Despite President Obama’s two election victories, the nation has become increasingly racially divided in its politics and “tribal” in its voting patterns, according to the president’s election pollster.
“We’ve come a long way in a lot of different ways around race in this country, but if you look at our voting patterns, we’re as segregated in how we vote today as we were 40-some years ago,” said Cornell Belcher, president of Brilliant Corners Research & Strategies and a Harvard University fellow.
In a video for the school’s Institute of Politics to tout his study group, “Tribal America – Racial Polarization in the American,” the respected and influential pollster said that Obama’s election inspired minorities, but also pushed whites away.
“There was a spike in enthusiasm around minorities that was helping propel the president, but there was also a spike in the other direction around the heightened sort of racial aversion among segments of the electorate that was working in the opposite direction,” he explained.
“And there’s a bifurcation, where you have more minorities voting one way and more whites voting the other way. To me it becomes problematic as we move forward because how do we win the future when we are so segregated and continue to be increasingly segregated in sort of our politics and voting pattern and we are becoming more tribal at the level of voting,” he added.
The political division, Belcher said, has roots in former President Lyndon B. Johnson’s signing of the Civil Rights Act. “Him signing the civil rights legislation realigned the parties.”
And he said that it is his goal at Harvard to mend politics and encourage students to approach voting differently and address race.
“Going back to the founding of America, race has always played a role in our culture and our politics and we shouldn’t pretend that it doesn’t and we can’t and we can’t solve for the problem if we pretend that race matters don’t matter, because you know what, in this country, race matters really matter and they’ve always really mattered,” said the pollster.
The goal: One tribe of American voters.
“If we don’t fix this and our politics is going to continue to be even more segregated and more polarized as the demographics of our country continue to change. If we don’t fix for this, I think our future in politics in this country is going to be problematic,” said Belcher, adding, “I think you will see more dysfunction. I think you will see our politics, our legislative bodies come to a complete halt, more so than they already have, if we don’t solve for this problem, if we can’t solve for the tribalism in our politics and be one big tribe and not several separate smaller tribes.”
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected].
