kansas News Service, “it’s not high-minded, good-government, issue-based goals. It’s, ‘I hate the other party. I’m going to go out, and we’re going to beat them.’ That’s troubling.”

Analyzing data from the 2010 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, Miller and Conover found that, contrary to earlier research, party loyalty was the driving factor in voter behavior — much more so than fundamental disagreements over ideological issues.

Forty-one percent of voters who identified with either the Democratic or Republican party stated that they were more heavily invested in winning elections than achieving policy goals, whereas only 35 percent of respondents felt that ideology trumped party victory. Moreover, 38 percent of self-described Democrats and Republicans believed that politics is a zero-sum game in which electoral victory must be achieved at all cost, using any tactic necessary....

...“If our politicians are polarized and uncivil,” Miller explained, “maybe it’s because many voters are polarized and uncivil.”

“We’re not thinking about politics in the way that most Founders wanted, which is to think about issues, be open to compromise and not be attached to parties,” he continued. “We’re looking at politics through a simplistic partisan view in which we think our side is good and their side is bad.”...

http://www.salon.com/2015/04/16/lying_cheating_stealing_winning_the_shocking_motivations_of_american_voters_revealed_in_new_study/

[MisterP]

1. the higher the vitriol and anger, the less you have to focus on actual policy

hence such flagrant contradictions like "the IWR is redundant" and "the IWR was actually a good thing," or blazing nonsense like "Hillary will save us from fracking and Wall Street"

[The2ndWheel]

2. Well it is a winner-take-all system

And people vote for just 1 President at a time. Nuance is difficult when one size must fit all.

[FSogol]

3. Crappy article. Both parties are not the same. How much time did Obama spend looking for

points of compromise with the GOP? Compare that to the zero amount of time the GOP spent doing anything other than grandstanding.

Screw the GOP.