The Battle for the White House: The US Presidential Election 2020 under the impression of Polarization, Coronavirus Pandemic and Social Tensions. 3658389338, 9783658389338

Table of contents :
Preface
Acknowledgement
Contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
1 Introduction
References
2 Joe Biden’s Road to the Nomination
2.1 The Democratic Party’s System for Candidate Selection
2.2 Turning Points South Carolina and the Super Tuesday
2.3 Joe Biden and the Democratic Electorate
2.4 Summary
References
3 Voting in the Shadow of the Pandemic
3.1 The Absentee Ballot in the United States in the Context of Partisan Polarization
3.2 Who is Allowed to Vote?—Voter Registration, Voter ID Laws and Polling Stations
3.3 Summary
References
4 Democrats vs. Republicans
4.1 The Southern Strategy as a Precursor to Asymmetric Polarization
4.2 The Radicalization of the Political Discourse
4.3 Summary
References
5 The Polarization and its Characteristics
5.1 Party Affiliation and Preferences in the American Electorate
5.2 The Polarization of Representatives in Congress
5.3 Summary
References
6 Economic Policy as a Salient Issue: The Elections in the Shadow of Recession
6.1 The Shadows of the Pandemic
6.2 Social Inequality
6.3 Government Policy in Times of Crisis
6.4 Economic Policies of the Trump Administration
6.5 The Economic Policy Concept of the Democrats
6.6 Summary
References
7 A Society Without a Safety Net: Social Issues in the Election Campaign
7.1 The Crisis in the Health Care System
7.2 Social Justice: The Demand for Social Justice as a Controversial Issue
7.3 The Ideological Balance in the Supreme Court and its Social Consequences
7.4 Summary
References
8 Minorities in the USA: The Controversial Immigration Debate
8.1 Contrasting Models of Society
8.2 Social Development and Political Orientations of Minorities
8.2.1 The Hispanic Minority
8.2.2 The Asian-American Minority
8.2.3 The African-American Minority
8.3 Summary
References
9 The Strategies in the 2020 Election Campaign
9.1 Biden’s Classical Approach as an Antithesis to Trump’s Populism
9.2 Contrasting Narratives: The Democratic and Republican Conventions
9.3 The Delegitimization of the Election and its Consequences
9.4 Summary
References
10 The Election Results and Their Transatlantic Implications
10.1 The Results of the 2020 Presidential Elections in Historical Perspective
10.2 Transatlantic Relations under President Biden: A New Beginning?
10.3 Summary
References
11 Final Considerations
References
Index

Citation preview

Christiane Lemke · Jakob Wiedekind

The Battle for the White House The US Presidential Election 2020 under the impression of Polarization, Coronavirus Pandemic and Social Tensions

The Battle for the White House

Christiane Lemke · Jakob Wiedekind

The Battle for the White House The US Presidential Election 2020 under the impression of Polarization, Coronavirus Pandemic and Social Tensions

Christiane Lemke Institut für Politikwissenschaft Leibniz Universität Hannover Hannover, Niedersachsen, Germany

Jakob Wiedekind Institut für Politikwissenschaft Leibniz Universität Hannover Hannover, Niedersachsen, Germany

ISBN 978-3-658-38933-8 ISBN 978-3-658-38934-5  (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-38934-5 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Responsible Editor: Jan Treibel This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature. The registered company address is: Abraham-Lincoln-Str. 46, 65189 Wiesbaden, Germany

Preface

This book started out in the manageable waters of pre-pandemic times in the winter semester of 2019/2020 at Leibniz University Hannover. The lively discussions with students in the seminar on the Trump presidency and the upcoming election campaign, which was jointly taught by both authors, were the starting point for considerations of how the numerous interesting approaches and analyses of US politics could be further developed and combined. In a subsequent seminar in the winter semester of 2020/2021, we discussed the course and background of the election results again with master’s students. We also followed each phase of this unusual election year in a blog: from the primaries to the nomination of the candidates; from the campaign in the fall to the election on November 3, 2020; from the certification of the results to the change of power in the White House on January 20, 2021. In the blog, we regularly analyzed key political issues and concepts, reflected on current developments, and evaluated empirical data. At the beginning of our project, we could not foresee the spread of the pandemic and the subsequent lockdown in most US states. This development not only posed great challenges to the everyday life of the American people. Rather, it seemed as if the themes that had previously determined them, the candidates’ positioning, and the strategies of the election campaign were turning into a kaleidoscope of power and powerlessness, crisis and renewal, despair and hope, cohesion and division, right before our eyes. Insights that could be gained from previous elections seemed to lose their validity and were put to the test. Unexpected challenges arose and the analysis required new political science interpretations and perspectives time and again. The research for this book is based on extensive research, which we partly carried out in Washington D.C., partly during longer stays at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In fall 2020, the UNC at Chapel Hill also supported a

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virtual Transatlantic Seminar with students on both sides of the Atlantic. This valuable intercultural dialogue resulted in some interesting perspective changes that have enriched the content of this book with additional facets. The manuscript was completed at our home university, Leibniz University Hannover. Hannover, Germany, January 2021

Christiane Lemke Jakob Wiedekind

Acknowledgement

We would like to thank our colleagues and employees of the Institute for Political Science at Leibniz University Hannover for their many suggestions and support despite the restrictions caused by the Coronavirus pandemic. Special thanks also go to our students who participated in the discussions. Their critical questions and perspectives on the USA have greatly enriched the research for this book. Finally, we would like to thank Natalia Dalmer and Dominic Nyhuis for their valuable input as well as Sebastian Kahlfuß and Pia Schnelle for their editorial support.

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Contents

1 Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 2

Joe Biden’s Road to the Nomination. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 2.1 The Democratic Party’s System for Candidate Selection. . . . . . . 8 2.2 Turning Points South Carolina and the Super Tuesday. . . . . . . . . 14 2.3 Joe Biden and the Democratic Electorate. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 2.4 Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

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Voting in the Shadow of the Pandemic. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 3.1 The Absentee Ballot in the United States in the Context of Partisan Polarization. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 3.2 Who is Allowed to Vote?—Voter Registration, Voter ID Laws and Polling Stations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 3.3 Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

4

Democrats vs. Republicans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 4.1 The Southern Strategy as a Precursor to Asymmetric Polarization. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 4.2 The Radicalization of the Political Discourse. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 4.3 Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68

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The Polarization and its Characteristics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 5.1 Party Affiliation and Preferences in the American Electorate. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

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5.2 The Polarization of Representatives in Congress. . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 5.3 Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88 6

Economic Policy as a Salient Issue: The Elections in the Shadow of Recession . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 6.1 The Shadows of the Pandemic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 6.2 Social Inequality. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 6.3 Government Policy in Times of Crisis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 6.4 Economic Policies of the Trump Administration . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 6.5 The Economic Policy Concept of the Democrats. . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 6.6 Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110

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A Society Without a Safety Net: Social Issues in the Election Campaign. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 7.1 The Crisis in the Health Care System. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 7.2 Social Justice: The Demand for Social Justice as a Controversial Issue. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120 7.3 The Ideological Balance in the Supreme Court and its Social Consequences. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 7.4 Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125 References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127

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Minorities in the USA: The Controversial Immigration Debate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 8.1 Contrasting Models of Society. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 8.2 Social Development and Political Orientations of Minorities. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 8.2.1 The Hispanic Minority . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138 8.2.2 The Asian-American Minority . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140 8.2.3 The African-American Minority. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143 8.3 Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146 References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147

9

The Strategies in the 2020 Election Campaign . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151 9.1 Biden’s Classical Approach as an Antithesis to Trump’s Populism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152 9.2 Contrasting Narratives: The Democratic and Republican Conventions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157

Contents

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9.3

The Delegitimization of the Election and its Consequences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161 9.4 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165 References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166

10 The Election Results and Their Transatlantic Implications. . . . . . . . 169 10.1 The Results of the 2020 Presidential Elections in Historical Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171 10.2 Transatlantic Relations under President Biden: A New Beginning? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177 10.3 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184 References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185 11 Final Considerations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187 References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190 Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191

List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 Delegates won in comparison—Biden against Sanders. Source Own figure based on the overview by Leatherby and Almukthar in the New York Times 2020 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Fig. 2.2 Biden’s popularity among voter groups. Source Own figure based on data from Civiqs (2020a). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Fig. 3.1 Composition of the American electorate by ethnic groups between 1980 and 2016. Source Own illustration based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau (2018) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 Fig. 3.2 Ethnic groups and their registration rate/voter turnout. Source Own figure based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau (2016). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 Fig. 3.3 Polling stations in Milwaukee, Wisconsin 2016 (top) and 2020 (bottom). Source Own figure based on data from the Wisconsin Election Commission (2016, 2020b). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Fig. 5.1 Strength of party affiliation in the U.S. electorate, 1972–2016. (Source: own figure based on ANES (2020) data). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 Fig. 5.2 Voting behavior of liberal and conservative voters in presidential elections, 1976–2020. Source Own figure based on overview of the Roper Centers (2020). . . . . . . . . 76 Fig. 5.3 “Ticket Splitting” in presidential and congressional elections, 1972–2016. Source Own figure based on data from the ANES (2020). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

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List of Figures

Fig. 5.4 Ideological polarization of the parties in Congress, 1961–2021. Source Own figure based on the data of Lewis et al. (2020). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 Fig. 5.5 Average strength of party unity, 1961–2019. Source Own illustration based on data from Congressional Quarterly Vote Studies (CQ Almanac, 2020, p. B-10) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 Fig. 6.1 Unemployment rate in the U.S. in percent, 2020. Source Own illustration based on data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2020) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 Fig. 6.2 Home Ownership in the USA over time 2016–2020. Source Own figure based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau (2020). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 Fig. 7.1 Status of health insurance in the USA, 2007–2018. Source Own figure based on data from CDC (2020b). . . . . . . . . . 118 Fig. 8.1 Percentage of each residence status among all immigrants. Source Own figure based on Pew Research Center overview (2020b) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136 Fig. 8.2 Political views on deportations (top) and border patrols (bottom). Source Own figure based on CCES 2016 data. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 Fig. 10.1 Number of states with close results in presidential elections, 1968–2020. Source Own figure based on the overview of the Pew Research Center (DeSilver, 2020). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174 Fig. 10.2 Popular Vote and victory in the Electoral College, 1968–2020. Source Own figure based on data from the American Presidency Project (2021). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175

List of Tables

Table 3.1 Access to absentee voting and the state government constellation. Source Own illustration. The government constellation was classified on the basis of the 51 official government websites, while the assignment with regard to the hurdles for absentee voting was made on the basis of the overviews of the National Conference of State Legislatures (2020a) vorgenommen. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Table 3.2 Pandemic-related adjustments to absentee voting rules 2020. Source Own illustration based on data from the CDC (2020) as well as the New York Times (Love et al., 2020) and the overviews of the National Conference of State Legislatures (2020a) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Table 3.3 Voter turnout in Georgia and North Carolina by ethnic groups in the presidential elections from 2004 to 2020. Source Own compilation based on the Voting and Registration data of the U.S. Census Bureau for the presidential elections 2004–2020 (2020b). . . . . . . . . . . . 42

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Introduction

“Somehow we’ve weathered and witnessed a nation, that isn’t broken, but simply unfinished.” Amanda Gorman, poet-laureates, Inauguration Joe Biden und Kamala Harris, 20.01.2021. (Gorman, 2021)

The US elections of 2020 can rightly be described as historically unique. The peculiarity of the elections was already apparent early on through the rapidly spreading pandemic, which fundamentally changed the conditions for the election campaign. This continued in sometimes very close election results in favor of the Democratic challenger Joe Biden in some states and finally culminated in Donald Trump’s stubborn refusal to accept his election defeat. Never before had an incumbent US president so deliberately tried to prevent a peaceful transition of power. His campaign against the election defeat, which claimed a large-scale election fraud, went beyond legal challenges and was also conducted on Twitter. While it was unable to produce any evidence of election fraud, it eventually prompted some of his supporters to violently break into the Capitol in Washington D.C. in order to prevent the certification of the official election results by Congress. This action led to the initiation of a second impeachment against Donald Trump shortly before he left office. There had never been such drama in elections in American history. But back to the start. Only a few weeks after the primaries began, which were decisive for the selection of candidates, the conditions changed completely due to the rapidly spreading coronavirus. Like most other countries in the world, the United States imposed a lockdown in early March 2020 with extensive travel and event restrictions. Due to the pandemic, campaign events were canceled, primaries postponed, and nomination conventions moved into the virtual space. Never before has a presidential election taken place under the pressure of such far-reach© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2022 C. Lemke and J. Wiedekind, The Battle for the White House, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-38934-5_1

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ing restrictions on social interaction and individual freedoms. With 30 million people officially reported unemployed already in April 2020, numerous corporate bankruptcies, and declines in international trade, the United States was also heading for one of the deepest recessions since the Great Depression of the 1930s right in the election year. The already highly polarized public opinion became even more polarized during this troublesome situation and also extended to the fight against the pandemic. Approval ratings for Donald Trump’s job performance fell and remained low throughout the election year, even though Trump quickly resumed large campaign events attended by thousands of his supporters, despite the pandemic. In summer 2020, a large coronavirus relief package was finally launched and Trump accelerated the development of a vaccine against COVID-19. However, the president, who clearly lost the election, was not granted a second term after four turbulent and controversial years in office. In addition, the Republicans failed to regain control of the House of Representatives and also lost their majority in the Senate. After turbulent months following the November 3, 2020 election and mass riots in Washington D.C. with the storming of the Capitol, Joe Biden was ultimately inaugurated as the 46th President of the United States on January 20, 2021. The course and result of the elections not only reveal far-reaching shifts in the political power relationships. Rather, this election also deepened and confirmed the extensive polarization of US society and politics. In addition, many observers criticized the attacks on established democratic procedures, such as the peaceful transfer of power after the elections, as a shaking of the democratic foundations in America. Against this background, the present book project sets out to examine the unusual elections of 2020 from an analytical perspective and to understand the course and results from a political science point of view. The focus is primarily on the domestic political dynamics of these elections, which are similar to a restructuring of the ship at sea. The analysis is based on our studies of American government and party research as well as studies from democratic theory. The scientific look at the rapid and highly complex dynamics of the election year seemed to us to be of paramount importance because the United States, more than any other country, influences international relations. The change of power in the White House will also change the relationship between the United States and Europe. After the unusual and controversial Trump presidency, the outcome of the election is of global political importance because it marks a significant change of direction. Even before the coronavirus crisis, it was already clear that Trump’s polarizing presidency had further divided American society. With his motto “America First”, he had not only called into question the multilateralism of the liberal

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international order and challenged international trade relations by withdrawing from international treaties, but also caused internal political disputes with controversial decisions such as the entry ban for people from some Muslim countries, the construction of the wall to Mexico and the planned deportation of undocumented immigrants. Again and again, Trump also attacked the mainstream media and individual journalists, insulted judges who made decisions he did not like and called into question the legitimacy of the Democrats and the opposition. A sharp friend-enemy rhetoric dominated the communication of the President, which was to a large extent communicated on Twitter. It became increasingly clear that Trump had succeeded in committing the Republican Party to his course. Some observers therefore raised the probing question before the election of whether American democracy could “break at this election” (Gellman, 2020). Although the first impeachment proceedings against the president, initiated at the end of 2019 on the grounds of power abuse and obstruction of Congress’s work, failed in the US Senate in January 2020, the process deepened the rift between the two parties and between the president and Congress. Hence the primaries at the beginning of 2020 were already marked by a sharp confrontation between the Republicans and the Democrats. However, the opposition to the Trump presidency was not limited to the Democrats, but included a broad spectrum of civil society groups and social initiatives that wanted to prevent Trump’s re-election. On the other side were not only the unshakeable defenders of the president, but also a Republican Party that has increasingly developed into the party of Donald Trump. Through the protests against police violence and racism that flared up in many American cities across the year in response to the death of an African American during a police control and the harsh reactions of the President Trump to this, the bitter political confrontation then intensified even further. Unlike in previous elections, the transition of power to the newly elected President Biden then became a complicated obstacle course, as Trump refused to acknowledge the victory of his Democratic opponent even after recounts and judicial clarification of objections to the election confirmed the election results and even the Supreme Court dismissed lawsuits of election fraud. The United States experienced a dramatic climax of Trump’s campaign to question the legitimacy of the elections and to doubt the election results on January 6, 2021, when, after a speech by Trump, his supporters stormed the Capitol in Washington D.C. to prevent the certification of the election results. While Trump denied any responsibility for this uprising, in which five people died, and according to YouGov polls 45% of Republicans surveyed considered the attack on the Capitol to be justified, the Democrats condemned the storming of the Capitol and saw it as an attack on democracy (YouGov, 2021). American

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democracy was facing one of the biggest challenges in its history with these riots. A second impeachment process against Donald Trump for “inciting insurrection” was initiated by the House of Representatives shortly before he left the White House and even some leading Republicans distanced themselves from Trump. But the vote in the Senate did not result in the required two-thirds majority for an impeachment, which would have deprived Donald Trump of access to all public offices. Since the influential writing of Alexis de Tocqueville (1835), which impressed his European contemporaries with the achievements of the democratic social order on the North American continent, democracy in the United States has been considered a model of a successful, new political order that has remained stable for more than two centuries. Even when European societies slid into authoritarian and fascist regimes as a result of the severe economic crisis of 1929/1930, the USA not only managed to maintain the democratic constitution, but also to implement extensive social reforms that were groundbreaking. The principle of “checks and balances”, a vital civil society and the adaptive capacity of the political system through crises were considered exemplary. Only under the impression of an increasingly divided society and the deep polarization fostered by the rightwing populist approach of the Trump campaign did the foundations of the democratic self-understanding come under particularly strong pressure. The political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt (2018) therefore warned early on of a scenario of the erosion of democratic relations “from within” – that is, by elected representatives who violate democratic norms and break rules. This development is capable of transforming a democratically constituted society into more authoritarian forms of rule, as some examples in South American and Europe political systems show. The conflict-ridden 2020 election showed that even well established democracies like the United States can be shaken by undemocratic, illiberal political strategies. “It Happened in America” was the title of the well-known American political scientist Pippa Norris’s (2021) critical essay on the hollowing out of democratic procedures during the Trump presidency. However, the open disregard for democratic norms and procedures was, according to Norris, foreseeable at an early stage if one not only analyzed Trump’s views and habitus, but also took into account the support in parts of the population, which, as survey data showed early on, supported Trump’s nationalist-authoritarian path (2019). “Democratic backsliding” was expressed not only in Trump’s populist political views, but also in his strategies of circumventing open, pluralistic procedures and democratic norms. It finally culminated in the denial of an election result achieved through democratic elections, which was supported by parts of the Republican Party, and

1 Introduction

5

in the challenge of the peaceful transfer of power to the elected successor. The critical diagnosis of democracy researchers on the global crisis-ridden development of democracies finally also affected the USA (Merkel/Kneip, 2018). How endangered is American democracy? Will Joe Biden be able to bridge the gaps in the divided society? What are his chances of implementing his political reform program in the economic, health policy and social sectors? How will the Republican Party position itself in the future? In order to answer these questions, this book lays the foundation by disentangling political developments on the basis of the elections and the underlying political currents. We argue that the evident rifts did not only arise with Trump’s presidency, but that the fault lines were already laid earlier. The future development of the democratic constitution of American society will therefore depend to a large extent on how these fault lines are addressed and overcome. The elections are not only decisive for American society and the development of democracy in the country. Rather, the United States’ global role is also at a crossroads. Four more years under the principle “America First” would have quickly accelerated the erosion of its global leadership role, because it would no longer be pursued by the leadership in the White House. However, the resentments in parts of the American population towards the costly international engagement of the USA will not simply disappear under the Democratic President Joe Biden. A simple return to the previous policy of multilaterally shaped international relations will therefore not take place without friction, because the goals and strategies in the post-pandemic world have to be re-adjusted and adapted to the consequences of the global economic crisis. This also exclude a re-ordering of transatlantic relations. Global politics have not stood still either, as can be seen in the growing self-confidence of China, an aggressive Russia or the ambitious Iranian nuclear program. The analysis starts with the primaries at the beginning of the election year 2020. While the candidacy of Donald Trump remained largely unquestioned within the Republican Party and the primaries were only a formality, the field was initially very wide among the Democrats. We reconstruct the path to the nomination of Joe Biden, illuminate the power relationships within the Democratic Party and the challenges Biden had to face, and analyze the positioning of the Democrats and the Republicans in an increasingly polarized social environment. We pay special attention to this context in connection with pandemic-related changes in the course of the primaries and their consequences, which are directly related to social questions of voting rights and voter turnout. In the following chapters we deal with the central political issues in this special election campaign: the economic development, which gained importance for the outcome of the election due to the

6

1 Introduction

pandemic-related recession, the controversial immigration policy, which became more acute due to the coronavirus crisis, as well as the role of minorities and racism. In the two following chapters of the book, we deal in more detail with the campaign in the last phase, the campaign strategies and the outcome of the elections. Here, we not only consider the presidential election, but also review the results of the House of Representatives’ and the Senate elections. In the final chapter we reflect on the importance of these elections for the future domestic policy of the United States and their consequences for transatlantic relations.

References de Tocqueville, A. (1835). Über die Demokratie in Amerika (dt. ed.). Reclam. Gellman, B. (2020). The election that could break America. The Atlantic. https://www. theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/11/what-if-trump-refuses-concede/616424/. Accessed 25 Jan 2021. Gorman, A. (2021). The hill we climb. An inaugural poem for the country. Viking books for young readers ( forthcoming). Here cited from: Inaugural poem, 21.01.2021. https:// www.rnd.de/kultur/amanda-gorman-gedicht-auf-deutsch-lesen-sie-hier-die-ubersetzung-und-das-original-the-hill-we-climb-QOXSZUHXRREFJNXHXKM2S4VEUY. html. Accessed 25 Jan 2021. Levitsky, S., & Ziblatt, D. (2018). How democracies die. Crown. Merkel, W., & Kneip, S. (2018). Democracy in crisis. Challenges in turbulent times. Springer. Norris, P. (2021). It happened in America. Democratic backsliding shouldn’t have come as a surprise. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2021-01-07/it-happened-america. Accessed 25 Jan 2021. Norris, P., & Inglehart, R. (2019). Cultural backlash. Trump, Brexit, and authoritarian populism. Cambridge University Press. YouGov. (2021). Most voters say the events at the US Capitol are a threat to democracy. https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/2021/01/06/US-capitol-trumppoll. Accessed 25 Jan 2021.

2

Joe Biden’s Road to the Nomination

At the beginning of a very special and turbulent election year in the USA, it was initially difficult to anticipate who would challenge Donald Trump in the presidential election in November 2020. The field of candidates within the Democratic Party was unusually large with up to 28 candidates at times, and it seemed like a competitive and long way to the nominating convention at the end of August, which would bring certainty. By mid-April, it was finally clear that the fight for the White House would be decided between the Democrat Joe Biden and the incumbent Republican Donald Trump, following the withdrawal of the progressive Senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders. Joe Biden’s path to becoming the Democrats’ official candidate was initially marked by much optimism. Biden has an established political profile through his long political career in Washington D.C. as a Senator for the state of Delaware, and served as Vice President under Barack Obama from 2009–2017, which is why he was initially considered the frontrunner in the primaries of the Democrats. However, he then suffered significant setbacks such as poor results in some primaries (especially in the states of Iowa and New Hampshire) and declining donations in January 2020. Only the primary in the US state of South Carolina at the end of February was able to revive his faltering campaign and to create a new momentum, which was also described as “Joementum” in the American press (Grullón Paz & Stevens, 2020). He then achieved significant victories in important states in March, such as in Michigan and in Florida. At this point, the Democratic primaries were essentially a competition between Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden, as many initially promising candidates such as Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar due to declining chances of success withdrew from the race. This was caused, among other things, by Biden’s successes on the so-called Super Tuesday early March, on which primaries took place simultaneously in 14 of the 50 US states. This gave additional © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2022 C. Lemke and J. Wiedekind, The Battle for the White House, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-38934-5_2

7

8

2  Joe Biden’s Road to the Nomination

impetus to Biden, so that it became increasingly difficult for remaining opponents such as Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren to keep up. As expected, Joe Biden was then officially nominated as a candidate for the presidential election on the nomination convention of the Democrats in August 2020. In this chapter we want to trace the path of Joe Biden outlined here briefly, which finally lead to his victory in the primaries. Even though this path officially began on April 25, 2019 with the announcement of his candidacy, we focus here on the most competitive phase of the primaries, which usually begins in January of the election year shortly before the first primaries. This means that the process of candidate selection extends over an unusually long period of time from a European perspective. The actual election campaign for the presidency is therefore preceded by a lengthy and complex process of candidate selection, which is not actually provided for in the American Constitution and only established itself during the twentieth century. These primaries mainly concern the challenging party, as incumbent presidents are typically set as presidential candidates in their party. In fact, Donald Trump already submitted the necessary paperwork for his re-election to the respective authority (the Federal Election Commission) on the day of his inauguration, January 20, 2017, and did not have to fear serious competition from within his own ranks at any time.

2.1 The Democratic Party’s System for Candidate Selection The system for determining candidates of the Democratic Party for the highest political office in the United States is both complex and fundamentally different from the more party-centered processes that we know particularly from the parliamentary systems within the European Union. For example, in Germany, political leaders are typically elected by delegates who consist exclusively of committed party members and they are nominated internally. The decision of who, for example, runs for Chancellor, is thus made internally and at the federal party level. In addition, the German party headquarters are strongly involved in the conduct of election campaigns. In the United States, the broader public is more directly involved in the process of candidate selection, and there are procedural differences between the individual US states because the party headquarters intervene far less. A complex and highly regulated system of sequential primaries allocates a fixed number of delegates between the candidates taking into account the respective primary results. Whoever can at the end of the primary process unite a simple majority of delegates behind him or her will be officially nominated for president at the national convention.

2.1  The Democratic Party’s System for Candidate Selection

9

In the 2020 Democratic primaries, which were held in all 50 US states, in the five American territories, in the District of Columbia, and for Democrats Abroad (supporters of the Democratic Party abroad with American citizenship), a total of 4750 delegates were allocated. The number of delegates per state is determined by a formula that uses the number of votes cast for Democratic candidates in the last three presidential elections and the number of votes of the state in the Electoral College (Democratic Party of the United States, 2020a, p. 1). This results, for example, in 494 delegates in California and 19 in Montana. The selection of delegates is regulated at the state level and can therefore look very different. However, 75% of the state delegates are district-level delegates, who are allocated along the primary results within the respective voting districts in the states. The remaining 25% are at-large delegates, which are allocated along the state-wide result of the corresponding primary and personnel-wise filled much later than the district-level delegates. This distinction is important for the course of the primaries because at-large delegates, which are won by candidates who drop out in the further course of the race, are divided among the remaining contenders. With the example of Florida this looks as follows: Of 190 bound delegates 143 are district-level and 47 are at-large delegates (ibid.: Appendix B). Delegates are typically party activists or local political leaders, who are often determined at regional party conventions. The selection follows a procedure already decided in 2018, which is roughly set by the party headquarters—the Democratic National Committee—and adapted at state level. The primary result in the respective state decides how many delegates have been won by the candidates running, with at least 15% of the votes cast being necessary to be considered in the proportional allocation of delegates based on the distribution of votes. The delegates thus allocated are also referred to as bound delegates because their vote is bound to the primary result at the nominating convention, even though this commitment is not legally binding, but supported by established tradition. The bound (district-level and at-large) delegates are to be distinguished from the so-called super delegates. In total, there are 771 of these super delegates, who are not bound by the results of the primaries and can therefore be decisive in a close race between the Democratic candidates. Of the 3979 bound delegates, according to the primary results in mid-August, 2687 voted for Joe Biden at the nomination convention, so that the role of super delegates in this election year was insignificant (Leatherby & Almukthar, 2020). Building on the previous example of Florida, it should be mentioned for the sake of completeness that 29 super delegates came from Florida, which are also called automatic votes in the rulebook of the Democratic Party (Democratic Party of the United States, 2020b, p. 2). These include, for example, former Democratic presidents

10

2  Joe Biden’s Road to the Nomination

or elected representatives in the US Congress. In many ways, the party elite here allows itself a potentially decisive say, which is not bound by the primary results. However, in this election year, the super delegates were only entitled to vote if it was expected that a clear winner in terms of primary results would emerge from the distribution of the bound delegates in the first ballot at the nomination convention. This should avoid the super delegates deciding a close race. Since Joe Biden had already won far more than the 1991 delegates required for a victory through numerous primary successes, and because there was no internal party competition after the withdrawal of Bernie Sanders, the outcome of the nomination convention was predictable at the latest by mid-April. However, if the race had been closer—that is, if no one had been able to exceed the aforementioned threshold of bound delegates—the super delegates would not have been entitled to vote until the second ballot at the nomination convention. This was not the case in 2016. At that time, they were still entitled to vote without restriction in the first ballot and finally decided a close race between Hillary Clinton and her rival Bernie Sanders in favor of Clinton. Since some super delegates also expressed their support for Hillary Clinton before the respective nomination convention, in particular Bernie Sanders criticized that the party establishment would marginalize the direction of the primaries with its influence. Since super delegates are neither bound by tradition nor by law to the results of the primaries, there has always been the possibility that they could ignore the result from their state and greatly influence the outcome of a close race at the nomination convention. So it was actually the super delegates, who made the nomination of Hillary Clinton possible in 2016, after she failed to gather the necessary majority of pledged delegates beforehand, which caused much criticism. With the rule change described for the election year 2020, the Democratic Party tried to end a long-standing controversy regarding the role of super delegates. In addition to the complexity of delegate selection and distribution, the actual conduct of the primaries is not entirely uniform, although this has also changed compared to 2016. In addition, the primary process was heavily influenced by the Coronavirus pandemic. For example, the primaries in Ohio and Georgia had to be postponed, while in numerous states there were closures of polling stations that made participation in the respective primaries more difficult. In addition, the course of the pandemic in the USA hampered the recruitment of volunteers, for example in polling stations or offering driving services for seniors. The federal states are responsible for the organization and implementation of the primaries that took place between early February and mid-July 2020. Two types of primary systems are to be distinguished here: the Caucuses and the Primaries. The process of candidate nomination on the Republican side differs

2.1  The Democratic Party’s System for Candidate Selection

11

only in nuances. For example, in the Republican system of candidate determination there are no super delegates. However, there are three automatic delegates (chairman of the Republican Party in the federal state and two delegates at district level) per state, who are however bound to the primary result of their respective state, unlike in the Democratic Party. In addition, in some Republican primaries the votes cast are not allocated proportionally, but according to the winner-takesall system. If, for example, a federal state has 50 delegates to allocate, in this system the candidate with the most votes receives all delegates and not just a proportional share based on the results of the opponents. However, since incumbent officeholders typically do not have to fear serious competition from within their own ranks, it was clear for the election year 2020 that Donald Trump would stand for re-election without any internal challengers. Accordingly, he was nominated as the Republican presidential candidate again at the Republican National Convention on August 28, 2020. That his Democratic challenger Joe Biden would ultimately win the Democratic nomination so clearly was not foreseeable after the disappointing result for Biden in the primary in New Hampshire in February of the election year. Here, Biden received only about 25,000 of a total of nearly 300,000 votes cast, which in this primary meant a distant fifth place behind Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren (New Hampshire Department of State, 2020). Joe Biden’s result was similarly discouraging at the beginning of February in the Caucus in Iowa, which traditionally opens the primaries. Here, he was only able to win six of the 41 pledged delegates and had to concede to Warren, Sanders and Buttigieg. The voting procedure in Caucuses, as in Iowa, is fundamentally different from the primaries that work through the classic voting by ballot at the polling station and are also called Primaries. A Caucus is a voting system that is similar to a meeting in many respects and is carried out at the district level in the respective state. This voting system was only introduced in 1968 as a particularly grassroots democratic procedure after the turbulent election. The voters, for example, come together in larger gyms or other polling stations and express their preference in the form of a list. This means that you actually stand, for example, in the camp of Bernie Sanders or Pete Buttigieg, while undecided voters are actively courted on site. In addition, there is a second ballot in which voters whose preferred option has not achieved the previously mentioned 15% hurdle can change their minds. The advantage of this approach is that the preference order is hardly distorted by strategic voting. For example, with the Primaries it is to be expected that, from the perspective of the voters before they vote, the expected success of the

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first preference is estimated. If it were to be assumed that the 15% hurdle in the final distribution of votes could be too high, the secondary preference would be more attractive if its chances of success were higher. This idea of strategic voting means that rational voters move away from their first preference if the preferred option is unlikely to win, or if, as in the case of the primaries, the 15% hurdle is not achieved, strategic voting then plays a much reduced role in the process of the Caucus, which is why the results in the first round are probably more accurate. However, in 2020, four states (Alaska, Hawaii, Kansas and Wyoming) nevertheless allowed a preference order on the ballot papers in the Primaries of the Democrats. First, the first preferences on the ballot papers are evaluated in order to successively exclude those candidates who are below the mentioned threshold of at least 15%. The ballot papers on which this candidate was the first choice are then re-evaluated on the basis of the further preference order. The voter migration between the first and second rounds of voting at the Caucus in Iowa allows for a fairly accurate insight into the preferences of the voters. It is easy to see how unattractive Joe Biden was to those who had to change their minds at the individual assemblies after the first round of voting because their first preference did not make the 15% hurdle. In particular, voters who supported the more left-wing candidates Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and Andrew Yang in the first preference apparently found it particularly difficult to see Joe Biden as a real alternative in the second round of voting (Nyhuis, 2020). Even if the result of these assemblies is by no means representative of the national level, the poor results in Iowa and New Hampshire indicated that Joe Biden had a lot of convincing to do before he was perceived by the Democratic electorate as the best chance to beat Trump. With regard to the election system of the Caucuses it should be added that the lists are of course not secret, which is why there are democratic concerns. In addition, in 2020, during the evaluation of the results in Iowa, which was supposed to work for the first time using an app, there were considerable difficulties and also the often quite chaotic implementation itself is criticized (Cramer, 2020). A Caucus often lasts several hours, so voters have to be prepared to spend this much time for the purpose of voting, as opposed to long open polling stations as part of the Primaries. It is to be assumed that this circumstance, together with more readily available polling stations in comparison to Caucuses, has a negative effect on voter turnout. Not least for this reason, in 2020, in comparison to 2016, a decreasing number of Caucuses were held. Only four states (Iowa, North Dakota, Nevada and Wyoming) used the assembly system in 2020, while there were 14 in 2016. In the context of the pandemic, Primaries are also advantageous because, for

2.1  The Democratic Party’s System for Candidate Selection

13

example, distance regulations and hygiene regulations can be implemented much more easily via absentee voting than in the case of large crowds gathering in assemblies. In addition to the previously mentioned preference sequence for four Primaries, there are other significant differences within this mostly used voting system that can be seen mainly in terms of voting rights. We suggest to distinguish between open, semi-open, semi-closed and closed Primaries. This distinction is based on the question of whether party membership in the sense of an existing registration is made a prerequisite for participation in the primary. If this is the case, the corresponding primary would be classified as closed, since only registered voters are allowed to vote. This is quite similar to party members electing political elites within a party in the German system. In contrast, all citizens can vote in open primaries—also those who are already registered with another party or not registered at all. For example, registered Republicans could participate in the Democratic primary and influence the results of the corresponding state. A Primary is semi-closed when registration for the Democratic Party is indeed a requirement for participation, but this can still be carried out directly at the polling station before voting. Semi-open Primaries allow participation without prior registration, but exclude voters who are already registered with another party. The delegate allocation and the diversity of the voting systems that structure the long process of candidate nomination showcase how complex the path to nomination as a presidential candidate in the USA is. This complexity also includes a certain susceptibility for disturbances, which surfaced particularly strongly in the context of the Coronavirus pandemic. Up to the withdrawal of Bernie Sanders it was quite conceivable that the postponed primaries could have had a greater importance. This would have meant that the Democratic Party would have been occupied much longer with the candidate selection. This could have lead to a significant delay in rallying resources and attention behind one candidate in the competition for the White House. From a Democratic point of view, such an advantage for Trump was to be feared. Since the postponed primaries were hardly more than formalities, however, a far-reaching influence of the pandemic was avoided. With the extensive schedule of primaries in mind, setbacks for the eventual winner of the primaries are not surprising. For Joe Biden, however, after Iowa and New Hampshire things looked so badly that his campaign seemed to be on the verge of collapse until the primary in South Carolina and the strong support of the African American voters became the turning point for his election campaign.

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2  Joe Biden’s Road to the Nomination

2.2 Turning Points South Carolina and the Super Tuesday Not only the obvious low support of the voters in Iowa and New Hampshire endangered Biden’s campaign. Also the comparatively low volume of donations in January and February signaled a certain loss of confidence in the Biden campaign. In these two months, Biden raised about 27 million USD for his election campaign. This put him far behind Bernie Sanders (approx. 72.9 million USD) and Elizabeth Warren (40.5 million USD) at the beginning of the election year. The numbers are based on the official reports that all candidates have to submit monthly to the responsible federal authority (Federal Election Commission, 2020). So it did not look good for Joe Biden before there was a significant turnaround in South Carolina, which had a lasting influence on the development of the primaries. The primary in South Carolina took place on February 29, 2020 and Biden won every single one of the 49 counties. Of the approximately 540,000 votes cast, slightly more than 262,000, or 48.6%, went to the former Vice President. This gave him 39 of the 54 bound delegates in this state. With the exception of Bernie Sanders with 19.8% of the votes cast, which meant 15 bound delegates, the other Democratic opponents were left empty-handed in the delegate distribution (State of South Carolina, 2020). This decisive victory had a clear signaling effect for the upcoming Super Tuesday, which cemented Biden’s positive trend. That South Carolina became a turning point in the Democratic primaries cannot be understood without the clear support of the African American electorate. The fact that Joe Biden has a certain head start in this voter group is due on the one hand to his position as Vice President under the first African American President Barack Obama. On the other hand, in South Carolina in particular, the support of influential African American politicians such as James Clyburn was decisive for the outcome. Clyburn is a high-ranking member of the Democratic Party and has represented the sixth congressional district of South Carolina continuously since 1993. In addition, there is a deep aversion to Donald Trump among African American women and men, which promoted support for Biden. Since about 30% of the population in South Carolina is African American, the support of this voter group was decisive for a victory in this state (US Census Bureau, 2016). Biden’s success is also likely to have been supported by his comparatively strong performance in the televised debate between the Democratic candidates shortly prior to the primary in South Carolina. In contrast, Bernie Sanders was less popular in the southern states. He was mostly seen as a typical

2.2  Turning Points South Carolina and the Super Tuesday

15

East Coast intellectual, whose progressive ideas and criticism of capitalism had a narrower basis in the South. The clarity of the victory in South Carolina provided much-needed fresh air for the Biden campaign and allowed Joe Biden to look ahead to the upcoming Super Tuesday with renewed confidence. For Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar the clear defeat in South Carolina was a setback they could not make up for, so they both dropped out shortly thereafter. Both immediately signaled their support for Joe Biden, which meant additional momentum and much less competition in the moderate part of the Democratic field leading up to the 14 simultaneous primaries on March 3. So, just prior to this important milestone in the Democratic primaries, the list of candidates had become significantly shorter, in that Biden was the only moderate candidate with a realistic chance of success. In many ways, this was a certain unique selling point that distinguished him from the still promising candidacies of Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, both of which represented significantly more progressive positions. When South Carolina initiated the turnaround for Biden, the results of the Super Tuesday were its spectacular continuation. On a single day, the allocation of more than 1300 pledged delegates was to be decided and Biden was able to win 811 of them. He won the primaries in Alabama, Arkansas, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia. Since Bernie Sanders was able to decide the other four states (Colorado, California, Utah and Vermont) for himself and won a total of 527 pledged delegates, the Democratic primary campaign had finally become a race between Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden. In this competition, the two dominant currents within the Democratic Party competed with each other. While Biden is considered a moderate candidate of the center, Sanders, as in 2016, stands for progressive reforms of the health and education systems, which gave him particular popularity among the young and well-educated generation. This meant a certain directional decision for the Democratic Party well beyond 2020. According to the results of the Super Tuesday, the race had clearly developed in favor of Joe Biden. Figure 2.1 illustrates the course of this inner-party duel between the beginning of the primaries in Iowa until April 8 as Bernie Sanders as the last remaining opponent of Biden decided to suspend his campaign. From Biden’s perspective, it shows how many of the bound delegates that were to be distributed on the respective election day were won in comparison to Bernie Sanders. A positive value therefore indicates that, in comparison to Sanders, more delegates went to Biden. Conversely, a negative value indicates that Biden received fewer delegates than Sanders. The "Interim status"-category category summarizes the deficit of Biden after the first three primaries (Iowa, Nevada and

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Distance gained delegate

550 450 350 250 150 50 -50

03. 11. 22. February February February Difference -6 -9 -15

Interim status -30

29. 3. March 10. March 17. March 7. April February 24 284 78 149 28

Total

533

Fig. 2.1   Delegates won in comparison—Biden against Sanders. Source Own figure based on the overview by Leatherby and Almukthar in the New York Times 2020

New Hampshire) for him. The also darkly colored bar “Total” captures the distance between Biden and Sanders in terms of the number of delegates won by the day of Sanders’ withdrawal. Figure 2.1 clearly shows that the development of the Democratic primary campaign saw a discernible change of direction with the election in South Carolina on 29 February. The clarity of Biden’s victory made it possible for the gap to Sanders to be almost equalized after the first three elections. Sanders was then unable to win more delegates than Biden on any of the following election days. On the contrary, Biden’s lead increased considerably with the Super Tuesday on March 3. The “Joementum” continued and eventually distanced the last remaining opponent even further. By the time Sanders withdrew after the primary in Wisconsin on April 7, Biden’s lead was already at a considerable 533 pledged delegates. As the states of California, Texas and Florida, which have particularly many pledged delegates to distribute, had already voted by this time, the Sanders campaign was faced with an almost insurmountable challenge. Even if it had somehow been possible to make the race closer again, it had to be assumed that the voting super delegates would not vote for Sanders again at the party convention because of Biden’s proximity to the Democratic Party establishment. In his speech announcing his withdrawal from the race, Sanders also touched on the consideration mentioned earlier that early Democratic unity regarding the candidacy is particularly advantageous in times of crisis. With the withdrawal of Bernie Sanders, the way

2.3  Joe Biden and the Democratic Electorate

17

was clear for Joe Biden. So the battle for the White House would be between the Democratic challenger Joe Biden and the incumbent Republican Donald Trump. Despite the unusually early time at which it was clear who would win the complex process of candidate selection in the Democratic primaries, the Biden campaign faced numerous challenges in the shadow of the Coronavirus pandemic. The extent and course of the pandemic in the USA fundamentally changed the election campaign. Large events with thousands of people were just as impossible as elaborate tours through contested states. In addition, Biden’s largely certain victory in the Democratic primaries does not disguise some of the difficulties of his campaign. In particular, younger and better-educated voters with more progressive preferences seemed to be only marginally enthusiastic about Biden and rather disappointed by Sanders’ withdrawal. In order to win the election in November, Biden, as a moderate candidate, had to succeed in uniting a variety of diverse and sometimes contradictory positions behind his candidacy. The argument that he is simply the better alternative to Trump was only partially promising. It required extensive work of persuasion that had to be done under constantly difficult conditions in this special election year.

2.3 Joe Biden and the Democratic Electorate A central challenge for the Biden campaign was to unite the many different streams of the Democratic Party into an electorate that will actually turn out to vote on November 3. For this, the support of Elizabeth Warren, but also in particular of Biden’s toughest competitor during the primaries, Bernie Sanders, was decisive. Both represent the progressive wing of the Democratic Party in contrast to Biden and reach younger people much better with demands for affordable college education, health insurance reform and resolute environmental protection than Biden. Even though it was clear by April that Biden would become the Democratic presidential candidate, it should be noted that his positions were sometimes received controversially, which is also a consequence of the internal heterogeneity of the political preferences in the Democratic electorate. Historically, the Democrats were considered the party in which union members, workers, European immigrants, and conservative citizens of the American South saw their political home. This coalition was known as the “New Deal Coalition” under President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933–1945), which shaped the Democratic Party for decades between 1932 and the late 1960s and made it possible to achieve a fairly constant era of electoral success at both the national and state levels (Andersen, 2014, pp. 103 ff.). In the course of the '68 movement, it

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2  Joe Biden’s Road to the Nomination

then developed more and more into a party in which various reform movements, such as the African-American civil rights movement with Martin-Luther King, the women’s and gay rights movement, environmentalists, and peace activists who protested against the Vietnam War, came together (Karol, 2014, pp. 129 f.). In the course of the 1990s, immigrated Hispanics also increasingly gained importance within the Democratic electorate. One consequence of this pronounced diversity is that the Democratic Party became the characteristic association of progressive, moderate, and economically liberal voters. At the same time, southern conservative voters were lost to the Republican Party, which deliberately promoted this migration with the Southern Strategy and primarily represented conservative positions. That the foundation for two sharply delineated political camps was already laid here is clear and it is a topic that we turn to in more detail later in this book (see Chaps. 4 and 5). However, the now particularly diverse voter base of the Democrats is not to be confused with reliable voter coalition, as the “New Deal Coalition” was. Rather, the Democratic Party must face the difficult task of forging a solid and majoritycapable coalition in the Electoral College from a ideologically quite heterogeneous group. In the USA, the President is only quasi-directly elected. In fact, a college of electors decides on the basis of the state results who will be President. The number of representatives in Congress determines how many electors can be won in a given state. In the American Congress, each state sends two senators to the Senate. In the other chamber, the House of Representatives, each state sends a fixed number of Representatives, but at least one, according to the population size, which is reevaluated every 10 years. So for example, California has 53 and North Dakota only one Representative/s (as of 2020). For the Electoral College, this means that California has 55 and North Dakota 3 electors. If one of the two candidates prevails in California with the majority of the votes cast, all 55 electors would be allocated to him or her, who will vote for him or her in the Electoral College, regardless of how close the actual distribution of votes may have been. In total, the Electoral College consists of 538 electors (435 seats in the House of Representatives, 100 seats in the Senate and three electors from the District of Columbia). To win the presidential election, a simple majority of 270 electors must be won (The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, 2020). This is a balancing act that challenges both Democratic and Republican candidates to forge a broad voter coalition that is capable to win a majority in enough states. For Joe Biden as a candidate of the Democrats, that task is particularly challenging, because under the umbrella of the Democratic Party there are very different currents or diverse interests to be united for electoral success in November.

2.3  Joe Biden and the Democratic Electorate

19

It is even more difficult when a pandemic with terrible consequences for the American economy reveals social divisions and when the USA is governed by a president who is not only controversial at least because of the failed impeachment proceedings in January 2020 and the storming of Congress by his supporters in January 2021, but who also consciously tries to profit from social disputes. Not least for this reason, Joe Biden positioned himself early as a reconciler of a divided country and declared the election in November to be a fight for the soul of America. This can be found, for example, as a central message in the Democratic Party Platform, a document that was adopted on the nomination convention on August 18 and which is similar to a party program. The section starting on page 39 is entitled “Healing the Soul of America” and, among other things, calls for the protection of American civil rights and the promotion of racial justice (Democratic Party, 2020b, pp. 39 ff.). This document reveals the heterogeneity of topics within the Democratic Party mentioned above particularly clearly. On the one hand, the document is almost twice as long as the Republican counterpart from 2016 (the Republican Party decided against a new version for the election year 2020). On the other hand, for example, in the aforementioned section on just 10 pages the following topics are addressed: racial discrimination, women’s rights, civil rights, the LGBTQ+ community, indigenous Indian tribes, people with disabilities, faith, freedom of the press, and art and culture. The Democratic Party makes its own claim here to be the party of diversity, which poses complex requirements for a successful election campaign and increases the expectations of Joe Biden as the new president. One possible starting point for the question of how well Biden was able to win over Democratic voters across the course of the primaries is poll numbers for his popularity. The data provided by the American research institute Civiqs is particularly suitable for this, as it not only allows a breakdown of the survey results into numerous subgroups, but also uses modern Internet surveys that allow for a higher degree of responsiveness and survey completeness than is to be expected with standard telephone surveys. From a methodological point of view, the approach of the political scientists at Civiqs is also particularly suitable for trend studies, as a representative group of over 145,000 participants (the so-called Research Panel) for the American society, which is constantly being expanded with new members, is surveyed continuously and thus repeatedly. In addition, only registered voters are included, so that the results are very unlikely to be distorted by answers from participants who ultimately do not take part in the election (Civiqs, 2020b). Figure 2.2 classifies the course of Biden’s popularity values along three established categories of the Democratic electorate and focuses on the period between January 2020 and October 2020. The first category

20

2  Joe Biden’s Road to the Nomination

90 80 70 60 50 40 1. Jan.

15. Jan.

29. 12. 26. 11. 25. 8. 22. 6. 20. 3. 17. 1. 15. 29. 12. 26. 9. Jan. Feb. Feb. March March April April May May June June July July July Aug. Aug. Sep. Age18-34

Age 50-64

100

Percentage of respondents

Percentage of respondents

100 90 80 70 60 50 40

80 70 60 50 40

College degree

20 .M 17 ay .J un 15 e .J ul y

30 25 .M ar ch

30

90

No college degree

20 .M 17 ay .J un 15 e .J ul y

30

25 .M ar ch

Percentage of respondents

100

African-American

Hispanic

Fig. 2.2   Biden’s popularity among voter groups. Source Own figure based on data from Civiqs (2020a)

differentiates between voters aged 18-34 and 50-64. Secondly, participants with a college degree are distinguished from those without a college education. Finally, the third category looks at Biden’s popularity values among African Americans and Hispanics—two minorities with special importance for the outcome of the election, as they can be decisive in contested states. The chosen period allows Fig. 2.2 to provide insights on the developments during the primaries of the Democrats as well as during the duel with Donald Trump. The individual values mark the share of all respondents who have a positive opinion of Biden. The additional answers not shown allowed the participants to express a negative opinion or an undecided opinion of Biden. However, the latter category is typically not of great importance, as it is only very rarely chosen by just over 10% of the

2.3  Joe Biden and the Democratic Electorate

21

participants in the categories under consideration. The intervals of 2 weeks allow for a relatively close observation of developments. A key message of Fig. 2.2 is that Biden’s popularity is increasing among all groups over time. Nevertheless, the data also reveal some findings that indicate at least relatively low enthusiasm about the candidate Biden. First, it must be emphasized again that the results are filtered by participants who identify themselves as Democrats and sympathizers, who would likely vote in the primaries and in the presidential election. Against this background, some weaknesses of Biden become particularly apparent among younger Democrats. For example, even after Biden’s clear victories on Super Tuesday, not even every second person in this group had a positive opinion of the candidate who would most likely be nominated to defeat Trump. Even after Sanders withdrew and thus the likely first preference for many younger voters dropped out, Biden’s approval ratings only improved marginally. In a similar way, although at a higher level of popularity, the values developed among the Hispanic minority. Even the clarity in the primaries at the beginning of April and the final nomination as the Democratic presidential candidate at the end of August had only a limited effect on Biden’s popularity in this group, which plays a role in the evaluation of the defeat in Florida on November 3. Against the background that low voter turnout is traditionally a problem in the USA and under the assumption that voters with a positive opinion of the nominated candidate are more likely to vote and are also not deterred by pandemic-related hurdles, this development in the run-up to election day was rather worrying from a Democratic perspective. However, these concerns were then largely eliminated by a particularly high voter turnout and a clear election victory by Biden. As the primary in South Carolina already hinted at, Biden performs strongly in the voter group of the African-American minority. The survey results in this group clearly show that they form a central pillar in Biden’s voter coalition. Here, not only the deep aversion to Donald Trump and the Republicans, but also Biden’s early support for the influential social movement “Black Lives Matter” comes into play. After the violent death of the African American George Floyd by police forces in Minneapolis, riots erupted and protests against racial discrimination occurred throughout the country. Joe Biden quickly supported the peaceful demonstrations and repeatedly stressed that the fight against racism is an important part of his fight for the soul of America. Similarly to African-Americans, the group of voters aged 50 to 64 stands out. They are among the most reliable supporters of Biden within the Democratic Party and indicate, across party lines, that Biden could be at least interesting to a significant part of Trump’s voters. On a side-note this also applies to the voters aged 65 and over who are not shown in Fig. 2.2. Since these two age groups

22

2  Joe Biden’s Road to the Nomination

usually vote quite reliably, this is a significant strength of Biden. The category that asks about the college degree is interesting in that it does not show clear ­differences in the levels of Biden’s popularity, unlike the other two categories. In addition, the values have converged as the election approached the results of the groups in which Biden seems to be particularly popular. A look beyond the attitudes towards Biden within the Democratic base illustrated in Fig. 2.2 reveals another difficulty, however: Biden’s popularity scores in the undecided voters without a clear party preference. Here, Biden’s approval was 38% in mid-September—shortly after his official nomination as a presidential candidate—and more than every second answer expressed a negative opinion of Biden (Civiqs, 2020a). At the same time, Trump was even slightly more popular than Biden in this group, which must have been a warning sign for Democratic campaign strategists. In summary, Biden’s victory in the Democratic primaries certainly ensured an official nomination at the Democratic Party Convention, but nevertheless cannot disguise a certain dissonance between Biden and significant parts of the Democratic electorate. Since far-reaching changes and new hurdles for voting participation came about under the impression of the Coronavirus pandemic (e.g. in the form of cumbersome postal voting procedures or closed polling stations), it had to be assumed that only the successful mobilization of a broad coalition of voters would lead to victory. The fact that Trump was significantly and consistently more popular than Biden among Republican voters across the aforementioned categories is, on the one hand, an expression of the largely closed ranks of the Republicans. On the other hand, it is also an indication of the ideological diversity within the Democratic Party, which is more difficult to unite behind one person than is the case for the much less diversified Republican positions. This is due to an increasing ideological polarization between the two parties, which we examine in more detail elsewhere in this book (see Chaps. 4 and 5). In addition to the clear delineation from Trump, the call for the fight for the soul of America and the portrayal as a politically experienced reconciler, three additional pillars of the Biden campaign emerge, which should unite the party’s base and turn the focus on a tough election campaign at the latest with his nomination as a presidential candidate. Biden established a narrative of hope in his campaign appearances. In his speech accepting the nomination as a presidential candidate at the end of August, the focus on a hopeful future was a central theme: “We can choose the path of becoming angrier, less hopeful, and more divided. A path of shadow and suspicion. Or we can choose a different path, and together, take this chance to heal, to be reborn, to unite. A path of hope and light.” (CNN, 2020). In this way, Biden clearly tries to stage himself as the antithesis to Trump. Here, the impression of a fateful choice for the USA should be created, in which

2.4 Summary

23

Biden tried to have the ethical-moral upper hand. The second strategy is the refreshment of the memory of the Obama-Biden administration. This is shown by the fact that in the Democratic Party program all sentences in which Biden occurs, Obama is also mentioned by name (Democratic Party, 2020b). Since health policy is a particularly important issue in the presidential election campaign, this particularly close connection to Obama can be understood as a statement of support for the Affordable Care Act (or “Obamacare”). Thirdly, the Biden campaign developed its own plan for coping with the Coronavirus pandemic, which was prominently placed on the campaign website and became an integral part of Biden’s criticism of Trump’s crisis management. It is clear that in Trump’s handling of the multifaceted crises, consisting of the pandemic, the economic crisis triggered by it and the anti-racism protests mentioned before, a weakness of the incumbent is identified, which enables Biden to stage himself as an experienced guide in a precarious situation. The triple crisis situation undoubtedly permeates all social classes in the USA and affects them differently, which at least partly explains why 83% of those surveyed in a Pew Research Center poll of 9114 registered voters perceive the outcome of the election as particularly important—the highest value since this question was first systematically and continuously recorded in 2000 (Pew Research Center, 2020, p. 5). Within the Democratic Party, there was widespread agreement from mid-April on who would run for president against Trump in this important election. The internal diversity of the Democratic Party can also be thought of as an opportunity and not just a challenge in this context. The opportunity for Joe Biden is to be closer to the actual heterogeneity of American society and its various problems in the context of crises with his message of reconciliation and diversity than is the case for his opponent in the competition for the White House. With Kamala Harris, Biden also deliberately chose a vice presidential candidate who, as the daughter of immigrants and the first woman in this role, personifies the aforementioned diversity—an important strategic decision (see Chap. 9).

2.4 Summary Overall, it can be said that Joe Biden managed to revive a faltering campaign and ultimately decided the Democratic primary early and clearly in his favor. As the victories in the primaries accumulated in March, the number of delegates needed for the official nomination was quickly reached. More or less promising opponents withdrew one after the other until Biden was declared the winner, even though the official nomination did not follow until August. In the absence of

24

2  Joe Biden’s Road to the Nomination

internal competition, the primaries postponed due to the Coronavirus pandemic were merely formalities, so that the candidate and party could focus on the actual contest for the White House earlier than usual. However, this chapter also showed some weaknesses of Biden. In particular, younger voters, who are increasingly responding to more progressive positions and largely saw Bernie Sanders as their first choice, could only get behind Biden’s candidacy with some reluctance and restraint, while the pandemic made traditional campaigning impossible. Based on the cornerstones that mark Biden’s position, it became clear that forging a majority voter coalition under the big umbrella of the Democratic Party in times of crisis was a special challenge that was already hinted at on Biden’s way to the nomination. The process of candidate nomination in the Democratic Party is particularly complex and quite lengthy. On the one hand, this allows for sufficient time to establish the profile of the final candidate and allows state-specific votes on the candidates running for office. On the other hand, the primaries were also to be understood as a dry run for a presidential election taking place under particularly difficult conditions. In order to shed light on this context in more detail, the following chapter aims to take a closer look at the conduct of the primaries in the shadow of the Coronavirus pandemic and to highlight controversies that are directly related to the presidential election in November. In doing so, the focus is on the state rules for access to postal voting, which were a preferred target for Trump’s futile attempts to challenge the election legally in order to reverse the result after his defeat. Trump held on to the narrative of a stolen election until the end, which shortly before the change of power contributed to the January 6, 2021 storming of the Capitol.

References Andersen, K. (2014). Constructing a new majority – The depression, the new deal, and the Democrats. In M. R. Hershey (Ed.), Guide to U.S. political parties. CQ Press. Civiqs. (2020a). Joe Biden – Favorable rating [data set]. https://civiqs.com/results/favorable_joe_biden?uncertainty=true&annotations=true&zoomIn=true. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Civiqs. (2020b). Research methodology. https://civiqs.com/methodology. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. CNN. (2020). Transcript – Joe Biden’s DNC speech. https://edition.cnn.com/2020/08/20/ politics/biden-dnc-speech-transcript/index.html. Accessed 28 Jan 2021.

References

25

Cramer, M. (2020). Besides Iowa, these are the states with caucuses. New York Times (04.02.20). https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/04/us/politics/what-states-caucus.html. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Democratic Party of the United States. (2020a). Call for the 2020 Democratic National Convention. https://democrats.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/2020-Delegate-Selection-Rules-12.17.18-FINAL.pdf. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Democratic Party of the United States. (2020b). Democratic party platform. https://democrats.org/where-we-stand/party-platform/. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Federal Election Commission. (2020). Campaign finance data – US President. https://www. fec.gov/data/elections/president/2020/. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Grullón Paz, I., & Stevens, M. (2020). From a 5th-place finish to here: A timeline of Joe Biden’s comeback. New York Times (20.08.2020), https://www.nytimes. com/2020/04/08/us/politics/joe-biden-2020-presidential-campaign.html. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Karol, D. (2014). Parties revised and revived – Democrats and republicans in the age of Reagan, 1980–2000. In M. R. Hershey (Ed.), Guide to U.S. political parties. CQ Press. Leatherby, L., & Almukthar, S. (2020). Democratic delegate count and primary election results 2020. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/elections/ delegate-count-primary-results.html. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. New Hampshire Secretary of State. (2020). 2020 presidential primary – Democratic. https://sos.nh.gov/elections/elections/election-results/2020/2020-presidential-primary/ democratic/. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Nyhuis, D. (2020). Die Präferenzen der demokratischen Wählerschaft: Die Vorwahl in Iowa [Blogbeitrag]. https://www.ipw.uni-hannover.de/de/institut/arbeitsbereiche/internationale-beziehungen/unser-blog-zum-wahljahr-2020-in-den-usa/gastbeitrag-i/. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Pew Research Center. (2020). Election 2020: Voters are highly engaged, but nearly half expect to have difficulties voting. [Data set]. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2020/08/13/election-2020-voters-are-highly-engaged-but-nearly-half-expect-tohave-difficulties-voting/. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. State of South Carolina. (2020). 2020 democratic presidential preference primary – Official results. https://www.enr-scvotes.org/SC/100517/Web02-state.242137/#/. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration. (2020). What is the electoral college? https://www.archives.gov/electoral-college/about. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. United States Census Bureau. (2016). Quick facts – South Carolina. https://www.census. gov/quickfacts/SC. Accessed 28 Jan 2021.

3

Voting in the Shadow of the Pandemic

A look at the schedule of the Democratic primaries immediately reveals the influence of the Coronavirus pandemic. Up to and including the primaries on March 17, in Arizona, Florida and Illinois the primaries could be carried out as planned and in the usual fashion, which applied to Caucuses as well as to Primaries. On this day, about 2800 new infections were registered, while only two days later there were already over 4700. On April 6, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (short: CDC) recorded more than 43,000 new infections with the coronavirus, while more than 3000 people lost their lives on this day alone (CDC, 2020a). In the USA, a particularly severe course of the pandemic was looming, which had far-reaching economic and social consequences. At this point, primaries had already been held in 28 of the 50 states and the race had a largely established winner in Joe Biden. Nevertheless, due to the course and extent of the pandemic in the USA, a total of 16 primaries had to be postponed and could mostly only be carried out by expanding and extending the deadline for mail-in voting. This change was easier for some states like Alaska because they were already working more with mail-in voting and only extended the deadline for submission. The primaries in Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York are examples for important postponements, as the primaries in these three states together decide on the allocation of just under 600 bound delegates and are therefore quite significant. New York tried to cancel the primary altogether on June 23, because the election was irrelevant to the outcome of the primary race at that time and because New York City struggled particularly strongly with the spread of the virus. The election had to take place after all, when a federal judge declared the cancellation of the election to be illegal. However, a presidential election cannot really be postponed. The election date on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November is regulated in a © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2022 C. Lemke and J. Wiedekind, The Battle for the White House, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-38934-5_3

27

28

3  Voting in the Shadow of the Pandemic

federal law and has been in place since 1845. To postpone it therefore requires a change in the law, which only Congress can bring about with majorities in both chambers. A postponement by a presidential decree (executive order) is therefore impossible. A bipartisan majority decision in Congress to postpone was never likely. Even under the assumption that this would succeed, the Constitution of the United States leaves only a small margin for such a postponement, because it stipulates that the new Congress must be installed on January 3 and that the term of office of the President ends at noon on January 20—or that the term of office of a President necessarily ends four years after his inauguration. These constitutional pillars cannot be changed by standard legislation. The new government must be in place in January 2021. There is no way around it. However, a closer look at the primaries in the face of the pandemic can still lead to a number of other conclusions that are to be understood as clear signs of a challenging presidential election on November 3. This is mainly refers to the handling of absentee voting. Different regulations and changes in the election year 2020 show that an at least apparently obvious option for a safe election process in the shadow of the pandemic does not take hold everywhere in the same way and fundamentally changes the election process. The special importance of absentee voting is shown by the example of the Democratic primary in the District of Columbia. Of just under 115,000 votes cast, almost 76,000 were sent by post, which posed a great challenge for administration and postal service at the same time (District of Columbia Board of Elections, 2020). In the state of Wisconsin in the 2020 primaries, of a total of just over 1.5 million votes cast, some 960,000 were received by post (Wisconsin Election Commission, 2020a).

3.1 The Absentee Ballot in the United States in the Context of Partisan Polarization In addition to postponements, the Coronavirus pandemic also caused changes in the conduct of elections. We focus on voting by mail, which is regulated very differently in the individual states. One way of categorizing the different regulations, centers on the hurdles that have to be overcome from the perspective of the voters in order to vote by mail. The typology distinguishes between very low, low, medium, high and very high hurdles for voting by mail. The first category includes states that automatically send absentee ballot papers to all registered voters. The hurdle to voting by mail is very low in these cases, as the completed ballot paper simply has to be delivered in time to be valid, and registration sim-

3.1  The Absentee Ballot …

29

ply has to take place once. In states that fall into the second category, absentee ballot papers are also automatically sent, but only if registered voters have previously registered on a corresponding list—the so-called permanent absentee ballot list. Once on this list, voters automatically receive the papers for all future elections by mail. Here, another step is necessary in order to automatically and continuously receive the postal voting documents. The hurdles to postal voting are assigned to the middle category if voters have to apply for postal voting, but this application is made easier in that it does not require justification and is either approved for one calendar year or even for a complete election cycle. In this category, applications for postal voting are occasionally sent automatically to all registered voters—a mode that was particularly used in this category in the context of the pandemic. States that can be assigned to the “high”-category generally only send postal voting documents on request and a new application is required for each election. However, in these states, the application does not need to be justified in order to be successful. Nevertheless, the hurdle for voting by post is higher than for the first three categories because a new application for postal voting is required for each election. From the administration’s point of view, this also entails additional effort because applications have to be reviewed and approved. This is particularly true for the administrations in the states that can be assigned to the fifth category and thus have the highest hurdles for postal voting in the USA. Here, the applications for voting by post must be explicitly justified, which at least makes it possible for the application to be rejected. Particularly interesting in this category is that the accepted reasons vary between states. While in Arkansas only physical limitations, illnesses or absence on election day are valid, Louisiana also accepts the working shift on election day, study at an educational institution outside Louisiana, volunteering as an election official, religious obligations, prison sentences that allow voting, service as a juror or confidentiality of one’s own address under the ACP (Address Confidentiality Program for victims of domestic violence, sexual harassment or stalking) as legitimate justification for postal voting. Finally, in all states that require justification for the application for postal voting, personal emergencies such as accidents can be claimed. The following overview in Table 3.1 distributes the 50 states and the District of Columbia along these five categories as well as along the composition of the state government in the election year 2020. The latter is important because pandemic-related changes with regard to absentee voting in the context of primaries but also with regard to adjustments for the presidential election are regulated exclusively at the state level. As at the national level in Congress, the state legislative bodies are also divided into two chambers: the State House of Representa-

aIn Alaska,

6

5

N

6

Florida, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota

Michigan

Vermont

Medium

traditionally, bipartisan coalitions gather for a majority in the legislature

Arizona

Utah

Montana

California, Nevada, New Jersey, District of Columbia

Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington

Rep.-Rep

Rep.-Dem

Dem.-Rep

Government constella- Dem.-Dem tion (prior to the 2020 election)

Low

Very Low

Classification of the hurdles to postal voting

51

21 Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Mississippi, Missouri, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia

Alaskaa, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming

16

9

Kentucky, Louisiana

Kansas, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin

18

4

Massachusetts, New Hampshire

17

Connecticut, Delaware, New York

Illinois, Maine, Minnesota, New Mexico, Rhode Island, Virginia Maryland

N

Very High

High

Table 3.1   Access to absentee voting and the state government constellation. Source Own illustration. The government constellation was classified on the basis of the 51 official government websites, while the assignment with regard to the hurdles for absentee voting was made on the basis of the overviews of the National Conference of State Legislatures (2020a)

30 3  Voting in the Shadow of the Pandemic

3.1  The Absentee Ballot …

31

tives and the State Senate. Only Nebraska and the District of Columbia have a legislature with only one chamber. Governors are the heads of the states’ respective executives and have occasionally postponed primaries by decree or lowered the hurdles for absentee voting, or extended the deadline for submission. For example, the Democratic Governor Tony Evers of Wisconsin wanted to postpone the primary scheduled for April 7 by decree, but this was prevented by the resistance of the Republican-dominated legislature and a corresponding ruling of the Wisconsin Supreme Court (Whitesides & Ax, 2020). Other examples such as the postponement of the primary in Georgia or in Delaware show that both the postponement of the election date and the lowering of hurdles for absentee voting can be initiated relatively unproblematically by the state governments. The four categories that capture the composition of state governments are designed as follows. “Dem.-Dem.” stands for the case that the legislature and executive are controlled by the Democrats, while “Rep.-Rep.” captures the opposite. The category “Dem.-Rep.” stands for states that had a Democratic majority in both chambers of the legislature in the election year 2020, while a Republican governor led the executive. The reverse scenario is depicted by the category “Rep.Dem.” These configurations are possible because, unlike in parliamentary contexts, the legislature and executive are elected separately. Three notes are to be made in advance of Table 3.1. Configurations in which the two chambers have different majorities were only present once (Minnesota), so that a separate category was not necessary. Since the governor and a strong majority in the Minnesota House of Representatives are in Democratic hands, this case is assigned to the category “Dem.-Dem.”. In addition, the assignments with regard to access to postal voting reflect the regulations before the Coronavirus pandemic, so that possible changes can be illuminated in a comprehensible way afterwards. Last but not least, it should be noted that “N” stands for the number of cases per column and row. The evaluation of Table 3.1 uncovers a number of central findings. First, it confirms that the rules for participation in postal voting in the USA resemble a mosaic because they vary greatly between the states, while high and very high hurdles predominate overall. On closer inspection, however, some quite clear patterns emerge. Republican-governed states tend to have very high hurdles for postal voting, while Democratic state governments prefer easier access to postal voting. With the exception of the two outliers Utah and Arizona, Democratic state government seems to be closely related to low or very low thresholds for absentee voting. If we look only at the two categories with clear party affiliation of the state government, it becomes apparent that only two Republican states—the mentioned outliers—make absentee voting easy. Of the remaining 19 Republican-governed states, 15 have high or very high hurdles for absentee voting. In addition, a ­geographical

32

3  Voting in the Shadow of the Pandemic

divide becomes clearly visible. In the southern states as well as in the states of the Midwest, it is clearly more difficult to vote by mail than in the states of the American West Coast, with only a few exceptions. States that are not established strongholds for Democrats or Republicans in terms of the electoral college are particularly interesting for the presidential election—so-called swing states. In the election year 2020, these include in particular Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina. In Colorado and Nevada, the threshold for absentee voting is low, which can promote higher voter turnout in the context of the pandemic. In Florida, Georgia and North Carolina, absentee ballots are only available upon request, although with different requirements for approval. The possibility of absentee voting is of particular importance in these three swing states considering the densely populated urban regions of Miami, Atlanta, Raleigh/Durham and Charlotte. Hurdles for absentee voting together with a potentially reduced number of polling stations make long queues likely and potentially favor lower voter turnout. Due to the traditionally low voter turnout in the USA, even small fluctuations can be decisive in the contested states. The Coronavirus pandemic presented all states with the central question of what voting would look like in the face of challenging conditions, and Table 3.1 showcased how different Republican attitudes to postal voting have been from the Democrats’ from the outset. The Republican aversion to extended postal voting was also fuelled by Donald Trump, who continues to stoke far-fetched fears of widespread election fraud through mail-in ballots. In a way, the primaries in 2020 simulated an unusual presidential election and illustrated how the affected states coped with the challenges in the shadow of the pandemic. The course and extent of the pandemic already indicated in late spring that it would not be over by November 3, the election day. In the debate about adequate means of holding a national election despite this difficult situation, entrenched lines between Democrats and Republicans have become apparent with regard to lowering barriers to voting by mail. The Democratic camp considers postal voting to be safe and reliable and sees the automatic dispatch of ballot papers as an opportunity for higher voter turnout. The Republican counterposition under Trump sees the legitimacy of the election result at risk, as postal traffic with ballot papers is argued to be susceptible to election fraud. Mail-in voting has thus become a political issue that distances the two camps of the contenders for the White House from each other when they look at the process of voting. A survey by the Pew Research Center in early August 2020 of around 11,000 adults showed that 58% of Biden supporters would prefer postal voting. Only 19% of Trump supporters share this preference, while 64% of Trump supporters expect an uncomplicated election. The Biden camp is much more pessimistic in this respect. Here, only 39% expect the

3.1  The Absentee Ballot …

33

election process in November to be unproblematic (Gomez & Jones, 2020). The Democrats’ scepticism is not without foundation when viewed against the background of some difficulties during the primaries. The fact that the elections on November 3 could finally be held without major difficulties despite the pandemic and with particularly high voter turnout is a particularly positive signal for American democracy. The comprehensive vote by mail is essentially linked to two conditions: a well-equipped administration to issue and count the ballots later, and a functioning postal service that guarantees shipping and timely return. The fact that both conditions are only partially fulfilled is shown on the one hand by the financial difficulties of the state postal service in the USA, which were not resolved before the election in November and were controversially discussed in Congress. On the other hand, the postponed primary in New York showed how difficult it is to cope with the flood of ballot papers. Weeks after this primary, which remained largely insignificant due to the postponement to June 23, many ballots were still not counted and there were difficulties with the timely delivery of the documents by the state postal service, so that many ballots were invalidated due to the deadline for submission (McKinley, 2020). This primarily affected a primary for a congressional district, but the problems were nevertheless obvious and had a certain signalling effect. A similar example is the primary in Connecticut. Here, about 20,000 ballot papers were sent late, so that affected voters had hardly enough time to return them (Kaufman, 2020). A look at Tab. 3.1 shows that postal voting in New York can actually only be approved on the basis of a justified application. However, in August, the Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo signed a law that considers the avoidance of the risk of infection with the Coronavirus to be a legitimate reason (New York State Senate, 2020). Applying for absentee voting remained mandatory, however. Connecticut goes one step further and makes voting by mail even easier by automatically sending all registered voters an absentee ballot request form, while self-protection from the Coronavirus is also accepted as a legitimate reason. The fact that some difficulties already arose during the primaries with the expansion of absentee voting caused certain doubts about the smooth process in the fall and indicated a need for progress on the two aforementioned conditions. However, this only refers to the issue of voting itself and not to the legitimacy of the election result as a whole. This distinction is important because the latter position generally suspects election fraud through absentee voting, while the former view recognizes it as a legitimate means and tries to improve it. Trump, however, mixed skepticism about the implementation of absentee voting with attempts to delegitimize it. Trump even stated long before

34

3  Voting in the Shadow of the Pandemic

election day that he could only lose if widespread election fraud had taken place (The White House, 2020). What the examples of New York and Connecticut suggest is that the coronavirus pandemic has caused widespread shifts in the landscape of absentee voting rules manifest particularly in numerous relaxations of restrictions (Love et al., 2020). A particularly notable change is that nine states that used to only send absentee ballots by request, automatically sent applications for the fall elections to all registered voters in response to the pandemic. Among these is Iowa, which is the only Republican-controlled state, which ties in with the previously mentioned opposition of Republicans to easily available absentee voting. Therefore, it is not surprising that of the six states that held on to a justification for absentee voting without adding the pandemic to the list of accepted reasons, five are Republican-controlled. In contrast, the Democratic-controlled states of California and Nevada decided to automatically send absentee ballots to all registered voters without a request. So one effect of the coronavirus pandemic is that access to absentee voting seems to be even more influenced by residence and state government configuration than before, deepening existing divisions between Republicans and Democrats. The latter is particularly clear in the geographic dimension. Voters in numerous southern states (Tennessee, Texas, South Carolina, Louisiana, Mississippi) have to overcome significant restrictions to vote by mail, while in states along the entire West Coast, including Utah, Nevada and Colorado, all registered voters got the absentee ballots automatically and without prior request. It is striking that absentee voting became more difficult precisely in states particularly hard hit by the virus. Based on the data from the CDC, a comparison between all states (including D.C.) and the adjustments made to absentee voting in the context of the pandemic is offered here (CDC, 2020b). For this purpose, the spread of the coronavirus in the respective states is measured as the number of cases per 100,000 inhabitants in Table 3.2 and divided into these six ascending degrees of severity in accordance with the CDC classification: Case number/100,000 ≤ 400; ≤ 1250; ≤ 1700; ≤ 2150; ≤ 2600; ≤ 3500. The end of September 2020 is used as the reference point because relaxations of the absentee voting regulations typically have to be approved not only by state legislatures and executive branches, but also because their implementation and execution would hardly be possible in time for the election on November 3 if they were adopted later. In addition, by this time the deadlines for registering to vote have already expired in many states. However, this does not entirely rule out that a few states have made absentee voting more accessible just before the election and therefore deviate from the classification presented here. The categorization of the hurdles to absentee voting follows the typology developed for Table 3.1 and therefore differentiates between the five

Very Low

High

N

13

20

Georgia, Alabama, New York

Florida

2

Idaho, Arkansas, Rhode Island

Illinois, Iowa, North Dakota, Oklahoma

Nevada, New Jersey

≤2600

10

Kansas, Missouri Nebraska, North Carolina

≤3500

N 10

2

10

6

51

9 Mississippi, Louisiana, South Carolina, Tennessee

Texas

12

Very High

8

Alaska, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Wyoming

Maine

Connecticut, Michigan, Minnesota, Kentucky, Indiana New Mexico Ohio, Virginia

Medium

Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, South Dakota, Wisconsin

Arizona

Montana

Low

Utah, California, District of Columbia

Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington

Vermont

≤2150

 ≤1700

Extent of the ≤400 pandemic (cases per ≤1250 100,000 inhabitants; Sep. 2020)

Classification of the hurdles to postal voting

Table 3.2   Pandemic-related adjustments to absentee voting rules 2020. Source Own illustration based on data from the CDC (2020) as well as the New York Times (Love et al., 2020) and the overviews of the National Conference of State Legislatures (2020a)

3.1  The Absentee Ballot … 35

36

3  Voting in the Shadow of the Pandemic

categories “very low”, “low”, “medium”, “high” and “very high”. Only a small adjustment is necessary: States that require a justification for the absentee ballot application but accept the coronavirus pandemic as a reason are assigned to the “high” category because this threshold is hardly higher than for applications that do not require any justification. The states in italics have made relaxations of the absentee voting regulations under the impression of the coronavirus pandemic and are therefore moving in comparison to Table3.1 in the following figure one step further to the left. In addition, the few states that are classified two categories lower (that is, further to the left) are highlighted, thus making significant relaxations compared to previously existing barriers to absentee voting. There is no movement to the right, that is, a tightening of the rules, and there is no relaxation beyond the definition of “very low”. If the text is not highlighted, the state has made no changes and the procedure for absentee voting remained the same despite the pandemic. Movements on the vertical axis are not comparable with Table 3.1 since Table 3.2 is about the extent of the Coronavirus pandemic and not primarily about the government constellation in the states. The key message of Table 3.2 is that high infection rates in the national comparison do not necessarily lead to a relaxation of the restrictions on absentee voting. Of 19 states particularly hard hit (categories ≤ 2600 and ≤3500), only eight have implemented relaxations of the absentee voting for the presidential election. It is particularly striking that, with the exception of the Democratic Governor in Louisiana all states that, despite the accelerating spread of the virus, held fast to the high barriers to access to absentee voting, are Republican-governed and are located in the American south. This is particularly interesting against the background that other Republican-governed states such as Arkansas, Missouri or West Virginia at least decided to accept the pandemic as a legitimate reason for the application for absentee voting, although they were less affected by it. In contrast, in California, the District of Columbia, Nevada and New Jersey ballot papers are automatically and without prior application sent to all registered voters. The fact that they are all Democratic-governed shows that even the extent of the Coronavirus pandemic was unable to overcome the divide between Democrats and Republicans when it came to access to absentee voting. Nevertheless, Table 3.2 confirms the previously indicated scope of the changes. While at the beginning of the year high and very high hurdles still dominated the sum of cases, now moderate and high hurdles for absentee voting predominate, while the number of very low hurdles doubled. A look at the previously mentioned swing states shows that Florida, Georgia and North Carolina made no significant changes of absentee voting, while voting by mail was made considerably more accessible in Nevada and comparable to the openness in Colorado. As mentioned before, Democratic voters

3.2  Who is Allowed to Vote?—Voter Registration, Voter ID …

37

in particular have a certain affinity for absentee voting, which is even more true in the context of the pandemic. Even small differences in voter turnout, which can be caused by different levels of hurdles, may make the difference, which is why the diversity in access to absentee voting is crucial for the election result. Overall, the changes in the context of the pandemic emphasize that the rules surrounding the voting process are fundamentally shaped by a certain degree of variance and are therefore not static over time. With absentee voting, only a small, albeit significant, insight into the complexity of the American electoral system has been achieved. In this sense, it is important to note that the starting point, which serves here as a benchmark for the pandemic-related changes, is itself the result of numerous and converging developments in American history, which cannot be given sufficient space here (Lowi et al., 2019, p. 441). The question of the hurdles for absentee voting makes deep divisions between Republicans and Democrats clear, which also touch on the fundamental question of restrictions on the right to vote. Even the most accessible absentee voting models require prior registration to vote.

3.2 Who is Allowed to Vote?—Voter Registration, Voter ID Laws and Polling Stations Making independent registration for the election a prerequisite for voting may initially surprise German and European observers, as on this side of the Atlantic, the state typically registers and entitles voters automatically—in Germany, for example, through the issuance of ID cards and comprehensive voting rights upon reaching the age of 18. In Belgium, Australia and Mexico abstention from voting is even punishable by fines. Here, voting is interpreted as a civic duty, not just a right. In the USA, no one can vote without prior registration, which leads to a noticeably lower voter turnout in comparison to other democracies during national elections (Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, 2020). However, two central concepts for this subchapter need to be defined first, which only appear trivial at first glance: electorate and voter turnout. The electorate can be divided into generally eligible and actually eligible citizens. Generally eligible are all American citizens who have reached the age of 18 and have not been convicted of a crime that excludes them from the right to vote. Actually being eligible to vote is however linked to registration, which looks different on a state level. In other words: “While the right to vote is universal, the exercise of this right is not.” (Lowi et al., 2019, p. 442). The elections—whether national or local—are regulated and organized on a state level in accordance with the US Constitution,

38

3  Voting in the Shadow of the Pandemic

which is why registration for the election also has practical backgrounds. In the absence of a federal agency that automatically manages registration, the states must at least know how many voters to expect for the administrative apparatus, for example, to produce sufficient ballots per voting district. For example, twelve states and the District of Columbia have implemented an automated process based on a 1993 law (the National Voter Registration Act; abbreviated NVRA) in which one is automatically registered with the state licensing authorities (the Departments of Motor Vehicles; abbreviated DMV) in the context of driver’s license issuance with the specification that one can still decide against it later on (National Conference of State Legislatures, 2020b). In the USA, the driver’s license serves as an identification document, since there is no ID card and only about 147 Million of 330 million Americans have a valid passport—a number that also includes those under 18 (U.S. Department of State, 2020). The number of citizens eligible to vote in the United States has increased over time through a series of fundamental liberalizations of voting rights. In 1870, the 15th amendment to the American Constitution ensured that former slaves and all ethnic minorities with American citizenship were allowed to vote, provided they were male. Only 50 years later, the 19th amendment to the American Constitution implemented the right to vote for women and doubled the electorate overnight, before another 51 years later, the 26th amendment to the Constitution lowered the voting age from 21 to 18. Demographic shifts and the growth of the American population to today’s just over 330 million people need to be taken into account here. In the 2018 midterm elections, for example, about 234 million people were eligible to vote—only about 114 million actually went to vote (U.S. Census 2020a). The voter turnout can be measured using this example. The number of actual votes cast is divided by the total number of generally eligible voters, resulting in a voter turnout of about 48.7% in this example. The problem with this common method is that the calculation basis also includes groups that are not actually eligible to vote, such as unregistered voters or convicted criminals, so that the number of eligible voters is slightly overestimated. As a result, the traditional model tends to underestimate the actual voter turnout. It should be noted that the term “electorate” in the United States refers to the group of all people who are “generally” eligible to vote, while “voter turnout” measures the percentage of people who actually vote. Starting from this basis, the subchapter first deals with the increasing importance of ethnic minorities in the American electorate, against the backdrop of the findings from Chap. 2 that in particular African American, Hispanic and younger voters tend to vote Democratic, while the Republican Party is particularly successful with conservative white voters in middle and older age ranges (Igielnik & Budiman, 2020). The question previously raised as to how strictly the n­ ecessity

3.2  Who is Allowed to Vote?—Voter Registration, Voter ID …

39

of an ID document with a photo for registration and voting is to be interpreted also gives rise to a tension between Republicans and Democrats, since higher requirements for registration and voting can be strategic means to facilitate or impede voting participation. It is interesting that both sides’ arguments end up in legitimate voting results, only that supporters of higher barriers cite the security against election fraud, although actual cases of election fraud in the USA are extremely small, while opponents emphasize the higher level of participation that would be possible through easier registration and voting. The controversy regarding the suppression of voters belonging to an ethnic minority only really took off in 2013 with the decision of the Supreme Court in the case of “Shelby v. Holder”, because a central control instrument from the Voting Rights Act from 1965 was abolished. In essence, it was no longer possible for the federal government in Washington D.C. to preventively check regulatory changes by individual states for possibly discriminatory elements against minorities. This opened the door for discriminatory voting regulations for a growing part of the American electorate. Figure 3.1 relies on data from the U.S. Census Bureau to evaluate the composition of the American electorate between 1980 and 2016. The basis for the calculation is based on all votes cast in the presidential elections held every four years during the period under review. The values ​​reflect the share of ethnic groups

Share of voter turnout in %

100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0

1980 1984 1988 1992 1996 2000 2004 2008 2012 2016 2020 Other 1 1,4 1,7 1,7 2,2 2,4 3,8 4,2 4,9 5,5 6 Hispanic 2,6 3 3,6 3,7 4,7 5,4 6 7,4 8,4 9,2 10 African-American 8,9 10 9,8 9,9 10,6 11,5 11 12,1 12,9 11,9 12 White 87,6 85,5 84,9 84,6 82,5 80,7 79,2 76,3 73,7 73,3 72

Fig. 3.1   Composition of the American electorate in presidential election by ethnic groups between 1980 and 2020. Source Own illustration based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau (2022)

40

3  Voting in the Shadow of the Pandemic

in the total voter turnout. The fact that the values ​​summed up each year do not exactly add up to 100%, is due to the fact that rounded values ​​were used. The trend lines are calculated as a linear function and the data table facilitates the reading of the values ​​for each presidential election along the four ethnic groups –the category “Others” is largely characterized by the Asian minority. The central message of Fig. 3.1 is that the proportion of whites in the American electorate, which is measured by voter turnout actually participating in the election, is declining while all ethnic minorities are gaining in importance. The dotted trend lines do not allow any reliable statement to be made about the percentage share of ethnic groups in voter turnout in 2024, but they do indicate a trend that is also shared by forecasts from the Pew Research Center (Cilluffo & Fry, 2020). This trend is also interesting because it is still hampered by relatively low registration rates for Hispanic and African American minorities. This means that the image of the actual electorate in presidential elections, as shown in Fig. 3.1, is skewed towards white voters due to lower registration rates in minorities. Fig. 3.2 captures the last four presidential elections prior to 2020 (2004, 2008, 2012 and 2016) and compares the registration rate along the ethnic groups “White”, “African American” and “Hispanic”. The rates are based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau and are illustrated as a percentage of the registrations

63,7

White: 2020

69,1 65,4 64,1

2016 2012

73,9 73,7

66,1

2008

73,5 67,2

2004 58,7

African-American: 2020

59,4

2016

69,4 66,2

2012

64,7

2008 60

2004 38,8

Hispanic: 2020

47,6

2012

48 49,9 47,2

2004 0

10

20

Voter-Turnout in %

30

40

73,1 69,7

68,7

44,1

2016 2008

75,1

64,7

50

57,3 58,7 59,4 57,9

60

70

80

Registration-Rate in %

Fig. 3.2   Ethnic groups and their registration rate/voter turnout. Source Own figure based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau (2022)

3.2  Who is Allowed to Vote?—Voter Registration, Voter ID …

41

to the total number of people who identify themselves as part of the respective group and are generally entitled to vote (black). In addition, the percentage share of the actually cast votes (grey) is given in relation to the registered and thus actually entitled citizens in the ethnic groups (U.S. Census, 2016). Three points stand out clearly from Fig. 3.2. First, it is clear that white voters register and vote in presidential elections more reliably, while the Hispanic minority stands out with a lower registration rate and lower voter turnout in comparison. Secondly, actual voter turnout is relatively constant among Hispanic and white voters, while it varies somewhat more among African-American voters. The higher voter turnout in 2008 and 2012 is certainly to be understood as an Obama effect, while the lower rate in 2016 can at least partly explain Hillary Clinton’s defeat. In 2004, voter turnout in this group was also relatively low when Democrat John Kerry narrowly lost to incumbent George W. Bush. Thirdly, Fig. 3.2 shows that registration by and large translates into actual voting, regardless of ethnic background, raising the question of why the two ethnic minorities have lower registration rates and lower voter turnout than white voters. A central reason for this is the definition of the obligation to show ID, which is interpreted more or less strictly by the individual states. The requirements for registration already differ from state to state—a variance that is particularly evident in the deadlines for registration. For example, while you have to register in Georgia at the latest on the fifth Monday before the election and thus four weeks before the presidential election, which always takes place on Tuesdays, Colorado allows registration on election day. In times of crisis, this means that in numerous states the election by mail must be planned far in advance of election day in order to initiate the registration first and then to complete the application for absentee ballot. For example, if you want to vote by mail in Georgia—a state that was particularly affected by the pandemic and electorally contested—you had to register successfully for the presidential election by early October at the latest and then overcome high hurdles for absentee voting in order to actually vote without going to the polling sites. However, the identification requirement for registration for the election is usually less strict than for the final vote at the polling station. In addition to the driver’s license or another recognized identification document (sometimes without a photo, such as bank documents), the social security number is also accepted for registration. In addition, for example, in 18 states, if no identification or social security number can be given on the registration form, the administration assigns a so-called “unique identifier number” to enable registration (U.S. Election Assistance Commission, 2020).

42

3  Voting in the Shadow of the Pandemic

However, a registration does not preclude the re-identification requirement when voting on site at the polling station and, in particular, differences between the states can have a negative effect on voter turnout. Table 3.3 contrasts the voter turnout of the three ethnic groups examined in the last four presidential elections in Georgia and North Carolina. In Georgia, strict ID requirements apply because an official ID with a photo is required and can only be submitted three or five days after the election, before the vote is declared invalid. A strict interpretation has been in place in in Georgia since 1977 and was tightened in 2005. In North Carolina, however, no photo ID is required and numerous alternative forms of identification are accepted (National Conference of State Legislatures, 2020c). A law to stricter interpretation was initially passed in North Carolina’s legislature in 2013. However, it was then challenged in court and declared an unconstitutional attack on the voting rights of the African-American minority in 2017. The law remained blocked for 2020, so no official photo ID is required. Apart from these different ID requirements, the two states are quite comparable in terms of their demographic composition, population, location, and especially in terms of the hurdles for mail-in voting (see Table 3.1 and 3.2). What distinguishes them in terms of access to the election is primarily the definition of acceptable ID documents for voting and mail-in voting. Table 3.3 includes the last five presidential elections and shows the voter turnout as the share of the actual votes cast to the generally eligible voters in each state per ethnic minority.

Table 3.3   Voter turnout in Georgia and North Carolina by ethnic groups in the presidential elections from 2004 to 2020. Source Own compilation based on the Voting and Registration data of the U.S. Census Bureau for the presidential elections 2004–2020 (2020b)

Voter turnout in presidential elections in % Georgia

North Carolina

2004

2008

2012

2016

2020

53.6

63.6

61.1

62.6

68.1

African-American 54.4

67.9

65

59.7

64

White Hispanic

7

54,5

47,8

47,9

44,2

Weiß

58,1

68,2

66

68,3

65

African-American 63.1

68.3

80.2

69.1

63.4

65.6

56

53.1

48.8

Hispanic

8.2

3.2  Who is Allowed to Vote?—Voter Registration, Voter ID …

43

As is particularly clear from Table 3.3, voter turnout along ethnic groups in Georgia is almost constantly lower than in North Carolina across the entire period under consideration here. In addition, Hispanic voters in both federal states are characterized by significantly lower voter turnout than African American and white voters, although their share of the population in both federal states increased significantly between 2010 and 2018 (Igielnik & Budiman, 2020). This finding points to a systematic problem that can be explained at least in part by the stricter ID laws. The negative impact of strict photo ID requirements on the voter turnout of ethnic minorities was empirically investigated and supported by political scientist Benjamin Highton in 2017 (2017, pp. 159 ff.). African American voters are particularly affected by stricter photo ID requirements as one of the few national surveys that asked about possession of official ID illustrate. In 2013, as part of a survey of 10,000 registered voters after the presidential election of 2012, Charles Stewart III found that only 63% of registered African American voters had a valid driver’s license, while 84% of white ethnicity did (2013, pp. 41 ff.). On a national level, “[…] the burdens of strict identification laws clearly fall heaviest on minority voters.” (ibid., p. 51). At the state level, Table 3.3 supports this relationship and highlights how high voter turnout can be for African American voters under the conditions of easier access to voting and mobilizing candidates (e.g. Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012). In these two presidential elections, the African American voter turnout was lower in Georgia than in North Carolina, which emphasizes the argument that voter turnout for ethnic minorities is particularly increased by less strict definitions of the ID requirement and that the stricter interpretation in usually Republican-governed Georgia tends to prevent this—even if the election in 2020 seems to have been an exception. The consideration becomes particularly clear with the examples of the gubernatorial elections in Georgia in 2018 and, moreover, also with the primaries in Wisconsin in 2020. As mentioned before, both are contested states, while in Georgia a relatively strict ID requirement favors lower voter turnout, which affects predominantly Democratic voter groups. In addition, both seats in the Senate were up for election in Georgia in 2020, making the vote in this state particularly important for the balance of power in Washington D.C. However, the gubernatorial elections in Georgia in 2018 were already particularly controversial in terms of their implementation and called into question the barriers to voter turnout even in the absence of a pandemic. The closure of some polling places and the malfunction of voting machines in largely African-American precincts, which complicated the exercise of the right to vote, already hinted at significant issues in the context of a pandemic. The African-American candidate of the Democrats, Stacey Abrams,

44

3  Voting in the Shadow of the Pandemic

lost narrowly with 48.8% of the votes cast to the Republican Brian Kemp, who as the then Secretary of State supervised and was responsible for the preparation and conduct of the election (Fausset et al., 2020). The gubernatorial election in Georgia clearly showed that closures of polling places and the resulting long queues as well as the extended routes to the polling station can negatively affect the voter turnout of crucial minorities and tip a close race in favor of the Republican Party, which clearly benefits less from high voter turnout in minorities. However, it was ultimately Biden’s slightly surprising victory in Georgia as well as the Democratic Party’s success in the two Senate elections in the same state that shifted the balance of power in Washington D.C. decisively in favor of the Democrats. Another interesting case is Wisconsin: In this Republican-governed state, voters experienced during the primaries in 2020 that polling station closures disproportionately affected urban regions, while rural areas, where the Republican Party is particularly strong, were largely spared. The primaries in Wisconsin were to be postponed, but took place on April 7 under pressure from the Republican-dominated legislature. The following two plot-diagrams compare the geographical location of the polling stations for the presidential elections in 2016 and those for the primaries in 2020 in Milwaukee County, which comprises the same-named most populous city in Wisconsin with about 950,000 inhabitants. The plot diagrams in Fig. 3.3 work with the longitudes and latitudes of the polling stations, which are available from the Wisconsin Election Commission (2016, 2020b), and thus show their number and distribution in the county area. Figure 3.3 shows that, due to the 2020 Coronavirus pandemic, voters in the urban area of Milwaukee County had considerably fewer polling stations available to them during the primaries than is usually the case. This drastic reduction was, in addition to the pandemic, also an expression of the great difficulty in finding sufficient volunteers for the election. However, the geographic location is particularly interesting because the densely populated city center was equipped with significantly fewer polling stations than the suburbs. Not least for this reason, the closures disproportionately affected the African American minority in Wisconsin. In total, about 390,000 African Americans live in Wisconsin, of which 260,000 live in Milwaukee County and suddenly had to make additional trips and endure longer lines in order to cast their vote (U.S. Census, 2020c). The fact that Wisconsin, like Georgia, only accepts an official photo ID—typically a driver’s license or an ID that is only issued upon request and after presenting the birth certificate—makes the situation even more difficult. This is also just one example of numerous urban areas where ethnic minorities typically make up larger shares of

3.2  Who is Allowed to Vote?—Voter Registration, Voter ID …

45

Fig. 3.3   Polling stations in Milwaukee, Wisconsin 2016 (top) and 2020 (bottom). Source Own figure based on data from the Wisconsin Election Commission (2016, 2020b)

the population than in rural areas and where voting in polling stations was made more difficult by their closure. If, in addition, higher barriers to mail-in voting and long registration periods are additional hurdles on the way to voting in the shadow of a pandemic, voter turnout can be severely restricted—especially for African American and Hispanic voters. Against this background, the high voter turnout in 2020 is all the more remarkable (see Chap. 10).

46

3  Voting in the Shadow of the Pandemic

3.3 Summary Overall, it is clear that the right to vote is comprehensive, but access to the vote itself is restricted by state-specific regulations and that those restrictions seem to be associated with lower registration rates and lower voter turnout. It is also striking that Republican-governed states appear to have a greater interest in maintaining or tightening barriers to voting that particularly affect ethnic minorities. On the other hand, Democrats are more in favor of easier absentee voting and lower barriers to voting access—both of which make sense in light of their heterogeneous base. These polarizing tendencies put the US political system under pressure and become more pronounced under the influence of the pandemic. From the perspective of the Democratic challenger, this is a fundamental problem because it requires convincing mobilization strategies to make potential voters willing and able to overcome the hurdles described here. Only then can a majority in the Electoral College be won, which fundamentally depends on states in which minority voter turnout has higher hurdles. Voting in the face of the pandemic means that a new hurdle has been added, which exacerbates existing difficulties. This results in different procedures and challenges for voting that fundamentally influenced the conduct of the elections in November 2020. A central finding of this chapter is finally that a clear line of division between Democrats and Republicans is becoming apparent, which manifests itself in the details of the electoral systems and it is also expressed in a geographical differentiation between Republican and Democratic strongholds. The following chapter is devoted to this polarization and traces the development of an escalating opposition.

References Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2020a). Trends in number of COVID-19 cases in the US reported to CDC, by state/territory. https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-datatracker/#trends_dailytrends. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2020b). United States COVID-19 cases and deaths by state. https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/?CDC_AA_ refVal=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cdc.gov%2Fcoronavirus%2F2019-ncov%2Fcasesupdates%2Fcases-in-us.html#cases_casesper100k. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Cilluffo, A., & Fry, R. (2020). An early look at the 2020 electorate. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/essay/an-early-look-at-the-2020-electorate/. Accessed 28 Jan 2021.

References

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District of Columbia Board of Elections. (2020). June 2, 2020 primary election after-action report. https://www.dcboe.org/getattachment/Data-Resources-Forms/June-2-2020-Primary-Election-After-Action-Report.pdf.aspx?lang=en-US. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Fausset, R., Epstein, R., & Rojas, R. (2020). ‘I refuse not to be heard’: Georgia in uproar over voting meltdown. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/09/us/politics/atlanta-voting-georgia-primary.html. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Gomez, V., & Jones, B. (2020). Biden supporters in states where it is hardest to vote by mail are most concerned about voting this fall. Pew Research Center. https://www. pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/08/26/biden-supporters-in-states-where-it-is-hardest-tovote-by-mail-are-most-concerned-about-voting-this-fall/. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Highton, B. (2017). Voter identification laws and turnout in the United States. Annual Review of Political Science, 20, 149–167. Igielnik, R., & Budiman, A. (2020). The changing racial and ethnic composition of the U.S. electorate. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/2020/09/23/the-changing-racial-and-ethnic-composition-of-the-u-s-electorate/. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance. (2020). Voter turnout database. https://www.idea.int/data-tools/data/voter-turnout. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Kaufman, E. (2020). 20.000 absentee ballots are being mailed by Connecticut town clerks one week before primary. CNN. https://edition.cnn.com/2020/08/05/politics/connecticut-ballots-primary/index.html. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Love, J., Stevens, M., & Gamio, L. (2020). Where Americans can vote by mail in the 2020 elections. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/08/11/us/politics/ vote-by-mail-us-states.html. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Lowi, T., Ginsberg, B., Shepsle, K., & Ansolabehere, S. (2019). American government. Power and purpose (15. Edn.). Norton. McKinley, J. (2020). Why the botched N.Y.C. primary has become the november nightmare. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/03/nyregion/nyc-mail-ballots-voting.html. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. National Conference of State Legislatures. (2020a). Voting outside the polling place: Absentee, all-mail and other voting at home options. https://www.ncsl.org/research/ elections-and-campaigns/absentee-and-early-voting.aspx. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. National Conference of State Legislatures. (2020b). Automatic voter registration. https:// www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/automatic-voter-registration.aspx. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. National Conference of State Legislators. (2020c). Voter identification requirements – Voter ID laws. https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/voter-id.aspx. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. New York States Senate. (2020). Senate Bill S8015D. https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2019/s8015. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Stewart III, C. (2013). Voter ID: Who has them? Who shows them? Oklahoma Law Review, 66(1), 21–51. The White House. (2020). Remarks by President Trump in press briefing, 13. August 2020. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-press-briefing-081320/. Accessed 28 Jan 2021.

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United States Census Bureau. (2022). Historical reported voting rates. https://www.census. gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/voting-and-registration/voting-historical-time-series. html. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. United States Census Bureau. (2022). 2020 Presidential Election Voting and Registration Tables. https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2021/2020-presidential-election-voting-and-registration-tables-now-available.html. Accessed August 17, 2022. United States Census Bureau. (2020a). Citizen voting-age population and voting rates for congressional districts: 2018. https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/voting-and-registration/congressional-voting-tables.html. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. United States Census Bureau. (2020b). Data tables – Voting and registration tables. https:// www.census.gov/topics/public-sector/voting/data/tables.2018.html. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. United States Census Bureau. (2020c). Quick facts – Wisconsin & Milwaukee county. https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/WI,milwaukeecountywisconsin/ PST045219. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. United States Department of State. (2020). Reports and Statistics – U.S. Passports. https:// travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/about-us/reports-and-statistics.html. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. United States Election Assistance Commission. (2020). National Mail voter registration form. https://www.eac.gov/sites/default/files/eac_assets/1/6/Federal_Voter_Registration_ENG.pdf. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Whitesides, J., & Ax, J. (2020). Wisconsin’s Supreme Court orders primary to process as planned on Tuesday. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronaviruselection-wisconsin-idUSKBN21O2JN. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Wisconsin Election Commission. (2016). Fall 2016 general election. https://elections. wi.gov/elections-voting/2016/fall. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Wisconsin Election Commission. (2020a). April 7, 2020 Absentee voting report. https:// elections.wi.gov/sites/elections.wi.gov/files/2020-05/April%202020%20Absentee%20 Voting%20Report.pdf. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Wisconsin Election Commission. (2020b). Spring 2020 election and presidential preference primary. https://elections.wi.gov/node/6524. Accessed 28 Jan 2021.

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Democrats vs. Republicans

In the competition for the White House, the polarization between Democrats and Republicans regularly spikes. For party supporters and representatives alike, seeing the highest US political office in the hands of the political opponent is not only a political defeat. It is really perceived by the losers as a severe catastrophe for the entire country (Dimock & Wike, 2020). Behind this is the history of a worsening hostility that draws both sides into separate and self-contained camps that mainly meet each other with open hostility and thus shrink the space for cross-party compromises. The gravitational centers of the ideological spheres of influence of both parties are increasingly moving away from each other, resulting in a multidimensional polarization, which emerges in particular on the liberalconservative scale. In addition, this trend of divergence also has a geographical facet, in which densely populated urban regions as well as the states of the West Coast and the Northeast of the USA reliably vote more Democratic, while rural regions as well as the American Southern states and the Midwest states tend to go to the Republicans. Polarization stands for a decoupling in which the position of the political opponent is perceived as particularly far away from one’s own political camp—with far-reaching consequences for the political discourse and for the sense of belonging of a society that only has the choice between two parties anyway. Third parties play only a marginal role due to the winner-takes-all voting system. Accordingly, a particularly common definition of polarization reads as follows: “Polarization as a state refers to the extent to which opinions on an issue are opposed in relation to some theoretical maximum. Polarization as a process refers to the increase in such opposition over time.” (DiMaggio et al., 1996, p. 693). Typically, in political science, a distinction is then made and based on such a basic understanding between the polarization of voters and the polarization in

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2022 C. Lemke and J. Wiedekind, The Battle for the White House, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-38934-5_4

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the political elite (e.g. elected representatives) (McCarty et al., 2006), although these two dimensions are connected with each other via the electoral process. This chapter focuses on understanding polarization as a process that is exacerbated by political elites in their quest for electoral success. Before the next section of this book takes a closer look at the characteristics of polarization in the United States, this chapter therefore first deals with its origin and asks how the Republican Party became Trump’s party. From today’s perspective, it is difficult to perceive that the first institutional anchoring of environmental protection at the federal level in the form of the Environmental Protection Agency was created under Republican President Richard Nixon or that it was Ronald Reagan who said: “If we ever closed the door to new Americans, our leadership in the world would be lost” (Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum, 1989). The fact that the Republicans have moved away from rather traditional Republican positions on environmental protection, immigration, but also on issues such as international free trade, is a strategically and self-reinforcing process with many facets, whose central driving force is the so-called Southern Strategy. On the Democratic side, the more liberal orientation with electoral successes in urban regions is partly due to their internal heterogeneity and the claim to reflect the true diversity of the American population, which was already hinted at in Chap. 2. This claim traces back to the legacy of the far-reaching “Great Society” plans, which under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (abbreviated: FDR; term of office: 1933–1945) revolutionized the salience and reach of government interventions. So, the elections on November 3, 2020 in the United States, against the background of severe economic damage caused by the Coronavirus pandemic, were also about competing ideas for the reach of government interventions. Republican positions tend to be particularly critical of social welfare programs such as state-run health insurance, while Democrats generally welcome government regulation. During the pandemic, this difference became particularly apparent when incumbent President Trump withdrew responsibility for the government in Washington D.C. and emphasized state responsibility even in times of national crisis, while his challenger Joe Biden established a national plan for rebuilding as a key element of his campaign. The contrast in positions is clearly visible in almost all election-dominant issues such as health policy, economic policy, or immigration policy. Often, Donald Trump is perceived as the cause of these hardened fronts, which fundamentally underestimates the role of the Republican Party and its history of strategic orientation in favor of white conservative voters in the American South.

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4.1 The Southern Strategy as a Precursor to Asymmetric Polarization The 1960s were, beginning with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963, turbulent times in the USA. They were characterized in particular by the civil rights movement and the struggle of the African-American population for an end to structural racism, which had deep roots, especially in the American South in the form of Jim Crow laws, which maintained racial segregation. In addition, large protests against the Vietnam War and an active student movement, which had numerous international counterparts, pushed messages of social change and broke ground for electoral success of more liberal positions. Similar to the previously mentioned formation of the “New Deal Coalition” under FDR, the Democrats in particular were convinced to be on the winning side of historical circumstances and saw an opportunity to continue their dominance at the national level, which had been going on since 1932. The clear electoral victory of the incumbent Democrat from Texas, Lyndon B. Johnson, in the presidential election of 1964 compounded the belief that his clear victory was associated with his more liberal positions and the determined support of the Civil Rights Movement. With 486 votes, Johnson broke the record of Franklin D. Roosevelt in the Electoral College and also received about 60% of all votes cast (Hoffman, 2015, pp. 8ff.). The states of Connecticut, New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Vermont, which had previously gone more to the Republicans, were all won by Johnson, while the established Democratic strongholds in the South went to the strongly conservative Republican Barry Goldwater—the beginning of a transformative shift. Under Johnson’s leadership, the Democratic Party aligned itself with his plans for the “Great Society”, which, for example, fought poverty in general, but primarily within the African-American minority, with the Economic Opportunity Act. Further liberal milestones in Johnson’s legislation included the reform of the American healthcare system through the establishment of the Medicare (for seniors) and Medicaid (for less well-off segments of the population) programs and the modernization of the school system through the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. However, these far-reaching social interventions by the state were met with massive resistance, especially in the American South. In response to the liberalization of American society, therefore, a realignment began to take shape—a redistribution of electoral preferences in favor of the Republicans in the Southern states.

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In his much-discussed book “The Emerging Republican Majority” from 1969, Kevin P. Phillips noted a development in the composition of the American electorate and in the geographic distribution of ideological predispositions of social groups which, taken together, can explain the unexpectedly clear electoral success of the Republican presidential candidate Richard Nixon in 1968 quite accurately. Phillips, who served as a campaign advisor for Nixon, even identifies his success as a turning point: “Far from being a tenuous and unmeaningful victory suggested by critical observers, the election of Richard M. Nixon […] bespoke the end of the New Deal Democratic hegemony and the beginning of a new era in American politics.” (2015, p. 1). This diagnosis is based essentially on the assumption of a collapse of the New Deal coalition, the binding strength of which declined due to the centrifugal forces of progressive positions and was challenged by strong social movements like the civil rights movement to the extent that conservative white voters could no longer identify with it. Phillips’ quite cynical and resentment-driven calculation was simple: “The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That’s where the votes are.” (Phillips quoted in Boyd, 1970). The strategic realignment along conservative narratives opened up access for the Republican Party to dominant voter groups in the American Southern states which, in the heyday of the “New Deal Coalition”, still voted reliably Democratic. In 1956, the Democratic challenger to Dwight D. Eisenhower, Adlai Stevenson, lost by a clear margin, but was able to rally the majority of votes in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas and Missouri. So while almost the entire country spoke out against the Democratic candidate, the aforementioned states remained loyal to the Democrat. Eight years later, however, the Democratic candidate Lyndon B. Johnson was able to win all states except for Arizona, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina (American Presidency Project, 2020). While an overwhelming majority thus spoke out in favor of Johnson, the southern states broke away as strongholds for Democrats. Here, the Republican candidate Barry Goldwater won with a message that was essentially based on the resistance of conservative white voters to the civil rights movement: “Goldwater’s approach of targeted appeals to the resentments of racist voters without appearing to be openly racist was tailor-made for the implementation of the still young Southern Strategy.” (Adorf, 2019, p. 38; translated by the authors). What had previously been reliable Democratic strongholds—the “Solid South”—seemed to be tipping in favor of the Republicans in the wake of social transformations. Until Jimmy Carter in 1976 in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, no Democratic presidential candidate could match the strength of the

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Democrats in the Southern states during the New Deal era. The strategic orientation of the Republican Party was aimed at consolidating this electoral alliance in the aforementioned states and beyond in the Midwest of the USA and is also known as the Southern Strategy. It is important to emphasize that this strategy is primarily designed for success in presidential elections and thus focuses on the required majority of 270 votes in the Electoral College. In a different and somewhat exaggerated formulation, Phillips described the approach to a journalist as follows: “Who needs Manhatten when we can get the electoral votes of 11 Southern States?” (Phillips quoted in Grohsgal and Kruse, 2019). This can only be a winning strategy due to a fundamental peculiarity of the American electoral system. For victory in a presidential election, it is not the majority of all votes actually cast that is decisive, but the majority of votes cast in a sufficient number of states in terms of the sum of the won electors for the Electoral College. Whoever wins the majority of votes in a state receives all of its votes in the Electoral College. Winning narrowly in several states therefore pays off more than winning clearly in a few states. The 2016 election showed this particularly clearly. Hillary Clinton’s 48.18% of all votes cast only resulted in 227 votes in the Electoral College, while only 46.09% of voters cast their ballots for Donald Trump, which was enough for Trump to win a clear victory in the Electoral College with 304 votes (U.S. Federal Election Commission, 2017, p. 5).1 But what was the basis for this strategic orientation? The Southern Strategy deliberately targeted a reordering of the political power relationships in the South. Its advocates recognized the deep dissatisfaction of white evangelical voters in the Southern states with more progressive positions that came to the fore as part of the '68 movement and were picked up by the Democratic Party. In addition, racism was by no means a thing of the past in many states that had fought on the side of the Confederate States in the American Civil War, among other issues, to maintain slavery. There were clear majorities in many Southern states in the 1960s that were committed to resist the abolition of segregation. “In these regions, African-American citizens were not only seen as competitors for economic resources, but also as a group that could gain political importance.” (Adorf, 2019, p. 32, translated by the authors). No election could better illustrate this than the 1968 presidential election, in which George

1 The

sum of the votes in the Electoral College does not add up to 538 because one vote was cast for John Kasich and one for Ron Paul in Texas. In addition, one vote in the Electoral College was cast for Bernie Sanders in Hawaii, while three votes from the state of Washington were cast for Colin Powell and one for Faith Spotted Eagle.

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­ allace ran as an independent candidate and yet won Alabama, Arkansas, GeorW gia, Louisiana and Mississippi. Wallace had previously been governor of the state of Alabama and was known as a prominent supporter of segregation as well as the author of the statement “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever”. This was associated with the fear of many white voters of losing political influence and reduced weight of their votes in elections. According to data from the U.S. Census for 1970, 37% of the population in Mississippi and about 30% of the population in Louisiana were African-American (U.S. Census Bureau, 2002). Through the Civil Rights Act and in particular through the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which guaranteed African Americans access to elections, the social and political situation shifted from the perspective of white voters in the Southern states, which resonates in today’s debate about the strategic suppression of voter turnout by minorities. Wallace ran as an independent candidate and won the aforementioned states despite his roots in the Democratic Party, which showcases the rift in the Democratic Party’s voter coalition. The Republican Party subsequently aimed to profit from this dynamic. The Republicans’ plan in the sense of the Southern Strategy was to capitalize on the noticeable opposition to the Civil Rights Act in the Southern states, which emerged clearly in Wallace’s election success of 1968, the Civil Rights Act in the Southern states, by promising to strengthen the states’ autonomy visà-vis the federal government in Washington D.C. The political scientist Timothy J. Hoffman summarizes this notion quite clearly: “Despite Wallace’s supremacy in the South, Nixon’s Southern Strategy paid long-term dividends for Nixon and the Republican Party. The Southern Strategy used states’ rights and other racially tinged appeals to court white conservative voters and exploited dissatisfaction with Johnson’s liberal racial and economic policies.” (2015, p. 10). The Republicans’ overall direction shifted in favor of positions characterized by decentralization of political power with reduced bureaucracy and far-reaching deregulation, which also caught on in states of the Midwest. Economic policy in the 1980s under President Ronald Reagan was characterized by tax cuts and deregulation of the financial markets—a policy also known as “Reaganomics”. The Southern Strategy narrowed the Republican Party’s ideology towards strongly conservative positions. The success in the Electoral College encouraged the Republicans in pursuing this course, which over time marginalized moderate posititons and allowed the religious right, such as the Moral Majority and the Christian Coalition of America in the 1980s, access to the Republican base. The Christian right especially fueled the culture war over social issues such as

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abortion rights and the rights of sexual minorities. Consequently, the strategic realignment along particularly conservative positions limited the ideological field of vision and fostered aggressive rhetoric, which was leveraged politically by, for example, Newt Gingrich in the 1990s and increased receptivity to more radical positions within the Republican Party. “Culturally, Republicans moved steadily rightward, depending more and more on white conservative evangelical voters and Americans living outside big metropolitan areas.” (Dionne Jr. 2020, p. 68). Today, evangelicals continue to play a central role in American politics as the Republican voter base. Accordingly, in 2016 it was somewhat surprising, though not entirely without plausible explanation, that Donald Trump managed to win the Republican primaries with radical rhetoric as well as with messages of economic protectionism and anti-minority positions. It should be emphasized that his success in the subsequent presidential elections is also linked to social dynamics that are outside the Republican Party strategy. For example, the socio-political forces in the USA cannot be understood without the influence of hyper-globalization, which is distributing economic returns unequally and slowing down social mobility in the absence of decisive governmental corrections. In the context of global interdependencies, some sections of the electorate feel left behind and Trump capitalized on this in 2016 with his “America First” message. The Republican shift to the right can be understood as asymmetrical polarization, because the Republican Party is moving further to the right on the ideological spectrum than the Democrats are moving to the left. “The Republican party has been the main driver of this chasm between the parties.” (Levitsky and Ziblatt 2018, p. 222). With regard to the Republican Party and its candidates, the speed by which the realignment along the Southern Strategy changed its core electorate is hardly more clearly illustrated than by the landslide losses of African-American votes. Of course, losses in this voter group were anticipated when the conservative positions of white voters were so obviously placed at the center of the party’s political orientation. When Richard Nixon lost to Democrat John F. Kennedy in the 1960 presidential election, the Republican Party was still able to win about a third of the African-American vote. In 1964, Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson won 94% of the African-American vote, thanks in part to his support for the Civil Rights Movement, while on a national level, a remarkable 82% of this voter group identified with the Democratic Party (Bositis, 2012, p. 9). The Southern Strategy was successful in what it was supposed to achieve: the development and consolidation of a

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stable voter coalition that gave Republican candidates an advantage in presidential elections on the way to a majority in the Electoral College by making the Southern states Republican strongholds. On the other hand, the Democrats were able to score points with African American voters and other ethnic minorities. In the 13 presidential elections between 1968 and 2016, the Democratic candidates always won the overwhelming majority of votes from ethnic minorities (Brown, 2016, p. 25). However, what works against the Democrats is essentially a special facet of the American political system: the overrepresentation of rural states in the Electoral College. To reiterate: the majority of all votes cast in a state decides the allocation of its votes in the Electoral College. The number of electors is based on the number of representatives from the respective state in Congress. The rule that each state is represented with at least one seat in the House of Representatives and that each state elects two senators regardless of population size, ensures that at least three votes in the Electoral College are the minimum, while the maximum of 435 seats in the House of Representatives and 100 seats in the Senate is also fixed. To illustrate, in 2020 in Mississippi one of the six votes in the Electoral College represents approximately 500.000 citizens, while one of the 55 electors from California represents 720.000 inhabitants. In Wyoming there are only about 193,000 citizens per vote in the Electoral College (as of 2020). What was written into the constitution as a protection for smaller states against the dominance of larger states is now, under the pressure of demographic change, turning into a driver of electoral imbalance between states. The U.S. Census, which takes place every ten years, and the distribution of delegation sizes per state in the House of Representatives that results from it, can only do little to counter this trend due to the upper and lower limits. The Republican Party recognized that conservative positions all but guarantee a constant majority in a number of states, while the more liberal orientation of the Democrats has arrived in urban centers and metropolitan regions like New York or Los Angeles since the end of the 1960s. However, in many states the increasing dominance of the Democratic Party in large cities was offset or trumped by the Republican strength in reliably conservative voting districts of rural areas with regard to the presidential election. In addition, demographic changes and structural differences in economic performance ensure that the livelihoods of people who, for example, live in the urban centers of California differ fundamentally from those of people who live in the much less densely populated and agricultural areas of Oklahoma, Mississippi or Arkansas. This results in different political preferences, which, in terms of the winner-takes-all electoral systems, leads to a distance of winning positions between the states. What Phillips therefore meant by the “Emerging Republican Majority” is essentially the description of a winning Republican voter coalition for the Electoral College, which broke away

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from the Democratic New Deal coalition in the 1960s in the face of progressive social reform. The Southern Strategy therefore meant a political shift in focus for the Republican Party, which was informed by a conscious perception of social centrifugal forces and is still rewarded by a unique electoral system. In the last 20 years (2000-2020), the Republicans won three of the five presidential elections (2000, 2004, and 2016) and only received a majority of the votes cast in one (2004). As the 2020 elections showed, however, the mechanism on which the Southern Strategy originally rested does not work without restrictions and can be overtaken by the growth of urban areas in states usually considered Republican strongholds. Joe Biden was able to surprisingly win the state of Georgia by means of the Democratic dominance in the growing metropolitan area of Atlanta (Georgia Secretary of State, 2020)—between 1964 and 2016, only Jimmy Carter (1976 and 1980) and Bill Clinton (1992) as Democratic presidential candidates were able to win this state (American Presidency Project 2020). Similarly surprisingly was Barack Obama’s victory in North Carolina in the 2008 presidential elections, which would have been impossible without the Democratic dominance in the growing urban centers of the state and without the high voter turnout of African American voters. Overall, it should be noted that the Southern Strategy plays a central role for the Republicans, even though it does not guarantee victories in all southern states. In order to understand the history of an escalating rivalry between the two major parties in the United States, the Southern Strategy is a central building block because it fostered a redistribution of political alliances that is clearly visible in today’s political landscape of the USA. “The realignment of the South from a solidly Democratic region to one dominated by Republicans is the starkest example of the sorting of ideology and partisanship.” (Barber & McCarty, 2015, p. 27). The Southern Strategy strengthened the sorting of ideology and party affiliation because it benefited from it in terms of electoral success. With regard to the elections to the House of Representatives, this effect becomes clear in that moderate Democrats in the American South were increasingly replaced by conservative Republicans, while Democrats increasingly represented more liberal positions and were successful in urban constituencies that are often strongly shaped by minorities such as African Americans and Hispanics (ibid.). Of course, the background of the polarization between Democrats and Republicans in the USA is too complex to be solely associated with the Southern Strategy and its effects. Nevertheless, it is clear that the strategic realignment of the Republican Party marks an important piece of the explanation for the escalating rivalry between Republicans and Democrats. Yet, the Democrats, driven by their support for the civil rights movement in the 1960s, gradually embraced more liberal positions, which extended the distance to the more conservative preferences of Republicans.

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As a result, the parties’ become internally more cohesive and as their ideological centers of gravity drift further apart, the willingness to compromise with the other side erodes significantly. As Nolan McCarty, Keith T. Poole and Howard Rosenthal show in their work “Polarized America: The Dance of Ideology and Unequal Riches”, “conservative” and “liberal” have become almost natural synonyms for Republican and Democratic representatives and their voters (2006, p. 4). However, the explanations for the Southern Strategy make it clear that the polarization is asymmetrical in that it is driven in particular by the strategic realignment of the Republican Party along conservative ideology in the aftermath of the social policy changes in the 1960s. As the political scientists Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson already noted in 2010: “[…] the story was one of growing determination and focus, as the Republican Party marched steadily rightward.” (p. 186). The opposition between Democrats and Republicans, which spiked during Donald Trump’s 2020 election campaign, can therefore be explained in many ways by a polarization and its central driving force: the Republican movement to the right (ibid., p. 13; Norris, 2021). Overall, the Southern Strategy coupled the Republican Party firmly with strongly conservative values of white voters and set off a long-term focus on ideological groups that became convinced Trump supporters in 2016 and voted for him again in 2020 despite a very controversial presidency. This subchapter shows that Trump is a prominent symptom of social change and party developments that began long before his presidency. The focus of the Republican Party on the American South for almost 60 years prepared the ideological breeding ground for Trump’s success in many ways. Eugene J. Dionne Jr. notes this aptly: “Over the last half century, Republicans have driven out moderate forces that might have provided more robust resistance to Trump, turning themselves into an almost uniformly white party in the process.” 2020, p. 67). In addition to consolidating and reinforcing conservative positions, another dynamic emerged that drives the opposition between Democrats and Republicans.

4.2 The Radicalization of the Political Discourse The first TV debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump on September 29, 2020 was characterized by Trump’s constant interruptions, obvious lies, attacks and controversial characterizations of his political opponent as a socialist with left-wing visions for America. A debate did not take place. to counter this, the microphones of the candidates could be turned off during the second debate on October 22, 2020 as the opponent spoke. This step was necessary for the first

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time and showcases the erosion of respect for the political opponent. Driven by an increasingly active and influential right-wing, the Republican rhetoric against the political opponents grew harsher. Trump, with his norm-braking rhetorical style, dominated the Republican primaries in 2016 and remained loyal to his rhetoric during his presidency without experiencing serious restrictions from his party. This was only possible because the political discourse was already radicalized before Trump’s rise to power. The Southern Strategy found a recipe for success in elections that benefited from polarization. However, the shift to the right also created pressure to more sharply delineate oneself from the political opponent and to abandon moderate positions. “[…] the parties have deserted the center of the floor in favor of the wings.” (McCarty et al., 2006). Even if bipartisanship and moderate positions do not disappear, it is worth taking a look at the development of political discourse in the USA in order to understand why Trump’s aggressive rhetoric finds resonance among voters and within the Republican Party. The fact that Trump remained true to his controversial rhetorical lines during his presidency and gained nearly 10 million additional votes in the 2020 presidential elections compared to 2016 underlines that the polarizing rhetoric was successful. Essentially Trump can be characterized as the culmination of a dynamic of eroding respect for the political opponent, which subverts common norms of political competition in democracies. Specifically, this means that generally accepted and practiced forms of dealing with each other in the political arena are deliberately ignored in order to attack the Democrats’ intentions particularly harshly. In this context, media attention generated by stepping over lines is more important than policy substance. This subchapter is dedicated to that development and begins with the influential Republican Newt Gingrich. His so-called “Contract with America” helped Republicans to take over the majority in this chamber for the first time since 1954 and at the same time also in the Senate. However, the radicalization of the political discourse cannot be explained without the effect of a divided media landscape that, through ideologically shaped news channels such as Fox News and—especially in today’s time—to a large extent unregulated social media platforms such as Twitter or Facebook have established effective filter bubbles. Transmitters and receivers of content thus gather around their respective ideological focal points and tend to exclude or simply devalue other opinions, thereby creating echo chambers in which exclusive and often ideologically informed positions reinforce each other. As a result, moderate positions diminish, which is attributed to their weakness in sharper exchanges. The second focus of this subchapter turns to the breakdown of this media landscape, which is closely related to the sharpening of Republican rhetoric.

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Newt Gingrich founded the Conservative Opportunity Society (COS) in 1983, which steadily increased its influence among Republican representatives and further removed the party from moderate positions. The COS initially consisted of 12 other representatives and steadily grew under Gingrich’s leadership. It had a strong influence on the aforementioned “Contract with America”, which outlined the basic legislative agenda of the Republican Party in the second half of the 1990s and beyond. In addition to far-reaching tax relief and the rejection of state regulatory functions, the focus was also on the strengthening of law enforcement and a strict justice reform following the slogan of “Law and Order”. The still very active conservative think tank “Heritage Foundation” also provided key ideological pillars and described the Contract with America as “[…] one of the most significant developments in the political history of the United States.” (Gayner, 1995). Gingrich’s influence was particularly strong when he was elected the first Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives in 40 years in 1995. In addition to cementing strongly conservative positions, Gingrich used his increased influence within the party to write a very aggressive rhetoric, especially towards the political opponent—the Democrats—into the DNA of the Republican Party. The Republican rhetoric should follow his example and increasingly include vocabulary such as “radical”, “corrupt”, “pathetic”, “shame”, “traitors” when it came to the Democratic opponents and their politics (Coppins, 2018). Here, Gingrich expressed the fundamental conviction that politics is a bitter fight in which one has to fight dirty to be successful. As early as 1978, during his third and ultimately successful campaign for the House of Representatives in a speech to Republican students in Atlanta, Gingrich made it clear that he stands for an aggressive style of politics: “You’re fighting a war. It is a war for power. […] This party does not need another generation of cautious, prudent, careful, bland, irrelevant, quasi-leaders […].” (Gingrich, 1978). Rather, Gingrich envisioned a more aggressive approach that expressed itself in polarizing vocabulary. For example, it is interesting that Gingrich had a certain preference for catchy nicknames, which can also be found clearly in Trump’s rhetoric. For Gingrich, Congress was less a legislative chamber and more a national stage on which aggressiveness replaced the openness to compromise. Since March 19, 1979, the cameras of the channel C-SPAN began to broadcast every session live, which was crucial for the success of Gingrich’s polarizing rhetoric. His messages would otherwise have lacked the audience and thus the reach. He often held fiery speeches in an empty plenary hall, knowing that he reached his actual target audience through the cameras. A central message that Gingrich implemented propagates a patriotic Republican Party that represents the true America and real Americans and puts a stop

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to the liberal ambitions of the Democratic Party—a narrative that has its roots in the Reagan era and the beginnings of the Southern Strategy: “The narrative is relatively simple here: The true American works hard, is not dependent on the help of the state and looks at social welfare programs with suspicion. Big Government is synonymous with socialism and therefore un-American.” (Adorf, 2019, p. 82, translated by the authors). The stylization as representatives of the true America continued long after Gingrich. For example, Sarah Palin, as a candidate for the vice presidency during the election campaign of John McCain, spoke in North Carolina in 2008, said that the true America could be found in the small towns and in the hard-working and very patriotic parts of the population. Many rhetorical building blocks that are typical for Trump actually have their origin in the strong hostility that Gingrich actively promoted in the 1980s and 1990s. So it comes as no surprise that Gingrich was one of Donald Trump’s key advisers during his election campaign in 2016 and established himself as one of his most important defenders during his presidency. The competition between Republicans and Democrats did not start with Gingrich, but it was raised to a new level of hostility by his rhetorical agitation, which rapidly and continuously radicalized the political discourse. From political competition, ideological hostility arose. Successes of the Republican Party such as in the midterm elections 1994 confirmed Gingrich’s approach and inspired numerous co-partisans to continue down this road. This is accompanied by the previously mentioned erosion of cross-party norms that at least guaranteed the political opponent relevance and significance in the political discourse. There has always been opposition between the two parties. The noval dynamic is the polarizing rhetoric that denies the legitimacy of the other side’s positions in general terms and establishes a particularly hostile vocabulary. In political science, this effect of mutual aversion between Republicans and Democrats is referred to as “negative partisanship” (Abramowitz & Webster, 2016). A consequence of deep divisions between the two parties, which is detrimental to legislative progress in Congress, is the erosion of the openness to compromise. “It is hard to imagine a senate leader happily admitting that he or she is, of all things, a compromiser.” (Glaser & Berry, 2018). Those who did not sharply attack the Democrats and their moderate-progressive positions were no longer considered true Republicans and could hardly be considered representatives of the true America. A generation of subsequent Republican representatives continued Gingrich’s pattern and increasingly lost sight of one of the premises of the American political system: Long-term and far-reaching legislative progress typically comes about only through bipartisan cooperation. If this principle fails, the revision of legislative progress becomes the core business of legislation for the ­opposition.

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It is also not surprising that legislative stagnation in the form of legislative proposals that remain stuck in partisan gridlock reached a historical peak under Republican majority in the House of Representatives under Gingrich’s leadership between 1995 and 1997 (Binder, 2018, p. 37). If legislative proposals of the opposition deviate from one’s own ideal point, blocking possible compromises is preferable. An example for the tendency of the Republican majority in Congress to obstruct the legislative process of a Democratic President when actually qualities of compromise are needed, are the negotiations on the budget for the fiscal year 1996. In the USA, the budget is passed by Congress every year through corresponding legislation and signed into law by the President. However, the President can refuse to sign and thus veto the legislative process, which can only be overturned by a two-thirds majority in the Senate and in the House of Representatives. However, the majorities per party in Congress are never so large. Hence, for Gingrich and the Republicans there were only two options: to negotiate with Bill Clinton, the Democratic President, or to go the risky way and increase the pressure through obstruction with far-reaching consequences. Following the rhetoric of agitation, the latter variant was chosen, which resulted in a so-called “government shutdown”—a situation in which the financing of affected state authorities is paused and, for example, state employees are forced to take a leave. In 1995, this situation lasted for 21 days during the Christmas season and caused public outrage (Congressional Research Service, 2018, p. 15 ff.) What is usually prevented by all means of negotiation by both sides quite suddenly became a viable strategy of power politics. In this particular case, however, President Clinton was able to prevail and the blame for the shutdown was largely assigned to the Republicans. However, the example shows clearly how political consequences result from confrontational rhetoric and hostile patterns of thought. Gingrich’s rhetoric changed the style of conversation in Washington D.C. permanently. When the Republican Party lost five seats to the Democrats in the context of the Monica Lewinsky affair and the failed impeachment proceedings against Bill Clinton in the 1998 midterm elections, however, there was growing internal resistance to Gingrich. Shortly thereafter, he resigned and gave up his seat in the House of Representatives after it was also revealed that he behaved ethically questionable at the time of the impeachment proceedings against Clinton as he himself had an affair. The radicalized rhetoric repertoire had by this time, however, long made it into the mainstream of the Republican Party, just as uncompromising obstructionism was a fixed part of the Republican strategy. Under Gingrich, ideologically sharpened rhetoric became a popular political

4.2  The Radicalization of the Political Discourse

63

power tool that benefited from the polarization between Democrats and Republicans and aimed to fascilitate it. The radicalization of rhetoric established here at the expense of willingness to compromise installed a changed understanding of political success. In perceptions informed by opposition and negative partisanship, success is an exclusive and sharply delineated category that leaves no room for concessions to political opponents. An absolute understanding of success emerges, which highlights more radical positions vis-à-vis more moderate approaches that can have overlaps with the other side. This dynamic becomes clear in the discourse on immigration policy during the second term of President Bush (2005–2009), when his reform proposal (the “Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act”) failed due to intra-party resistance. The reform aimed to guarantee a right of residence and a path to American citizenship to the then approximately 12 million migrants without legal status in the USA, while at the same time pushing for the reinforcement of border controls. The first pillar of the reform was sharply criticized by Bush’s own party from the outset. The fight against the bill was led by Republican Senator Jeff Sessions from Alabama, who was later appointed as Attorney General by President Trump. In a central vote on the reform in the Senate in 2007, only 12 of the 49 Republican Senators voted in favor of the President’s proposal from their own ranks. The Republican opposition to this reform proposal includes elements of anti-migrant sentiment that are closely linked to the resentments of a predominantly white electorate towards progressive social change. As previously mentioned, the Southern Strategy stoked fears of declining cultural significance in conservative white voters. The radicalization of the political discourse finally contributed to the fact that, in the complex and highly sensitive area of immigration policy the patterns of controversial rhetoric and obstruction politics became particularly pronounced. A study from 2016, which examined the Republican discourse of the party elite over time, shows that the chosen rhetoric deliberately appeals to ethnically motivated resentments. The focus has simply shifted compared to 1968: while in 1968 it was still the civil rights movement of the African-American minority, it is now primarily the immigration of Hispanic minorities and their growing importance in the American cultural landscape that trigger fears of a loss of importance in conservative parts of the white population, primarily in the southern states, which are played on by the Republican Party politically and rhetorically (Brown, 2016). Building on this dynamic, the candidate Trump was successful in 2016 with his particularly hard line on immigration policy and his extremely controversial vocabulary towards Mexican migrants. Immigration policy in general has a high

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priority in the American discourse and was also a central issue in the election campaign in 2020, which is why Chap. 8 deals with it in more detail. The success formula of the Republicans picks up resistance to social as well as cultural change and combines it with rhetorical radicalization, which gives expression to a relatively homogeneous conservative party ideology and mobilizes a reliable voter coalition. An integral part of this formula is the polarized opposition to the Democratic Party, in order to boost Republican messages in the political discourse. The immigration debate is just one of many examples. In the context of the war on terror after the attacks of September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush’s re-election campaign in 2004 was based fundamentally on emphasizing strength and questioning the determination of the Democratic challenger, John Kerry, in the fight against terrorism. Democrats were portrayed as being too soft, too indecisive, and too weak. The remarks of Tom DeLay—the then Republican majority leader in the House of Representatives—have remained particularly memorable. He always referred to Kerry as “French” in order to establish a connection between France’s non-participation in the Iraq war and the alleged powerlessness of the Democrats in the fight against terrorism. This went so far that he began his speeches in Congress with “Hi, or as John Kerry might say, ‘Bonjour’” (Cohen, 2004). DeLay had worked closely with Gingrich on the previously mentioned “Contract with America” and adapted his confrontational rhetoric without hesitation. The polarized media landscape plays a central role as a transmitter and argument amplifier for the influence and reach of sharp Republican rhetoric. The commercialization of the media with an open media marketplace since the 1980s through satellite and cable allowed for the emergence of a number of radio and television stations dedicated to political, social, or religious topics, often without considering the rules of independent reporting. A large-scale study by the Brookings Institution in 2008 that examined approximately 17,000 reports related to immigration policy for their content found that the verbal attacks of conservative media on the reform of immigration laws corresponded to the content of the opposition in the Senate. “In 2007, conservative voices on cable television news shows, talk radio and the Internet mobilized opposition to provisions of a Senate bill [the reform of immigration laws] that would have offered legal status […] to unauthorized migrants.” (Akdenizli et al., 2008, p. vii). Sessions himself pleaded for a postponement of the negotiations until Rush Limbaugh—a prominent conservative radio moderator—could explain the true content of the law to the American people. The function of these media channels as an amplifier of more radical positions is therefore a development that has reached its peak with Trump and the close connection with Fox News, but which began long before him and is related

4.2  The Radicalization of the Political Discourse

65

to Gingrich’s preference for attention through more radical rhetoric. There has been an increasingly close ideological connection between certain platforms and one of the two parties, which has fundamentally changed the media landscape in the USA and the preferred news source of an electorate that is divided in many ways. At the end of 2019, a survey by the Pew Research Center of approximately 12,000 Americans found that “[…] Republicans and Democrats place their trust in two nearly inverse news media environments.” (Jurkowitz et al., 2020, p. 4). The results of the study show that Democrats trust a variety of news outlets,with CNN being particularly trusted among Democrats, with 67% of respondents who identify as Democrats or independents that lean Democratic agreeing with this statement. NBC News comes in second (61%), followed by ABC News (60%). In contrast, Fox News’ dominance among respondents who identify as Republicans or independents with a preference for Republican positions is particularly pronounced, with 65% of respondents in this group trusting Fox News, while other stations are far behind: ABC News (33%) and Hannity Radio (30%). This discrepancy carries over to the news source actually used by both groups, and is even more pronounced when the two camps are limited to liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans. 67% in the latter group distrust CNN, while 77% of liberal Democrats do not trust Fox News (ibid., pp. 6–7). As a result, voters with a party preference gather around different sources of news. In a sort of self-reinforcing process, the profit-oriented broadcasters are aware of their relatively homogeneous audience and therefore deliver content that, following economic interests, is ideologically close to conservative or more liberal positions in order to increase ratings. The fact that there are no public broadcasters in the USA contributes to this development. After Trump called Biden’s victory into question and propagated a narrative of widespread election fraud, his messages were confirmed in numerous Fox News programs such as “The Ingraham Angle,” “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” or “Hannity,” which deliberately undermined the trust in the integrity of the negative election result for Trump among the predominantly Republican audience. Trump’s slogans like “radical left,” “voter fraud,” “stolen election,” and “national embarrassment” reached the target group almost unedited and with high frequency, while on the other side CNN described Trump’s baseless accusations as a danger to democracy and as an authoritarian pattern of behavior. This amplifies divergent perceptions that manifest themselves in the opposition between the two parties both on the level of voters and on the level of elected representatives. This media-driven amplified polarization is identified as a fundamental challenge for American democracy (Benkler et al., 2018).

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4  Democrats vs. Republicans

Social media like Twitter and Facebook make communication even more direct and immediate, which contributes to the closeness of ideologically shaped media echo chambers. In essence, the algorithms of the various news feeds are designed so that users are shown preferred content to a large extent exclusively. These platforms profit financially by means of embedded advertising from the time invested by users in consuming content and scrolling through their individual news feed. It follows that more time is spent on the platforms if the consumed content is adapted to one’s own preferences. The better this succeeds, the more interaction with the platform can be expected. Often widely personalized advertising patterns are thus given longer attention, which can then be monetized by the platforms. This business model reduces the receptivity to other positions over time and, due to its basic mode of operation, contributes to the fact that congruent views and positions reinforce each other. If the attention of the users is the currency of social media, it can be concluded that extreme positions are also beneficial to this economic interest because they attract a lot of attention and promote interaction with the platform. Trump already benefited from this logic in 2016 when he instrumentalized Twitter as a central communication tool in the election campaign and was able to place his radical rhetoric unfiltered and directly within the divisive political discourse. In the 2020 election for the White House, Trump also relied more heavily on Twitter. However, Twitter reacted to Trump’s constant attempts to undermine the integrity of the election process by placing warning notices under numerous tweets that identified the shared content as false or misleading (Conger, 2020). This step by Twitter towards assuming more responsibility for the content shared on its own platform is still quite unique and is now also discussed on Facebook and YouTube. After the storming of the Capitol, Trump’s Twitter account was completely suspended and his access to Facebook and Instagram was temporarily blocked. The core message is that radicalized rhetoric and controversial messages always require a platform, and that both the divided media landscape and modern communication of Social Media provide exactly this stage. The Southern Strategy, the radicalization of discourse and the divided media landscape are puzzle pieces that can be put together to explain how the Republican Party became Trump's party. They also indicate that these dynamics will not disappear with Trump’s election defeat, but will remain central challenges during Biden’s presidency.

4.3 Summary

67

4.3 Summary At the end of the 1970s, C-SPAN cameras broadcasted congressional sessions into the living rooms of the American people and increased the reach of confrontational rhetoric like that of Newt Gingrich. As the fronts between Democrats and Republicans hardened in the early 2000s, the long-term effects of the Southern Strategy contributed to the fact that within the Republican Party, more radical positions could become prominent. Supported by a divided media landscape and the rise of social media, the attraction of ideologically increasingly distant poles rose, deepening the divide between Democrats and Republicans. This chapter emphasizes that the Southern Strategy as well as the radicalization of the discourse are central elements for understanding the great rivalry between the two parties in the USA. This can explain why Trump was also able to defuse the fierce criticism of his crisis management at least with regard to Republican voters in the context of a pandemic with terrible consequences for the American population and the American economy. In largely closed echo chambers, critical voices are not heard, while a divided media landscape in combination with social media facilitates the guarantee for the upper hand in the interpretation of the political discourse at least for their own electorate. The reorientation of the Republican Party initiated by the Southern Strategy was a decisive factor in an asymmetrical polarization, which noticeably narrowed the ideological field of vision for the conservative party. The centrifugal forces of the deepening divide between conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats led to an erosion of the willingness to compromise, which was reinforced by the radicalization of the political discourse. This ideologically charged discourse reaches its target groups even easier in the digital age, so that information and the perception of its reliability often depend on certain predispositions that differ from each other along partisan lines. Of course, there are moderate forces in both camps that still emphasize the value of cross-party cooperation. But they are clearly in the minority in the Republican Party. Joe Biden’s message immediately after his victory was clear: he wants to overcome the partisan warfare and work with the Republicans. However, as this chapter on the political polarization in the USA shows quite clearly, this will not be an easy task. The ideological distance seems to be too great and the mutual aversion between Republicans and Democrats after Trump’s controversial presidency seems to be too established. This is also evident from the second impeachment proceedings following the storming of the Capitol by Trump supporters in January 2021, when only 10 Republicans were willing to vote for the impeachment

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4  Democrats vs. Republicans

in the House of Representatives and distance themselves from Trump. The radicalization of the political discourse, which peaked during Trump’s presidency, has become more than just a characteristic of the Republican Party. It has become a cornerstone of their political strategy and will remain significant far beyond the presidency of Trump. The following chapter looks at the extent of the polarization outlined here in more detail in order to better understand how far it has actually progressed.

References Abramowitz, A. I., & Webster, S. (2016). The rise of negative partisanship and the nationalization of U.S. elections in the 21st century. Electoral Studies, 41, 12–22. Adorf, P. (2019). Die Republikanische Partei in den USA. UVK. Akdenizli, B., Dionne Jr., E. J., Kaplan, M., & Rosenstiel, T. (2008). A report on the media and the immigration debate. Brookings Institution. https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/0925_immigration_dionne.pdf. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. American Presidency Project. (2020). Statistics on election years. https://www.presidency. ucsb.edu/statistics/elections/2012. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Barber, M. J., & McCarty, N. (2015). Causes and consequences of polarization. In N. Persily (Hrsg.), Solutions to political polarization in America (p. 15–58). Cambridge University Press. Benkler, Y., Faris, R., & Roberts, H. (2018). Network propaganda: Manipulation, disinformation, and radicalization in American politics. Oxford University Press. Binder, S. (2018). Congress and the President: Legislating in polarized times. In J. A. Thurber & J. Tama (Hrsg.), Rivals for power – Presidential-congressional relations (p. 31–51). Rowman & Littlefield. Bositis, D. A. (2012). Blacks & The 2012 Democratic National Convention. Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. https://jointcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/ Blacks-and-the-2012-Democratic-National-Convention.pdf. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Boyd, J. (1970). Nixon’s Southern strategy – ‘It’s all in the chart’. New York Times. https:// www.nytimes.com/packages/html/books/phillips-southern.pdf. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Brown, J. A. (2016). The New Southern strategy: Immigration, race, and ‘welfare dependency’ in contemporary US Republican political discourse. Geopolitics, History, and International Relations, 8(2), 22–41. Cohen, R. (2004). Globalist: The Republicans’ barb: John Kerry ‘looks French’. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/03/news/globalist-the-republicans-barbjohnkerry-looks-french.html. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Conger, K. (2020). Twitter has labeled 38% of Trump’s tweets since tuesday. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/05/technology/donald-trump-twitter.html. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Congressional Research Service. (2018). Shutdown of the federal government: Causes, processes, and effects. https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL34680.pdf. Accessed 28 Jan 2021.

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Coppins, M. (2018). The man who broke politics. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic. com/magazine/archive/2018/11/newt-gingrich-says-youre-welcome/570832/. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. DiMaggio, P., Evans, J., & Bryson, B. (1996). Have Americans’ social attitudes become more polarized? American Journal of Sociology, 102(3), 690–755. Dimock, M., & Wike, R. (2020). America is exceptional in the nature of its divide. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/11/13/america-is-exceptional-in-the-nature-of-its-political-divide/?utm_source=Pew+Research+Center&utm_ c a m p a i g n = 6 a a 1 2 8 c 0 9 b - E M A I L _ C A M PA I G N _ 2 0 2 0 _ 1 1 _ 1 4 & u t m _ medium=email&utm_term=0_3e953b9b70-6aa128c09b-400520273. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Dionne Jr., E. J. (2020). Code red – How progressives and moderates can unite to save our country. St. Martins Press. Gayner, J. (1995). The contract with America: Implementing new ideas in the U.S. Heritage Foundation. https://www.heritage.org/political-process/report/the-contract-americaimplementing-new-ideas-the-us. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Georgia Secretary of State. (2020). November 3, General Election 2020: President of the United States. https://results.enr.clarityelections.com/GA/105369/web.264614/#/ detail/5000. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Gingrich, N. (1978). Speech addressing the College Republicans at the Atlanta Airport Holiday Inn. Transkript der Rede von PBS. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/ newt/newt78speech.html. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Glaser, J. M., & Berry, J. M. (2018). Compromising positions: Why republican partisans are more rigid than democrats. Political Science Quarterly, 133(1), 99–125. Grohsgal, D., & Kruse, K. M. M. (2019). How the republican majority emerged. https:// www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/08/emerging-republican-majority/595504/. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Hacker, J. S., & Pierson, P. (2010). Winner-take-all politics: How Washington made the rich richer – and turned its back on the middle class. Simon & Schuster Paperbacks. Hoffman, T. J. (2015). The civil rights realignment: How race dominates presidential elections. Political Analysis. https://scholarship.shu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1006& context=pa. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Jurkowitz, M., Mitchell, A., Shearer, E., & Walker, M. (2020). U.S. media polarization and the 2020 elections: A nation divided. Pew Research Center. https://www.journalism.org/2020/01/24/u-s-media-polarization-and-the-2020-election-a-nation-divided/. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Levitsky, S., & Ziblatt, D. (2018). How democracies die. Crown Publishers. McCarty, N., Poole, K. T., & Rosenthal, H. (2006). Polarized America: The dance of ideology and unequal riches. MIT Press. Norris, P. (2021). It happened in America – Democratic backsliding shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Foreign Affairs. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/unitedstates/2021-01-07/it-happened-america. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Phillips, K. P. (2015). The emerging republican majority. Princeton University Press. Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum. (1989). Remarks at the presentation ceremony for the presidential medal of freedom. https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/

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speech/remarks-presentation-ceremony-presidential-medal-freedom-5. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. United States Federal Election Commission. (2017). Federal Election 2016 – Election Results for the U.S. President, the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives. https://www.fec.gov/resources/cms-content/documents/federalelections2016.pdf. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. United States Census Bureau. (2002). Historical census statistics on population totals by race, 1790 to 1990, and by Hispanic origin, 1970 to 1990, for the United States, regions, divisions, and states. Working Paper (Eds. Campbell Gibson and Kay Jung). https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/working-papers/2002/demo/POPtwps0056.pdf. Accessed 28 Jan 2021.

5

The Polarization and its Characteristics

“The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism.” (Senate Document No. 106–21, 2000, pp. 15 ff.)

With these words, the first President of the USA, George Washington, expressed the danger at the end of his second and last term in office in 1796 that he saw in the hostility between parties. In fact, parties are not mentioned at all in the American Constitution and initially played no role in the basic conception of the American political system, while in contrast, the role of parties is, for example, firmly anchored in the German Basic Law in Article 21. However, parties in the USA have increasingly gained in importance as the geographical extension of the American state territory increased both the plurality of interests and the requirements for the federal state. Finally, the previously described winner-takes-all election system also favored the development of two dominant parties. This chapter focuses on different dimensions of polarization in the USA and understands them as empirical observations in the voting behavior of representatives as well as a historical trend of ideological distancing between two increasingly homogeneous camps. After the last chapter examined the hostility between Democrats and Republicans in more detail and pinpointed its central driving forces in the Southern Strategy as well as in the radicalization of the political discourse, this part of the book approaches the question of how polarization can be captured empirically. It is important to expand the view beyond Trump’s controversial presidency into the history of American politics. Shortly after his election, Trump noted quite appropriately: “I didn’t come along and divide this country. This country was seriously divided before I got here.” (The White House, 2017). © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2022 C. Lemke and J. Wiedekind, The Battle for the White House, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-38934-5_5

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5  The Polarization and its Characteristics

However, Trump’s presidency was more of an accelerant than a fire extinguisher for the polarization that characterizes American politics today. Recognizing and understanding the characteristics allows insights into the implications of polarization for the Biden-Harris administration, because the American electorate and representatives were rarely as far apart ideologically as in the election year 2020. The tough competition for the White House in the context of the Coronavirus pandemic and Trump’s unwillingness to recognize his defeat intensified rifts in American society. A few days after the election, a Pew Research Center survey of about 10,000 voters found that 79% of those who said they voted for Trump consider the conduct of the election to be inadequate or completely inadequate. In contrast, 94% of those who voted for Biden said that the elections were carried out quite well or even very well overall (Pew Research Center, 2020, p. 12). If even the voting process, as an essential pillar of the democratic process, is politicized to the extent that confidence in its proper conduct depends on the respective political camp, it must be assumed that polarization is spiking. Similarly striking is that for 84% of respondents, it was already clear before September 2020 who they would vote for in November. In 2016, only 67% were as early decided. In fact, in 2016, 13% of those surveyed said they only decided in the last week before the election. In 2020, this only applied to 5% (ibid.). In a groundbreaking election that was actually characterized by comprehensive uncertainties in the face of health, social and economic crises, it seemed clear to most voters early on who they would vote for. The perceived subscription to one or the other political camp has today become a dominant structural principle in the USA and at least in 2020 the hardened fronts were not broken up by the far-reaching and consequential crises. On the contrary: Even the perceptions of the severity of the Coronavirus pandemic and its consequences differed strongly between Republicans and Democrats. Only 24% of the Republicans surveyed in another survey considered the Coronavirus pandemic to be an issue that was important in the election year 2020, which stands in stark contrast to the 84% of the Democrats surveyed who attribute great importance to the pandemic (Dimock & Wike, 2020). In times of radicalized discourse and media echo chambers, the close connection between party and voter is not seriously challenged in times of crisis. The hurdle of questioning party-political predispositions simply appears to be too high. Polarization can then be thought of on the standard liberal-conservative scale in two ways: On the one hand, the ideological focal points move in opposite directions from an hypothetical moderate center. On the other hand, with the increasing distance to the political opponent, the attraction of one’s own camp also increases, which is especially true for two-party systems in which moderate middle ground positions are left behind.

5.1  Party Affiliation and Preferences in the American Electorate

73

However, it should be noted that the strong polarization does not go hand in hand with the end of bipartisan cooperation. With regard to American society, the focus on political polarization carries the risk of overlooking the strong social cohesion of American communities at the local level. Neighbourly help, charitable work, active clubs, voluntary work and a shared conviction that the USA is a unique country often unite Americans more than they are divided by political polarization. That is why it is important to emphasize from the outset that this chapter deals with a prominent and far-reaching phenomenon in American democracy that affects both society and politics to a great extent, but does not define them in their entirety. To what extent there will be a re-grouping—or a realignment—in the medium or long term is still open. For the 2020 election, however, polarization has become a common explanation for the party-political rifts between Democrats and Republicans, because it actually provides useful insights for the 2016 election of Donald Trump and the 2020 election campaign.

5.1 Party Affiliation and Preferences in the American Electorate The basic assumption underlying the search for signs of polarization in the American electorate is that liberal voters vote Democratic and conservative voters vote Republican. The closer this dynamic maps onto actual voting behavior, the more clearly we can see the degree of polarization in the electorate. So it’s about understanding how clearly the electorate divides into two ideologically distant camps. This effect is also defined in political science as partisan sorting and it is typically researched by means of survey data such as the American National Election Studies (see, for example, Barber & McCarty, 2015; Jacobson, 2017; Layman & Carsey, 2002; Levendusky, 2009). As already mentioned in the introduction to this chapter, for most voters in the 2020 elections, it was clear early on who they would vote for, even in times of crisis. If this resolution were to be accompanied by strong feelings of attachment to one party, the image of a polarized electorate would emerge clearly. Therefore, in this subchapter, we examine the strength of party affiliation of liberal and conservative voters. The Southern Strategy as a conservative reaction to far-reaching social changes in the 1960s reinforces the dynamics of partisan sorting. From this emerged a shift in the party-ideological priorities because the Republican Party became increasingly conservative in order to profit from the social rifts, especially in the American South. “As a result, the mass bases of the two parties have grown increasingly distinct in their political values and ideological preferences.”

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(Jacobson, 2017, p. 91). One of many ways to make this development visible is to understand the strength of party affiliation in the electorate through survey data. Figure 5.1 uses data from the American National Election Studies (ANES), which are available for the years 1972 to 2020 and were collected every two years until 2004. Since 2004, the survey has only been conducted every four years during presidential elections. The survey is conducted by the Stanford University in cooperation with the University of Michigan and is one of the renowned data sources for election research in the USA. From the wide range of data from ANES, Fig. 5.1 filters out the categories “Weak Partisan” and “Strong Partisan” and classifies the results according to respondents who would self-identify as either liberal or conservative. “Weak Partisans” includes respondents who only express a weak connection to the preferred party, while “Strong Partisans” have a strong sense of belonging. Assuming that conservative attitudes are more likely to result in voting decisions in favor of the Republicans and that liberals are more likely to vote for the Democrats, the strength of affiliation of the two parties among American voters can be traced over time. The values show the share of the total number of respondents in the corresponding category, while the inserted linear trend lines focus on the development of strong party affiliation.

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Percentage of all respondents

55 50 45 40 35 30 25 20

Weak party affiliation: Liberal Weak party affiliation: Conservative Linear (Strong party affiliation: Liberal)

2020

2016

2012

2008

2004

2002

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1998

1996

1994

1992

1990

1988

1986

1984

1982

1980

1978

1976

1974

1972

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Strong party affiliation: Liberal Strong party affiliation: Conservative Linear (Strong party affiliation: Conservative)

Fig. 5.1   Strength of party affiliation in the U.S. electorate, 1972–2016. (Source: own figure based on ANES (2020) data)

5.1  Party Affiliation and Preferences in the American Electorate

75

The key message of Fig. 5.1 is that strong party affiliation clearly increases over the period under consideration, while the share of respondents describing their identification with a party as weak decreases. This trend applies to both conservatives and liberals, with the trend line for the former group rising more steeply than the trend line for the latter group. In addition, it appears that 1992 was a turning point. Previously, strong party affiliation was sometimes more common among liberals and sometimes more common among conservatives, without any clear pattern beyond the abstract trend line. After 1992, with only two close exceptions (1998 and 2012), the share of conservative respondents reporting strong party affiliation has been constantly and in some cases quite significantly higher than in the group of liberal respondents. Insights from Chap. 4 regarding the radicalization of political discourse during Newt Gingrich’s leadership of the Republican majority in the House of Representatives offer one possible explanation. The Southern Strategy also increasingly tied conservative voter groups to the Republican Party, which can also explain why the trend line for this group is steeper in comparison to the liberal camp. When Donald Trump was elected in 2016, almost half of conservative respondents say they have a strong preference for a party, while the situation is similar for liberal respondents. Looking at the results for 2020, figure 5.1 indicates that Trump has exacerbated these trends. In sum, Fig. 5.1 points to an increasing cohesiveness of the parties, indicating a electorate that is more and more divided into two political camps. The “partisan sorting” marks the progressing polarization in the American electorate, because the parties gain significance. The question that arises in connection to these findings is this: how exactly does a liberal or a conservative predisposition actually predict a vote choice for Democratic or Republican candidates. A prudent way to answer this question is provided by so-called exit polls in the context of presidential elections. These surveys are carried out directly on election day and question voters when they leave the polling station after casting their vote. A comprehensive overview of these survey data is provided by the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research at Cornell University (Roper Center, 2020). The surveys are typically carried out by the research institute “Edison Research” and financed by major news organizations such as the Associated Press, the New York Times, CBS or ABC. The sample size varies quite strongly, but is at least 8000 and no more than 50,000 respondents. Figure 5.2 begins with the presidential election of 1976 and includes the results of the exit polls from the election year 2020. In order to be able to understand how exactly a liberal predisposition is related to a vote for Democratic candidates and against Republican candidates, Fig. 5.2 shows both the percentage of liberal respondents who voted for a Democrat (“Liberal Dem.”) and the share of

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5  The Polarization and its Characteristics 100

Percentage of all respondents

90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20

Liberal Dem.

Liberal Rep.

Conservative Rep.

2020

2016

2012

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2000

1996

1992

1988

1984

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0

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10

Conservative Dem.

Fig. 5.2   Voting behavior of liberal and conservative voters in presidential elections, 1976– 2020. Source Own figure based on overview of the Roper Centers (2020)

those who, despite their liberal views, voted for a Republican (“Liberal Rep.”). The same principle is applied to respondents with a conservative predisposition (“Conservative Rep.” & “Conservative Dem.”). The values provide the share of respondents of the total number of respondents. As Fig. 5.2 clearly shows, liberal voters have a clear preference for the Democratic Party, while conservative attitudes show a clear tendency to vote for Republican candidates. In both categories, Fig. 5.2 also shows that partisan sorting has increased continuously since 1992, which is underlined by the downward trend of the graphs for the categories “Liberal Rep.” and “Conservative Dem.” Focusing on the exit polls at this point has the advantage that they are, in terms of this book’s focus, in a closer relationship to actual voting behavior in presidential elections than is the case for other surveys, which illuminate the connections between liberal / conservative attitudes and the two parties from a more general perspective. The core message of Fig. 5.2 is that, in the context of presidential elections, conservatives are likely to prefer Republican candidates, while liberal attitudes make it likely to vote for Democratic candidates. With regard to the election year 2020, it also becomes clear that this sorting of ideological predisposition and party preference has reached a new peak: 89% of the surveyed liberal voters decided in favor of Joe Biden, while 85% of those surveyed with a conservative attitude voted for Donald Trump.

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77

So far it has become clear that ideological attitudes are increasingly divided between the two parties in the USA, indicating a polarized electorate. Both the strength of party affiliation as well as the preferences for presidential candidates show a fairly clear picture. Another statistical perspective goes beyond the presidential elections and asks about the coherence of voting behavior. When the presidency is decided every four years, American voters also vote on representation in Congress. The entire House of Representatives as well as one third of the Senate seats must then be re-elected, which in any case has far-reaching consequences for the government’s composition in Washington D.C. If, for example, a Democratic President is in office while the Democratic Party holds a majority of seats in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, we would categorize it as a unified government. If, however, the Republican Party controls a majority of seats in one of the two chambers or even controls both the Senate and the House of Representatives, we would speak of a divided government (Lowi et al., 2019, p. 97). In addition to the presidential elections, therefore, a large part of the legislature is up for election on November 3, raising the question of whether the strength of party affiliation can be determined beyond the presidential election. To answer this question, Fig. 5.3 relies on the data set of the American National Election Studies already introduced and focuses on the category “Ticket Splitting”. If voters in opinion polls, for example, indicate that they have voted for a Republican candidate for the office of President, but on the identical ballot have chosen Democratic candidates for Congress, this is referred to as “ticket splitting”. It is therefore a question of determining whether there has been a deviation from the party preference for the presidential election with regard to the congressional election. A polarized electorate would then be assumed if “ticket splitting” decreases over time, since the strength of party affiliation extends beyond the presidential election and voters consistently vote Democratic or Republican. In Fig. 5.3 “Dem. Pres./ Rep. Congr.” refers to the case where respondents indicate that they voted Democratic for the presidential election and Republican for the congressional election. “Rep. Pres./Dem. Kongr.” marks the reverse case. The values shown ​​ represent the percentage of the total of respondents. Based on the findings from Chap. 4 with regard to the Republican focus on the southern states, Fig. 5.3 additionally breaks down the results along the subcategory for “ticket-splitting” among respondents who live in the south of the USA and in the corresponding election year voted for a Republican presidential candidate and Democratic candidates for Congress (“South. Rep. Pres./Dem. Congr.”). The values ​​in this category therefore show the share of all respondents who indicated that they had voted in the American southern states. As in Fig. 5.1 the period under consideration is limited to 1972–2020.

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5  The Polarization and its Characteristics 45

Share of all respondents in percent*

40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 1972

1976

1980

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Fig. 5.3   “Ticket Splitting” in presidential and congressional elections, 1972–2020. Source Own figure based on data from the ANES (2020)

As is particularly clear from Fig. 5.3, historically, Democratic voters were more loyal to the party line in their voting behavior than was the case for Republicans. However, it becomes apparent that 1992 marked a clear turning point, which led to greater coherence of voting behavior along party lines. With regard to the findings from Chap. 4, several reasons come into play. For example, the Republican Party increasingly adopted a divisive rhetoric and also politically increasingly distanced itself from the Democrats, who were perceived as too progressive. By the 1996 presidential election, it was clear that a decision for the Republican presidential candidate was relatively certain to go hand in hand with a constant Republican voting behavior. The same is true for the Democratic camp even before that, although it should be noted that “ticket splitting” among Republicans has been lower than among Democrats since 1996, with only one exception (2004). A central driving force behind this development seems to be the voting behavior of Republican voters in the Southern states of the US. Figure 5.3 shows a particularly clear decline in “ticket splitting” there. While in this category in 1988 more than a quarter of those surveyed with Republican preferences in the presidential election said they had voted for Democratic candidates in the congressional elections, by 1992 only fiver percent remained. Overall, Fig. 5.3 thus underscores the findings that point to a divided electorate that is divided into

5.2  The Polarization of Representatives in Congress

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two opposing camps. This central finding is also supported by a study by the Pew Research Center, which points out that voters are increasingly tending to remain loyal to one party in Senate and presidential elections, so that Senate seats and votes in the Electoral College are quite consistently won by one party or the other (Desilver, 2021). Overall, it is clear from this subchapter that the polarization of the electorate is detectable by a number of quite clear characteristics, and that this development was certainly exacerbated by Trump, although it began long before him. Against the background of these insights, it becomes clear that Joe Biden’s goal of overcoming the divisions between Democrats and Republicans will be difficult to implement. The voting behavior and the connection between ideological predispositions and the parties emphasize the internal cohesion of the two camps, which sustainably impairs the receptivity for cross-party messages. In addition, the success of Biden’s undertaking will partly depend on a cooperative attitude of Republican representatives in Congress. However, many Republican representatives, such as Senator Mitch McConnell, only very hesitantly recognized Biden’s election victory, which suggests that the fronts in Congress are entrenched. After the analysis of polarization in the American electorate, the next question is how divided the two political camps are in Congress. The next subchapter is dedicated to this question.

5.2 The Polarization of Representatives in Congress Unlike, for example, in the proportional representation voting system of the Federal Republic of Germany, American elections are either won or lost at both the regional and national level. Members of the House of Representatives are the winners of their congressional district, while senators have won their state election and presidents have also received a majority of votes in states until 270 votes in the Electoral College were reached. In any case, only the candidates with the most votes win a political office, while losers can go home empty-handed with 49.9% of the votes. These are typically called single-member districts. This systematic competition makes it very difficult for third parties that are lagging behind to sell themselves to voters as a realistic option with a chance of success. On the contrary: if only victory counts, it would be unreasonable for rational voters to cast their vote for hopeless candidates of a third party, as they would perceive their vote as wasted. This presumed regularity is known in political science as Duverger’s law and works quite well with regard to the USA, because it actually explains why there are only two dominant parties (Duverger, 1972).

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In addition, large-scale social changes, such as the abolition of slavery, ensured that two political factions could form along dominant fault lines that compete with each other for votes, although their positions are always changing. Like George Washington, Abraham Lincoln also saw a great danger in deep divisions between two politically opposed camps. In June 1858, as the newly elected Republican candidate for the US senator for the state Illinois, Lincoln spoke the famous words at the meeting of the Republican Party “A house divided against itself, cannot stand.” and warned of the danger of a deep division of the country and its government if no agreement could be found on the abolition of slavery. Of course, the Democratic and Republican parties of today are hardly comparable to their former versions. Nevertheless, many of the most important politicians in American history were aware of the dangers of partisan strife and ideological divisions, which today partly come to light in the hostility between Democrats and Republicans. In the American checks-and-balances system, the separation of powers between the executive, judiciary and legislature is supplemented by the principle of shared powers. Just before Joe Biden’s inauguration, a particularly striking example of this is the fact that all high-ranking members of his cabinet must be confirmed by a simple majority in the Senate. In the legislative process, this principle is also particularly prominent. As the legislature, Congress basically drafts and passes all the laws, but they only come into force with the signature of the President. In addition, the President can veto any bill presented to him for signature, which can only be overturned by a two-thirds majority in both chambers of Congress. Within Congress, both chambers (House of Representatives and Senate) always have to agree in order to pass legislation. If, for example, Republicans in the Senate and Democrats in the House of Representatives have the majority of the votes, the principle of shared powers requires cross-party cooperation, which would be challenged by an increasing polarization. How deep the divisions between the two parties in Congress are is therefore a significant question and will be followed up on below by looking at the ideological positioning of the elected representatives and by analyzing their voting behavior over time. Figure 5.4 uses the “Congressional Party Data” dataset from Voteview, in which the ideological position of the parties is recorded on a scale of −1 to 1 (Lewis et al., 2020). Ideological positioning of members of Congress is captured by the DW-Nominate score (Dynamic Weighted Nominal Three-step Estimation), which was developed in the 1980s by Keith Poole and Howard Rosenthal. The score is essentially based on a scaling method that maps the voting behavior of members of Congress in a spatial model across two dimensions. In political science, this measurement has proven useful because it allows for a fairly precise positioning of members of Congress in terms of their ideology. The closer the

Conservative

5.2  The Polarization of Representatives in Congress

81

0.6

0.5175

0.4 0.2775

0.4725

Ideology

0.2 0.2445 0

-0.342

-0.4 -0.304 -0.3795

-0.6

87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116

Liberal

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Congress no. H. Dem.

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Fig. 5.4   Ideological polarization of the parties in Congress, 1961–2021. Source Own figure based on the data of Lewis et al. (2020)

value shown in Fig. 5.4 comes to −1, the more liberal the calculated position is, while a value that is closer to 1 indicates a more conservative attitude. The data corresponds to the median value of the entire party in the respective chamber during the respective Congress. So the average value of the entire distribution of ideological positions is displayed. The time period for Fig. 5.4 extends from the beginning of the 87th Congress on January 3, 1961 to the end of the 116th Congress on January 3, 2021, thus covering the presidencies of JFK to Donald Trump. The legislative period of Congress always lasts two years, with only 1/3 of the seats in the Senate being newly elected in this cycle, while the House of Representatives is up for election in its entirety. The congresses are numbered consecutively from the 1st Congress (March 4, 1789 to March 3, 1791). “H. Dem.” stands for the Democrats in the House of Representatives, while “S. Dem.” picks up the values of the party in the Senate. The Republicans are captured in the two categories “H. Rep.” and “S. Rep.“ The clear message of Fig. 5.4 is that the Democratic Party has become more liberal over time, while the Republican Party has become clearly more conservative in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. Compared to the starting point, the 87th Congress, the Republicans have moved 0.273 and 0.195 closer to the maximum value for the scaling of the conservative ideological position (1)

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in the House of Representatives and the Senate, respectively, while the movement towards −1 for the Democratic Party is less clear in both chambers. In addition, the parties remain true to their ideological orientation in both chambers. Here a clear ideological party line becomes visible, which holds across the entire period under review. Overall, Fig. 5.4 shows that the two parties are moving further apart ideologically over time, which is an indicative feature of the polarization examined in this chapter. The findings from Fig. 5.4 speak to the results of similar studies that also capture polarization in Congress through the DW-Nominate score, although the respective operationalization of the large dataset from Voteview differs (Barber & McCarty, 2015, p. 17; Thurber & Tama, 2018, pp. 16–17; Smith & Gamm, 2017, pp. 169–170; Smith et al., 2013, p. 113). In terms of ideology, the parties in Congress are therefore increasingly further apart, which, under the assumption that ideological attitudes are related to political preferences, suggests very different ideal points in legislative bargaining, making crossparty compromises more difficult and increasing the cohesion of partisan lines in distinction to the political opponent. Against the background of Fig. 5.4, we expected that the Republicans will continue to follow the trend and become more conservative in response to the Biden administration. Following Trump’s controversial presidency and in view of the radicalized political discourse, we also assume that the trends of the graphs will not stagnate and continue to point to spiking polarization. However, similar to the previous subchapter with regard to actual voting behavior of a polarized electorate, the question arises as to whether this ideological difference of the parties in Congress also translates into the voting behavior of the members of Congress. Figure 5.5 uses the so-called Party-Unity-Vote-Score (short: PUV-Score) to capture the strength of the party line in the voting behavior of members of Congress. Votes in which a simple majority of Democrats voted against a simple majority of Republicans are referred to as Party-Unity-Votes. Only those votes are taken into account in which the members present in the respective chamber are called by name and vote with yes or no (“Roll-Call Votes”). The values shown ​​ provide the average percentage of Democratic or Republican legislators in the respective chamber who voted with the simple majority of their party in these party unity votes. In this way, it is possible to trace the average strength of party loyalty in the voting behavior of the representatives over time for each year. With regard to the polarization examined here, higher values would ​​ show that there is a pronounced cohesion and strength of the party line, while lower values ​​would rather speak against a polarization, because Democrats and Republicans would vote less often together with the simple majority of their party. Figure 5.5 covers the period from 1961 to 2020. This time frame allows a reference to the ideo-

50

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H. Dem. H. Rep. S. Dem. S. Rep.

Fig. 5.5   Average strength of party unity, 1961–2020. Source Own illustration based on data from Congressional Quarterly Vote Studies (CQ Almanac, 2020, p. B-10)

Average party unity in percent

1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020

5.2  The Polarization of Representatives in Congress

83

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5  The Polarization and its Characteristics

logical split between the two parties. “H. Dem.” stands for the Democrats in the House of Representatives and “S. Dem.” for the Democrats in the Senate. Conversely, the categories “H. Rep.” And “S. Rep.” provide the values of ​​ the Republicans in the House of Representatives and in the Senate. As Fig. 5.5 shows, there is a clear trend that describes the voting behavior of both the Democratic and Republican parties: The strength of the party line increases over time and reaches a higher level, especially in the early 1990s. Thus, we find that membership in one of the two parties increasingly predicts the actual voting behavior of representatives in Congress when a simple majority of Democrats votes against a simple majority of Republicans. In the 1960s and 1970s, at least a quarter of the representatives always voted with the party they did not belong to in party unity votes. Even if a party line in voting behavior was clearly recognizable, the two parties were still so close to each other that a quarter could be enthusiastic about the other side. In the 1980s, the party lines became more exclusive, but the values still fluctuated relatively strongly, but rarely broke the 80%- threshold. At the end of the 1980s, it was rather the Democrats who remained particularly loyal to their own party line. This changed abruptly in the early 1990s, when only 10 to 15% of the Republicans were willing to break out of the party line in party unity votes. In both the Senate and the House, a clear polarization along the party lines became increasingly clear, which can at least partly be explained by the radicalization of the discourse and the ideological polarization of the electorate. With the beginning of the second George W. Bush administration in 2005, the Democrats caught up in terms of the cohesion of the party line. In the House of Representatives, the voting behavior was clearly polarized from then on, as the values always ​​ exceeded 85%. In the Senate, in particular the Republican Party, there is a greater variance of values during the Obama presidency, while the values ​​of the Democrats in the context of the Trump presidency decrease comparatively strongly in this chamber. Overall, the core message of Fig. 5.5 is that the strength of the party line has increased significantly in party unity votes in the period under review, which marks a clear manifestation of polarization between the two parties in the American legislature. However, the frequency of votes with clearly marked party lines varies quite strongly. Nevertheless, in both chambers, at least half of all votes have been classified as party unity votes since 2000, with only a few exceptions, while some spikes reinforce the impression of polarized voting behavior. For example, in 2017, a simple majority of Democrats voted against a simple majority of Republicans in 76% of all roll-call votes in the House of Representatives. In 2009, the value for the Senate was 72%, and to date marks the highest value (CQ Almanac, 2020, p. B-10). It must be noted that the parties in Congress are ideologi-

5.2  The Polarization of Representatives in Congress

85

cally divided and that they remain loyal to their own party line with increasing resilience in the event of frequent party unity votes. The previous analyses therefore show that the political polarization between Republicans and Democrats in Congress emerges as an empirical pattern in the PUV score and the DW-Nominate score. But what consequences for the legislative work of Congress arise from these findings? Answers to this question are also of crucial importance for the government under President Joe Biden, as his claim to work with the Republicans beyond the party line is challenged by a great distance between the two parties. The legislative process in the United States is characterized by various veto points that can only be overcome by a degree of readiness to compromise. For example, the presidential veto power was mentioned earlier, but within and between the two chambers of Congress, legislative proposals often encounter resistance from the other party and are difficult to pass. In the Senate, the socalled “filibuster” marks one of the indicated veto points. A filibuster marks an attempt to delay or prevent a vote on a bill by artificially extending the debate through disproportionately long speeches. Senators can use this obstruction tactic to stop the progress of legislative proposals. However, this attempt can be thwarted by forcing a vote to end debate (in the Senate glossary, this special vote is called “Cloture”). Since a rule change in 1975, it requires the support of threefifths of all senators to break a filibuster. This means that 60 senators are needed to force a vote on a bill in the event of a filibuster. Before this rule change, it even required a two-thirds majority to bring a bill to a vote against the resistance of one or more senators. For example, in 1964, senators from the American South used this to block the Civil Rights Act for 60 days (U.S. Senate, n.d.a). In 2013, it was the Democratic majority in the Senate that, by means of a rule change, took away the option of a filibuster from the minority party by requiring only a simple majority to end debate when presidential nominations for the cabinet are concerned. However, the 2013 rule change provided that for nominations of judges to the Supreme Court, the 1975 rule would still apply. In 2017, however, the Republicans used their majority to in the Senate in order to abolish this last exception, which allowed them to fill a seat on the Supreme Court with a simple majority in Donald Trump’s first year in office. This seat was only vacant because the Republicans had kept it vacant under Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in 2016 during Barack Obama’s last year in office by all means and under the premise that no judges should be appointed to the Supreme Court in an election year. In 2020, however, they did not stick to this line with the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett after the death of the liberal justice icon Ruth Bader Ginsburg made one of nine judge positions in America’s highest court vacant. Overall, with

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few exceptions, legislative proposals and bills can be blocked by a filibuster in the Senate. In a polarized legislature, this is therefore a powerful veto point that is gaining in popularity (U.S. Senate, n.d.b). If the ideological distance between the parties grows, the willingness to compromise diminishes and the filibuster becomes more attractive in order to block the progress of the other party, even if it holds the majority of seats in the Senate. “Increased policy differences shrink the set of compromises that both parties are willing to obtain.” (Barber & McCarty, 2015, p. 40). One consequence of polarization for legislative work is therefore the increased susceptibility to blockades and a reduced willingness to deliberate, which is substantiated in other political science studies (ibid.; Binder, 2018; Wallner, 2020). The famous work “Pivotal Politics” by Keith Krehbiel (1998) also suggest that often only a so-called supermajority of 60 senators can ensure the success of far-reaching or controversial legislative proposals, which reduces the prospects of comprehensive policy change and thus favors the status quo. Typically, the majority of one party in the Senate is slim, so that a coalition of 60 senators could only come about through the inclusion of colleagues from the other party. Yet, this undertaking is more difficult against the background of ideological divergence. Consequently, the governing party has to move further away from its ideal point so that enough senators from the other party can work with it and a filibuster can be prevented. This point is also relevant from the perspective of the Biden administration, since the Democrats’ majority in the Senate is not strong enough to provide a supermajority on its own. Therefore, this dynamics remains relevant in an unified government (Barber & McCarty, 2015, p. 41). Hence, Biden’s legislative agenda will most likely have to strike a cautious balance between the progressive reform demanded by large parts of his electorate and the concessions to conservative resistance that will be vigorously represented by the Republicans. In the House of Representatives there is no filibuster, but since laws always have to be passed through both chambers, this special veto point often casts its shadow on the negotiations in this chamber in advance. However, the fact that all seats in the House of Representatives are up for election every two years supports the connection to an increasingly polarized electorate. In addition, the rules for this chamber are also decided anew every two years, which allows the majority stronger control over the procedures than is the case for the Senate. Overall, both the power over the procedures and the influence on the agenda in the House of Representatives are strongly linked to the party leadership, since a simple majority is sufficient, for example, to end a debate on a legislative proposal. “In this way, as long as the majority party leadership can muster a majority, it freely controls the floor agenda.” (Smith & Gamm, 2017, p. 166). Against the background

5.3 Summary

87

of a polarized electorate, stronger control mechanisms for the majority mean that it is easier to represent an ideologically coherent line in the House of Representatives. Ideologically united and increasingly distant from the other party’s policy preferences make it easier for majority leaders like the Democratic Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi to organize their own party strategically. This is known as the “conditional party government thesis”, which holds that party unity with regard to political preferences leads to stronger party discipline (ibid.; Rhode, 1991; Aldrich & Rhode, 1998). Strong party discipline reduces the willingness to compromise under the impression of ideological differences and, consequently, promotes sharper competition between Republicans and Democrats. In times of spiking polarization, it must be kept in mind with regard to the House of Representatives that the legislative process is characterized by strong party discipline and entrenched fronts. The Democratic majority in the House of Representatives is quite narrow during the first two years of Joe Biden’s term of office, until the 2022 midterm elections could change this to some extent, which is why, it will be crucial for Biden to keep the Democratic ranks together in order to focus on the upcoming confrontations in the Senate. Against this background, Biden’s election victory is also to be understood as the starting point for numerous battles for the legislative implementation of his agenda. In conclusion, this subchapter shows that the polarization of the members of Congress is far advanced and can be seen in both the ideological differences and the actual voting behavior. In addition, the party lines become clearer under the impression of closed ranks and contribute to hardened fronts. Of course, there is also bipartisan cooperation in this polarized environment, as, for example, Jordan Tama (2020) or Florian Böller and Lukas Herr (2020) show with regard to American foreign policy. However, the overall impression of the political climate in the USA is characterized by a clear ideological polarization. The Trump presidency has deepened existing divisions and thus leaves its successor a difficult legacy.

5.3 Summary This chapter has taken a closer look at various characteristics of polarization in American politics and evaluated them from different statistical perspectives. The overarching result is that both the American electorate and their representatives in Congress are increasingly divided by incompatible ideological positions that appear to be directly related to vote-choices in the electorate and voting behavior in Congress. In addition, the legislative process is also affected by this devel-

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opment, making it particularly difficult for ambitious political agendas, such as those promoted by the Democrats in the election campaign, to actually be implemented. However, Joe Biden took office on January 20, 2021 with the goal of bridging the gaps between Republicans and Democrats that have become apparent in this chapter. Together with Chap. 4, however, the findings from this chapter make it clear that obstructionist measures such as the filibuster are particularly attractive in the context of polarization and that the fault lines that have become particularly pronounced under Trump actually follow established trends that will be difficult to mediate. Bipartisan cooperation remains case-specific, while the findings suggests that polarization will remain powerful during the Biden administration. The competition between Joe Biden and Donald Trump was characterized by Trump’s efforts to profit from polarization by consistently and vehemently attacking his opponent and trying to rally his own camp by attacking the political opponent. Particularly controversial and significant issues for the American electorate such as economic policy, health policy or immigration policy were mostly viewed from ideologically biased positions. Overall, the results of this chapter therefore point to important hurdles that the Biden-Harris administration will have to overcome on the way to legislative progress and bipartisan compromises. For this reason, the following chapters focus on the mentioned policy areas and analyze the contrasting positions of the Democrats and the Republicans against the background of a general election under unique circumstances.

References Aldrich, J., & Rhode, D. W. (1998). The transition to Republican rule in the House: Implications for theories of Congressional politics. Political Science Quarterly, 112, 541– 567. American National Election Studies. (2020). Cumulative data file. https://electionstudies. org/data-center/anes-time-series-cumulative-data-file/. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Barber, M. J., & McCarty, N. (2015). Causes and consequences of polarization. In N. Persily (Ed.), Solutions to political polarization in America (pp. 15–58). Cambridge University Press. Binder, S. (2018). Congress and the President – Legislating in polarized times. In J. A. Thurber & J. Tama (Eds.), Rivals for power – Presidential-Congressional relations (pp. 31–51). Rowman & Littlefield. Böller, F., & Herr, L. D. (2020). From Washington without love: Congressional foreign policy making and US-Russian relations under President Trump. Contemporary Politics, 26(1), 1–21.

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Congressional Quarterly Almanac. (2020). History: Party unity. CQ. https://library.cqpress. com/cqalmanac/index.php. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Desilver, D. (2021). Once again, nearly all Senate elections reflect state’s presidential votes. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/01/08/onceagain-nearly-all-senate-elections-reflect-states-presidential-votes/. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Dimock, M., & Wike, R. (2020). America is exceptional in the nature of its political divide. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/11/13/america-isexceptional-in-the-nature-of-its-political-divide/. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Duverger, M. (1972). Party politics and pressure groups. A comparative introduction. Crowell. Jacobson, G. C. (2017). Partisanship, money, and competition: Elections and the transformation of Congress since the 1970s. In L. C. Dodd & B. I. Oppenheimer (Eds.), Congress Reconsidered (vol. 11, pp. 89–118). Sage. Krehbiel, K. (1998). Pivotal politics: A theory of US lawmaking. University of Chicago Press. Layman, G., & Carsey, T. (2002). Party polarization and ‘conflict extension’ in the American electorate. American Journal of Political Science, 46(4), 786–802. Levendusky, M. (2009). The Partisan sort: How Liberals became Democrats and Conservatives became Republicans. University of Chicago Press. Lewis, J. B., Poole, K., Rosenthal, H., Boche, A., Rudkin, A., & Sonnet, L. (2020). Voteview: Congressional roll-call votes database. https://voteview.com/. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Lowi, T. J., Ginsberg, B., Shepsle, K. A., & Ansolabehere, S. (2019). American Government. Power and purpose (15th ed.). Norton. Pew Research Center. (2020). Sharp divisions on vote counts, as Biden gets high marks for his post-election conduct. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2020/11/20/votersevaluations-of-the-2020-election-process/. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Rhode, D. W. (1991). Parties and leaders in the postreform house. Chicago University Press. Roper Center. (2020). US national election day exit polls. https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/ how_groups_voted. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Senate Document No. 106-21. (2000). Washington’s Farewell Address to the People of the United States. 106th Congress 2nd Session. U.S. Government Printing Office. Smith, S. S., & Gamm, G. (2017). The dynamics of party government in Congress. In L. C. Dodd & B. I. Oppenheimer (Eds.), Congress reconsidered (pp. 163–188). CQ. Smith, S. S., Roberts, J. M., & Wielen, R. J. V. (2013). The American Congress. Cambridge University Press. Tama, J. (2020). Forcing the President’s hand: How the US Congress shapes foreign policy through sanctions legislation. Foreign Policy Analysis, 16, 1–20. The White House. (2017). Remarks by President Trump in Press Conference – February 16, 2017. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trumppress-conference/. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Thurber, J. A., & Tama, J. (2018). An introduction to Presidential-Congressional rivalry. In J. A. Thurber & J. Tama (Eds.), Rivals for power – Presidential-Congressional relations (pp. 1–30). Rowman & Littlefield.

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United States Senate. (n.d.a). Filibuster and Cloture. https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/ history/common/briefing/Filibuster_Cloture.htm. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. United States Senate. (n.d.b). Cloture motions. https://www.senate.gov/legislative/cloture/ clotureCounts.htm. Accessed 28 Dec 2020. Wallner, J. I. (2020). The death of deliberation – Gridlock and the politics of effort in the United States Senate. Rowman & Littlefield.

6

Economic Policy as a Salient Issue: The Elections in the Shadow of Recession

The influence that economic development exerts on US presidential elections is well documented in the scientific literature. The chances of re-electing an incumbent president are high if economic development is going well. In times of crisis, however, there is a tendency for the incumbent president to be denied a second term and his party to suffer a defeat. For example, no president has ever been re-elected in the United States if the unemployment rate was in double digits in the election year. Since Bill Clinton won a clear victory in 1992 with his campaign slogan “It’s the economy, stupid” and thus denied George H. W. Bush a second term, the question has repeatedly arisen as to which economic policy can achieve maximum voter support. Not only the data of macroeconomic development are of importance. Much more important is the perception of voter groups and the question of whether they believe that they are doing better than four years ago, or worse. So life realities of individual voter groups and the overall impression of the economic situation influenced by them tend to disappear behind macroeconomic figures, although the subjective perception of the socio-economic situation should be decisive for the final voting decisions. For example, Barack Obama, who ran with the slogan “Change”, was able to surprisingly win against the Republican candidate John McCain in 2008 because he was able to convincingly convey the hope for renewal and economic improvement for many voters. Donald Trump, on the other hand, repeatedly emphasized his qualities as a “dealmaker” in the economy during the 2016 election campaign and thus received support from voters who expected him to improve their economic situation. As studies after the election showed, it was precisely the voter groups who had voted for Trump who felt marginalized and disadvantaged in global competition. For example, Cavaillé et al. argued shortly after the 2016 election that Trumpism was a reaction to the negative consequences of globalization, which could © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2022 C. Lemke and J. Wiedekind, The Battle for the White House, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-38934-5_6

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be seen not only in the USA, but also in Western European countries and other parts of the world, and which favored the rise of right-wing populist and nationalist parties (Cavaillé et al., 2016). Others, in turn, observed how the “unwinding” of parts of the population, such as in the outskirts of the Appalachians (Packer, 2013) or in the southern USA (Hochschild, 2016), led to a deep alienation of the population from politics and government as a result of rapid economic change as part of globalization. Trump had apparently been able to make use of this alienation by denouncing the emigration of jobs as a result of free trade agreements and thus driving the change of the Republicans from a free trade party to a party that favors protectionism as a countermeasure to globalization.

6.1 The Shadows of the Pandemic A further decline in unemployment, rising stock prices and increasing profits of central companies, not least due to massive tax cuts, had initially convinced Trump’s supporters of his competence and secured him support after he took office. Precisely in the election year, however, this positive image was put to the test. The dramatic decline in economic performance as a result of the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic led to the election year 2020 being overshadowed by a severe recession. According to the Department of Commerce, gross domestic product (GDP) in the United States fell by 31.7% in the second quarter of 2020 (Bureau of Economic Analysis, 2020). The signs of an economic recovery remained weak and very unevenly distributed across industries and regions until election day. Although the Trump administration was pressing for a rapid opening of the economy, particularly in view of the upcoming elections, the economic development remained volatile due to the significantly high infection rates and the restrictions on travel and trade. Although President Trump could not be held personally responsible for the worldwide Coronavirus pandemic, he was often criticized for his poor crisis management. As a result, the effects of the pandemic were so serious in the election year that the trump card that the president believed he still held early in the election year seemed to disappear completely. Low opinion poll figures in 2020 also showed that confidence in Trump’s economic management continued to decline, while his challenger Joe Biden linked his economic program with the fight against the pandemic and was thus more convincing. The effects of the 2020 recession were felt primarily in the labor market. Similar to other countries, the lockdown immediately led to rising unemployment in order to contain the pandemic. In the United States, the highest increase since

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the Great Depression of the 1930s was recorded. Around 40 million people had to apply for unemployment benefits in the first ten weeks after the lockdown began. The unemployment rate shot up to 14.7% in April 2020, according to the US Department of Labor, well above the rate during the 2007/08 economic and financial crisis (New York Times, 2020). As Fig. 6.1 shows, the unemployment rate gradually declined as businesses and service facilities reopened and workers were rehired, but it was still as high as 6.7% in November 2020. Figure 6.1 also allows a comparison of unemployment rates in comparison between white and African American citizens. It stands out that the unemployment rate of the African American population is constantly higher than in the white population group. In addition, the situation for white workers seems to relax faster than for African Americans. In November, the unemployment rate in the latter group was 4.3% higher than before the pandemic in January, while the value for whites in November was only 2.8% from the comparison value in January. Since health insurance is often tied to the employment contract in the USA, Fig. 6.1 overall indicates that African American citizens were particularly affected by the pandemic. The social inequality indicated here is discussed in more detail in the following subchapter. So even beyond the current economic crisis, the circle of critics of the economic policy pursued by Trump has grown.

18

Unemployment rate in percent

16.8

16.7

15.4

16

14.6

14.2

14

14.7

12

13

13.3 11.1

12.4

10

10.1

8

6

5.8

4

3.6

3.5

2

3.1

6

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7.9

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Fig. 6.1   Unemployment rate in the U.S. in percent, 2020. Source Own illustration based on data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2020)

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Has he actually achieved what he had promised in 2016, i.e. brought jobs back to marginalized regions and improved living conditions? Who has benefited from economic policy and what longer-term structural changes have been recorded? In order to assess the economic developments, the following section will first deal with the problem of unequal living conditions, which have characterized the American society for some time, in order to then analyze the relationship between state and economy as a political challenge in American politics and the differences between Republicans and Democrats.

6.2 Social Inequality One of the outstanding features of economic and social development is the high degree of social inequality in an international comparison. Although the “American Dream” is supposed to offer all citizens of the USA the same opportunities to realize the great goals of American democracy—“life, liberty and a pursuit of happiness”, according to the American Declaration of Independence of 1776— social reality is characterized by an increasing inequality. In his work “The Price of Inequality” (2013), Nobel laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz criticizes that the richest one percent have been able to increase their wealth constantly in recent decades, while middle and lower incomes have not been able to keep up. America’s “1 Percent Problem”, according to Stiglitz, disadvantages members of these income groups in their career and educational opportunities and undermines democracy. Similarly, former US Labor Secretary Robert Reich (2020) criticizes that the economic system favors the wealthy more and that it needs to be fundamentally changed in order to strengthen the middle class. In fact, the USA has been the country with the largest income inequality among western OECD countries for some time now. The Pew Research Center has determined that the proportion of those who are considered middle class in the USA has steadily declined from 62 to 59% between 1991 and 2017. This trend can be observed in seven of the eleven western countries studied, but nowhere else does the middle class make up such a low proportion (Pew Research Center, 2017). In the study, households are defined as middle class if they have between two-thirds and twice as much net income available as the median income in a country. In the study, 26% of the American population is counted as belonging to the lower income group, and 15% to the higher income group. Although the income of the middle class in the USA is on average higher than in other western countries and has grown by around nine percent over the period under review, the country only ranks in the middle of the comparison countries in terms

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of this growth. In addition to Spain, the USA has the highest inequality among western societies. In the course of the past decades, a shrinking of the middle class has been observed, which is caused by growth of the lower income group, while the number of members of the higher income group remains relatively constant at a rapidly increasing income level. As a result, the gap between a small group of the wealthy and the rest of society, and thus socio-economic inequality, has grown significantly. The USA’s ranking along the 2020 Social Progress Index is particularly disappointing, which measures the provision of social goods, such as health, education, personal safety and environmental quality, against 50 indicators on an international scale. Here, the USA has now even fallen back to 28th place (Social Progress Index, 2020). Particularly low social progress can be seen in the areas of healthcare, climate and environmental protection, but also in the infant mortality rate and in containing the murder rate. Economists are divided over what causes this widening gap between rich and poor. Numerous scholars attribute the rise in inequality to three interrelated developments: technological progress and increasing digitalization with the changing world of work, the deregulation of the economy, which is particularly effective in the United States due to its promotion of neoliberal globalization, and the growing competition from economically booming countries such as China and India. These closely related developments are often summarized under the term globalization. In a long-term study, political scientists Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson (2010) show a “great economic transformation” that began thirty years ago and has made the super-rich richer and income differences wider at the expense of the middle class. With globalization, these developments have further intensified, especially since the USA as the core country of the world economy has favored and promoted a neoliberal economic policy. Ultimately, US governments are responsible for political decisions on tax and income policy as well as social consequences of inequality that have further exacerbated them. According to Hacker and Pierson, a gradual departure from the policy of an active state began in the 1970s; it was replaced by a “weak” state with little willingness to control and redistribute, accompanied by “systematic, prolonged failures of government to respond to the shifting realities of a dynamic economy” (Hacker & Pierson, 2010, p. 43). This development had the consequence of an ever-decreasing redistribution in favor of those disadvantaged. The decline of American unions, which now only organize 33% of employees in the public sector and only 6.4% of employees in the private sector, the disproportionate incomes of managers in contrast to those of employees, the expansion of the financial market with ever more risky (and more

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profitable) products as well as informal relationships also played a role in the growing inequality according to their view. A redistribution in favor of the middle and lower income groups is generally associated with higher growth, but whether such a development will occur is disputed. In his study on the structural transformation of the American society, Robert J. Gordon (2016) argues that growth has slowed down between 1940 and 2015; growing income inequality, declining educational attainment, demographic developments such as the retirement of the “baby boomer” generation from the labor process and rising public debt are structurally growth-inhibiting factors, as Gordon argues (Gordon, 2016, pp. 605 ff.). On the positive side, the USA still has a very high potential for innovation as well as high-quality research and teaching institutions that are considered pillars of a future-oriented knowledge society. However, this development also has its price. As the social scientists Torben Iversen and David Soskice show, this deepens the social divide between those who are employed in the new knowledge economy and those employed in traditional, lower-paid industries. “We see the division between the new knowledge economy and those low-producing labor markets as a new social cleavage that has crystallized along educational lines and a deepening segregation between successful cities and left behind communities in small towns and rural areas.” (Iversen & Soskice, 2019, VIV). The transformation to a knowledge society is therefore associated with far-reaching consequences for social development in the USA. Considering the long-term developments in the USA, the analysis of growing social inequality usually goes back to extensive deregulation, which began during the presidency of Ronald Reagan in the 1980s and was known as “Reaganomics”. At that time, the idea of economic neoliberalism was the dominant economic theory in the USA, but also in Great Britain and other countries. The goal was to revive the economy by eliminating regulations and requirements imposed by the state to relieve businesses and to make the labor market more flexible. According to the ideas of Reagan and the Republicans who followed him, these goals should be achieved, among other things, by a comprehensive tax reform in favor of businesses, which should increase their willingness to invest and generate higher demand in the labor market. The lower tax revenue was offset by cuts in government spending, especially in social programs, because the welfare state was considered the main cause of the weak economic growth. The conclusion that was drawn from this assumption was formulated by Reagan as the strategy of “getting government off our backs”. Then, according to the “trickle-down” effect, all citizens would benefit from the increased investments through deregulation, an assumption that was not confirmed by the following developments and was therefore repeatedly criticized by economists.

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The advent of the Democratic presidency of Bill Clinton in January 1993 was initially associated with the hope of returning to a decisive social policy orientation and an active role of the state. But Clinton also carried out far-reaching reforms that changed the relationship between state and economy. These included, in particular, the welfare reform—“to end welfare as we know it”, as Clinton put it—as well as the relaxation of banking supervision which, in a fateful way, favored the economic and financial crisis of 2007/08. However, during the Clinton presidency, it was possible to reduce the budget deficit through targeted budgetary consolidation, create more jobs and significantly reduce unemployment, as well as boost production and development. The Clinton administration also advocated multilateral trade agreements, such as the NAFTA agreement with Canada and Mexico to promote foreign trade—an agreement that was already being negotiated under the Republican President George H. W. Bush. The positive economic development allowed Bill Clinton to be re-elected in 1996 and he remains one of the most popular presidents in the USA today, despite some scandals and a failed impeachment proceeding driven by the Republicans. During the tenure of George W. Bush the focus in economic policy was, as with Reagan, on reducing the state’s involvement in the economy as well as significant tax cuts that benefited those with higher incomes. Since that time, the economic situation of the American middle class has become increasingly dire. For example, the employment rate decreased during President Bush’s first term. The number of new jobs was just enough to accommodate the influx of new, mostly young, workers onto the job market. The fact that the resulting wage increases could hardly keep pace with inflation and that most of the new jobs were in the lower-paying service sector had a particularly negative effect on income development. The concept of an “ownership society” with a targeted promotion of asset formation through the tax policy of the Bush administration, which envisaged a reduction or abolition of taxes on savings and stocks in order to promote the formation of equity, led to a worsening of social inequalities, as the wealthy were now able to accumulate more assets than those with lower incomes, who had little or no equity or savings. In addition, the costs that families had to incur for education and health care increased significantly. An indicator of growing inequality is the ownership of one’s own house or one’s own apartment. Home ownership is at the core of the American way of life, the “American Dream”, and is much more widespread than, for example, in Germany. However, data from the U.S. Census Bureau show that not only social differences between income groups are deepening, but also between ethnic groups with regard to housing or home ownership. Figure 6.2 uses data from the U.S.

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Home ownership in percent

64.4

63.9

63.4

75.2

73.4

73.5

72.3

71.9

66.9

64.6

60 50

45.8

42.3

41.6

42.1

42.1

40 30

20 10 0 2016

2017 USA Total

2018 White

2019

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African-American

Fig. 6.2   Home Ownership in the USA over time 2016–2020. Source Own figure based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau (2020)

Census Bureau in the category “Homeownership Rates by Race and Ethnicity of Householder” and covers the years 2016–2020. As Fig. 6.2 shows, members of the African-American minority own real estate much less often than white Americans. The dark bars give the mean of the quarterly values for the entire USA in each year and show that the home ownership rate of the African-American minority (grey bar) is constant and significantly below the national overall value. The key message of Fig. 6.2 is that the chosen indicator underlines the existing inequality between the two groups. The continuity of the distance between white and African-American citizens with regard to real estate ownership stands out here as the central finding. Despite a slight increase in the African-American group in 2020, the difference to the value in the comparison category is always around 30% in the five years under consideration.

6.3  Government Policy in Times of Crisis

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6.3 Government Policy in Times of Crisis For the second time in recent US history, the presidential elections in 2020 took place during a time of crisis. The deep economic and financial crisis of 2007/08, which ultimately led to the election victory of Barack Obama, resulted in a reori­ entation of state policy towards the economic and financial sector. In terms of its economic, political and social dimensions, it is often compared to the Great Depression of the late 1920s to the end of the 1930s, as a result of which the USA introduced the “New Deal” under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, including a more active role of federal government. The pandemic-related crisis is not over yet, but it was clear during the election year of 2020 that some dimensions, such as unemployment, were indeed comparable to the Great Depression. Similarly, federal state policy for crisis management was now again a key point. However, during the election campaign, fundamental differences between the Republicans and the Democrats also became clear, some of which had already become apparent in the crisis management of 2007/08. We will therefore turn to this earlier crisis situation. The first signs of the economic and financial crisis became visible in the summer of 2007 with the onset of the mortgage crisis. Credit without secure financing for the purchase of real estate, speculation with real estate ownership and “bad loans” caused severe bottlenecks due to insolvency of banks and credit providers. As the American political scientist Peter A. Hall (in Edsall 2008) emphasized, however, the mortgage crisis was only the trigger and not, as sometimes assumed, the core of the crisis. The causes were rather rooted in the unregulated trade in credits, which had become possible through deregulation of the banking and financial sector. Leading economists such as Robert M. Solow (2005) had recognized and criticized this early on. Although the Bush administration had already decided on rescue measures for the endangered banks at the end of 2007, the crisis peaked at the end of September 2008. In addition to leading banks, finance companies also reported difficulties; the number of foreclosures rose rapidly and the chain of corporate bankruptcies grew at an alarming rate. The rescue operation (government bailout) in the form of the “Economic Stabilization Act” in autumn 2008 could not offset the rapid loss of confidence of domestic and foreign investors, let alone stop it. Rather, other banks that were previously considered solid, such as Bear Stearns, J.P. Morgan and Lehman Brothers, also slipped into a severe crisis, which is why more and more experts demanded not only better regulation of credit but also reform of the entire financial system. In addition to extensive economic assistance to American companies, such as General Motors, a new regulation of the American financial market was also initiated.

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After the presidential election in November 2008, the US government under Barack Obama focused on concrete measures to cope with the economic and financial crisis. There was agreement in the Obama administration that, in addition to state-initiated concrete rescue measures for individual companies and banks, structural changes were also necessary. The regulation of the financial market was finally imposed against the resistance of the Republicans in Congress by the “Dodd-Frank Act” which came into force on 21 July 2010. The law, named after the then chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, Chris Dodd, and the then chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Barney Frank, aimed to better control banks and stabilize the financial market. In addition, American taxpayers were to be protected from state bail-outs of financial service companies and consumers from abusive practices in financial services by the establishment of a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency. However, the imposed regulation of the banking and financial system remained highly controversial among Republicans, so that the Trump administration could easily start and reverse many of the regulations. Therefore, the issue of consumer protection also played a role in the 2020 election campaign; in particular, the Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren advocated a return to active protection of consumers during the Democratic primary campaign. During Barack Obama’s second term 2012-2016, the economy had recovered, unemployment had fallen sharply, and the country was approaching full employment. The immigration of highly qualified workers had multiplied, research and science networks flourished worldwide, and the USA was able to maintain and expand its leading position in the communications and high-tech industry. Above all, Silicon Valley in the south of San Francisco, which includes the giants of the technology and Internet industry such as Apple, Google, Facebook and Intel, stood out as the engine of innovation. In addition, the Obama administration supported the state promotion of new economic sectors, especially in the field of renewable energies, in order to create jobs. In addition, the USA negotiated several multilateral trade agreements, including with the European Union and the Pacific rim countries (excluding China). However, not all Americans had benefited from the upswing (Bartels, 2016; Packer, 2013; Vance, 2016). The dissatisfaction in parts of the population, which had not participated in the opening of the economy and the social changes with new jobs under changed qualification expectations, grew and formed a breeding ground for the populist campaign of Donald Trump.

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6.4 Economic Policies of the Trump Administration The balance sheet of Donald Trump’s four years in office in terms of economic policy is mixed. Although Trump himself has benefited from the increasingly globalized economy with his worldwide operating Trump-Company, he repeatedly emphasized that the USA is a “loser of globalization” and is exploited by other countries, indeed “plundered”. In the election year 2016, he painted a gloomy picture of the economic situation of the USA, although macroeconomic data such as declining unemployment and continuing economic growth showed a more positive balance sheet at the end of the Obama administration. This negative narrative reveals the discrepancies between everyday realities and macroeconomic indices mentioned at the beginning of this chapter. The economy was doing well in 2016. However, numerous voters, especially in the so-called Rust Belt, the former highly industrial region in the northeastern United States, did not feel taken along by this positive trend because their own economic situation had not improved. Trump attributed this situation primarily to the growing trade deficit of the USA and the regulations of the economy introduced by the previous administrations. His goal was rather the withdrawal of federal government from furtherpolitical and social responsibilities and the emphasis on American national interests along the “America First” doctrine, which was a message that caught on with voters disappointed by globalization. Although the rhetoric during the first months of Trump’s term in office caused uncertainty about the further course of economic and trade policy, it quickly became clear that the Trump administration would implement its goals of deregulation and the reordering of trade relations favoring the United States. This strategy was initially able to increase some growth and further reduce unemployment. An “American economic miracle” seemed within reach, although doubts remained as to how stable this growth would be. Increasing social inequality remained a topic of high concern (e.g. Krugman, 2020; Reich, 2020). But above all, the aggressive trade policy and the confrontation with allies such as the EU and Canada as well as the confrontation with China which was intensifying, became a source of concern. Also, the World Trade Organization (WTO) was seen increasingly as an adversary by the US government, although it was this international organization that had been set up at the instigation of the USA and the country had benefited from its membership in many ways (Viola, 2020, pp. 554–555). Nevertheless, this protectionist-nationalist approach became decisive for Trump’s reelection campaign in 2020.

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What course has the Trump administration followed during its four years in office and how did Trump position himself in contrast to his challenger Joe Biden in 2020? When assessing Trump’s economic policy, three areas stand out in particular: tax policy, deregulation of the financial and economic system and foreign trade policy. Shortly after taking office in April 2017, Trump presented so-called guidelines announcing a drastic reduction in corporate taxes. The tax reform was enthusiastically welcomed by the Republican majority in both chambers of Congress; in particular, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Paul Ryan, had advocated for the legislative proposal. With the “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act” passed on December 19, 2017, the President achieved his first major domestic political success. With a Republican majority in both houses of Congress, the tax reform promised by the President during the election campaign and described by himself as “historic”passed with a vote of 227 to 208 in the House of Representatives and 51 to 48 in the Senate. The main focus was on tax cuts. The corporate tax was reduced from 46 to 34%, and a short time later further to 21%. Companies therefore paid significantly less tax on their annual profit than in previous years. This not only relieved companies significantly. Rather, the Trump administration also aimed to create incentives for foreign companies to (re)locate to the USA. In addition, the tax reform provided for a (partly temporary) relief for taxpayers from other income groups. The highest tax rate was reduced from 39.6 to 37%, so that recipients of higher incomes paid significantly less taxes. In addition, the tax-free allowance for inheritance tax was doubled from 11 to 22 million US$, another measure that primarily benefited the better-off upper class. While Republicans celebrated the tax policy as a big breakthrough, Democrats repeatedly criticized that the tax cuts were socially unbalanced and favored top earners and the wealthy, especially since the benefits for the middle class and the income tax cuts would expire in 2025, while the other provisions should be permanent. Critics like Paul Krugman (2017) therefore also characterized the law as the “biggest fraud” because it would primarily lead to a relief of the upper “one percent” and a redistribution in favor of the rich. It also remained unclear how the budget deficit could be reduced given the reduced tax revenue. Another change through the Tax Reform Act affected healthcare. By repealing tax-effective compulsory fees for those who choose not to take out health insurance, the indirect insurance obligation introduced by the Affordable Care Act (ACA) 2009 was in effect repealed. In this way, the Republicans were now able through the tax reform to undermine a significant part of the Affordable Care Act introduced by Obama by abolishing the “penalty fees” they rejected as compulsory contributions, after their attempt to completely abolish the law had failed a

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few months earlier due to far-reaching disagreements within the party which led to the failure of a new Republican bill. Following the principle of the neoliberal market economy, President Trump advocated for tax cuts from the outset and a targeted policy of deregulation of the economy. State regulations were to be cut back drastically; this affected in particular regulations and laws that were passed during the Obama administration. In the first year in office, the Trump administration lifted far more regulations than it enacted laws (Bump, 2017). The “deregulation tracker” compiled by the Center on Regulation and Markets at the Washington think tank Brookings Institution lists 60 measures for deregulation that were taken between January and September 2020(Brookings Institution, 2020). They affected a wide range of areas from banking and finance, to environmental and consumer protection, energy policy, education, transportation, and health. As one of the first measures in office in 2017, Trump signed an executive order to review existing regulations in the financial sector. The executive order was aimed at the “Dodd-Frank Act” passed during the Obama presidency. The executive order could not repeal the financial market regulatory law passed by Congress; but it set the framework for a legislative proposal to be drafted. Unlike tax reform, the proposal to amend the “Dodd-Frank Act” was also supported by some Democrats. A radical repeal of banking supervision, as originally demanded by some Republicans, had no chance of success in the legislative process—especially after the Democrats won a majority in the House of Representatives in the midterm elections in 2018—but a revised version was signed into law by Trump in spring 2018. In addition, many regulations in the banking and financial sector were relaxed or completely abolished through appointments of leading positions in the Ministry of Finance and in the leadership of the consumer protection agency as well as through budget cuts. Deregulation in environmental and consumer protection went particularly far. The federal environmental protection agency (EPA) established by Richard Nixon in 1970 not only had to endure significant reductions in staff, but Trump also placed the agency’s leadership in the hands of people who are opposed to the environmental protection idea and advocate a withdrawal of environmental policy guidelines. The head of the EPA appointed by President Trump in 2017, Scott Pruitt, for example, had sued the EPA several times as attorney general of Oklahoma and publicly denied climate change. His successor Andrew Wheeler was one of the well-known coal lobbyists. Structural changes and the reduction of the mandate gradually turned the EPA’s focus in Trump’s four years in office more and more towards deregulation and the abolition of environmental protection measures. Trump also rejected state funding for renewable energies, as well

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as the emission standards and energy consumption guidelines introduced by the Obama administration. The “war on coal” (Trump) was to be ended and the use of fossil energies was to be promoted (Volcovici et al., 2017). Oil drilling along the American coast and inland was permitted and fracking was expanded; among other measures, the controversial Keystone XL pipeline from Canada to the USA was also to be continued. In all areas relevant to environmental policy, therefore, regulations have been abolished and rules have been relaxed and abolished because they were considered to be a restriction on “free” economic activity. At the same time, this deregulation policy was in stark contrast to the regulatory policy advocated by Democrat Joe Biden. After the change of power in the White House, there was therefore a reintroduction of environmental standards and new regulations, not least because Biden had a significant share in the guidelines for the reorientation of energy policy and environmental policy during the Obama administration and set climate policy as a high priority for his term after 2020. Notably, in foreign trade policy under Trump, a reversal took place that led to a revision of the free trade principle. Based on his belief that the United States was at a disadvantage in world trade, in the first months of his term, Trump took a nationalist-protectionist path in economic policy that corresponded to his populist principle “America First”. The protectionism favored in this way represented a clear departure from the traditional Republican free trade and economic liberalism as shaped by his Republican predecessors in office. Initialcriticism of this reversal from within the Republican Party soon fell silent and in the election year 2020, Donald Trump had his party fully committed to the protectionist change in trade policy. Protectionism resulted in high activism. Immediately after taking office in January 2017, President Trump ordered in an executive order that the trade deficit, which was attributed to “unfair” trade practices, be reviewed and imports from countries with higher surpluses be subject to penalty tariffs. In January 2018, the government made its first move. With its decision for high tariffs on solar panels and washing machines, it hit China, South Korea and other Asian countries—more measures to protect domestic production followed. Tariffs were extended and amounted to almost half of all goods from China in order to force the country to agree to a new trade agreement with the United States. Tariffs were also imposed on the German steel industry, which the US government accused of “dumping” prices. Other tariffs, for example in the automotive industry, which is central to European exports, could successfully be averted by EU representatives, but the instrument of tariff increases became firmly anchored in the repertoire of Trump’s foreign trade policy.

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A clear change in foreign trade policy was also evident during Donald Trump’s four years in office with regard to free trade agreements that the USA had concluded or negotiated since 1990. In particular, the NAFTA agreement, which the Clinton administration had set up in 1994 with Canada and Mexico, and which had already been described as in need of revision during the Obama presidency, came under harsh criticism. From Donald Trump’s point of view, it was one of the worst contracts ever concluded and he announced an immediate review and renegotiation of the agreement. This led to a series of trade disputes with Canada as early as his first year in office, e.g. by the US government imposing duties on Canadian wood imports in response to disagreements over milk prices in April 2017. At the same time, relations with Mexico, which Trump repeatedly accused of taking advantage of the USA, were particularly strained, even though US companies often produce in Mexico to offer their products, many of them in the consumer sector, at low prices. The sharp criticism of Mexico also related to the ongoing immigration from the southern neighboring country. In many economic sectors in the USA, for example in agriculture—this above all in California—, in the service sector as well as in the construction and landscaping sectors, a large number of Mexican workers are employed, including many seasonal migrant workers and laborers who have entered the USA without papers. With his project to build a wall to Mexico, Trump wanted to give his hard line against the southern neighbour more weight and stop further immigration, especially since anti-immigration rhetoric is particularly popular with many Trump supporters. After difficult negotiations, Mexico, for which trade with the USA is vital, finally agreed to a new accordwith the USA, which Canada then joined, so that the successor document, the “United States-Mexico-Canada-Agreement” (USMCA), could be signed in 2018 and finally came into force in July 2020. The termination of the Trans-Pacific Partnership TPP, which the American government had negotiated for several years with Asian-Pacific countries and to which the partners had already agreed, was another step in reversing trade liberalization through multilateral agreements. The aim of the TPP was to establish a free trade zone that would not only strengthen the contracting parties, but also form a counterweight to the emerging China as an economic power in the Pacific. After the withdrawal of the USA, the countries, including important American trading partners such as Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Peru, agreed to ratify the TPP agreement in March 2018 without the USA. Critics assess the withdrawal of the USA from the already negotiated agreement as a clear weakening of the country in the region and in particular vis-à-vis China. The Pacific region, termed the “Indo-Pacific”, remained important for the Trump

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a­dministration, but it was striving to strengthen its trade position exclusively through bilateral agreements in favor of the USA, a strategy whose advantage for the USA has so far only been marginally visible. The fate of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), which was controversial not only in the USA but also in Europe, was also sealed. Already during the 2016 election campaign, Trump rejected this agreement negotiated by the Obama administration. His idea was to conclude bilateral agreements with individual European countries, first and foremost with the United Kingdom, which has traditionally maintained close relations with the USA, but also with other important trading partners such as France and Germany. However, this strategy could not be implemented because such bilateral agreements with individual European countries are not compatible with European law. Only the EU can conclude trade agreements with third countries on behalf of the member states. The situation is different for the United Kingdom, which, after withdrawing from the EU internal market, was striving to conclude bilateral agreements. As in the past, however, the economic interest of the USA in the EU remains high because it is the country’s most important trading partner. A central theme in Trump’s 2020 election campaign, as in his campaign four years earlier, was trade with China which he described as “unfair”. The rhetoric directed against China runs through Trump’s entire four-year term in office, but with varying intensity. Trump repeatedly condemned the high trade deficit of the USA vis-à-vis China, but also met several times with Xi Jinping and described him as his “friend”. According to the “Financial Times”, despite the long-standing complaints about the imbalance and the introduction of new tariffs, the trade balance had changed only slightly between 2016 and 2019—it amounted to a total of 347 billion USD in 2016 and 345 billion USD in 2019 (Sevastopulo & Williams, 2020). A first agreement, signed in January 2020 after a long struggle, was now to oblige China to buy more US goods in order to reduce the deficit. However, only slow developments in this direction are so far to be seen. As a result, the trade deficit played only a subordinate role in Trump’s 2020 election campaign. The trade war had meanwhile shifted to other issues, such as the use of Chinese 5G technology in the USA, the enforcement of market openings through sanctions and questions of intellectual property rights to inventions and technological developments. Especially in the election year 2020 and against the backdrop of COVID-19, the rhetoric had hardened, as can be seen from Trump’s attributions of responsibility for the pandemic, which he called “China-Virus” or “Kung-Flu”. Adding to the tensions was the ban on the Chinese video platform TikTok and the exclusion of Huawei from the 5G network. Clearly, China had

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become the number one external “enemy” in election campaign rhetoric and the followinghe trade war was therefore fought with hard means. Finally, it should also be mentioned that the agricultural sector played a special role in the economic policy of the Trump administration. For Donald Trump, farmers in the Midwest counted among the key voter group. Farmers traditionally see themselves as the true Americans who inhabit the “Heartland” of the USA, which embodies the core of American life and culture. In addition to the traditionally conservative, Republican-voting states of the Midwest, agricultural states such as Ohio, Wisconsin and Iowa made Donald Trump’s 2016 election victory possible. However, the economic situation in many of these states is precarious, because the COVID-19 pandemic also led to a decline in sales for farmers in the Midwest. They have also suffered from the trade war with China, as they had largely oriented their production of pork and soybeans to the Chinese market. However, due to the tensions between the USA and China and the imposition of tariffs and import bans, sales in China have been significantly reduced. Compensation payments in recent years to farmers should make up for these losses and agriculture has since diversified, but losses have been incurred as a result of the COVID 19 pandemic and the resulting restrictions on the catering, hotel, service and conference sector. Shortfalls caused by the pandemic in 2020 should now be generously compensated by the state. Just before the election, for example, the Trump administration announced that it would pay out around 37 billion USD in direct aid to farmers, a measure that observers criticized as electioneering for Trump (Meyer and Williams 2020), especially because smaller businesses and needy layers of society have received less targeted and far less extensive support.

6.5 The Economic Policy Concept of the Democrats In contrast to the protectionist economic policy of the Trump administration, which rejected multilateral free trade agreements and wanted to protect the domestic economy through the imposition of punitive tariffs, the concept of the Democrats is clearly characterized by a policy of economic openness and multilateral trade relations (Democratic Party Platform, 2020). Regarding the domestic economy, Biden also emphasized that the American industry and American jobs should be better protected. His election program “Build Back Better” clearly highlights this priority by making concrete proposals for the promotion of domestic industries and supply chains (Biden & Harris, 2020). At the same time he advocated free trade, multilateralism and close cooperation with allies and trading partners in Europe, North America and the Pacific. After all, this trade had also

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brought benefits to the USA. The trade deficit (“unfair trade”) with the EU, for example, only related to trade of goods; if one were to include the financial and service sector, the distribution of profits would look quite different since the US benefited from this trade. In this way, trade with partners can also secure American interests, a position that Biden explicitly advocated during the election campaign. Regarding China, Joe Biden criticized the country’s trade policy like Donald Trump has, however, he used a less confrontational rhetoric. Moreover, he called for a coordinated strategy with allies and partner’s of the US, like the European Union. Future trade relations should therefore not be independent from that of allies. During his first months in the White House, Biden said he would not lift tariffs already in place for about half of all Chinese imports, but negotiate trade relations with China. His goal was “to pursue trade policies that actually produce progress on China’s abusive practices – that’s stealing intellectual property, dumping products, illegal subsidies to corporations” (Friedman, 2020). Biden also rejected any technology transfer that was not agreed upon. Biden and the Democrats moreover are concerned about human rights violations, for example regarding China’s policy in Hongkong, minority rights, and the independence of Taiwan. In the areas of energy policy, consumer protection, climate and environmental policy the Biden-Harris-Administration clearly intended to change course. Because of the sustained recession and the pandemic-related health crisis, the topic of climate and environmental policy had initially been pushed into the background. However, Joe Biden positioned himself differently than Donald Trump with a program to combat climate change, in order to address especially the younger voters who demand an energetic climate and environmental protection policy. The accumulation of severe hurricanes and storms, floods, and extensive forest and bush fires have also hightened climate awareness in the American public, despite Trump’s repeatedly expressed doubts about climate change. His withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement, the abolition of environmental and climate regulations, and the weakening of the national environmental agency EPA were supposed to stimulate the economy through deregulation and abolition of environmental policy guidelines. In contrast, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris repeatedly emphasized that combating climate change and expanding renewable energy would have to be a main task for future policy. Once in office, the new government therefore advocated an active policy to develop an environmentally friendly economic policy, the return to rules based on environmental standards, and the expansion of jobs in the renewable energy and infrastructure sectors. While the Democratic Party’s left wing, which had demanded an even

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more coherent ecological transformation of the economy, argued that Biden’s policy plan did not go far enough, it became clear that the concepts for environmental and energy policy of the new government differed starkly from those of the Trump presidency. First steps included Biden’s decision to return to the Paris Climate Agreement immediately and to appoint the Special Envoy for Climate, a task that John Kerry took over, who has experience in environmental policy and, as foreign minister of the Obama administration, had co-signed the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015. In tax policy, too, Biden set other priorities, often resembling the policies of the Obama administration. The Tax Policy Center, a politically independent think tank based in Washington D.C., found that the concepts of tax policy that Donald Trump had put forward for the 2020 election campaign remained vague at best. In contrast, Joe Biden’s proposals were very detailed and comprehensive and, among other things, envisioned a relief for families and middle-class Americans, and an increase in taxes for higher-earners (Urban Institute and Brookings Institution, 2020). In addition, Biden advocated stronger support for middle-class families, the reduction of social inequalities and a significant financial improvement for employees in the areas of health care, education and childcare. In the field of education, the Democrats were advocating a better equipment of public schools and the linking of federal funds to goals such as environmental competence, critical judgment and the promotion of minorities. Although Biden does not supportthe abolition of high tuition fees for college education demanded by the left wing of the party, he advocated for example, that colleges and universities should be made affordable again by means of more scholarships and that the tuition fees for families with an annual income of less than 125,000 USD should be waived.

6.6 Summary More than three quarters of voters in 2020 said the economy was the most important issue in their voting decision, according to a study by the Pew Research Center (2020). The fact that it was a Democratic president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who led the United States out of the last Great Depression in the 1930s, may have helped the Democrats’ narrative in the election. In the context of the 2020 election, Biden appeared to be a sustainably oriented hope-bringer in the White House. He positioned himself as an anti-thesis to Trump’s confrontational and selective economic policy and placed economic policies with a strong focus on social and equality issues at the center of his agenda. In the future, this focus could help to alleviatethe deep social divisions in US society by elevating and

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improving the socio-economic conditions of those Americans, who had been pushed to the margins by the harsh neoliberal economic course of globalization. Immediately after the elections, the Biden-Harris administration presented a comprehensive stimulus package for the economy totaling 1.9 trillion USD (Smialek, 2021). Key elements of the plan included direct payments of 1400 USD to all adult citizens as well as targeted support for local and state authorities. In addition, the plan suggested an increase in the minimum wage and an extension of unemployment benefits during the pandemic. Since the Democrats had a majority in both, the Senate and the House of Representatives after the elections, the measures were expected to be implemented swiftly. Another trillion-dollar “American Jobs Plan”, in March 2021 presented further economic, infrastructure and social measures (The White House, 2021 After complex negotiations in Congress, the measures did not pass in full, but the legislation passed still opened new avenues in economic policy. In particular, legislation such as the American Rescue Plan Act (2021), the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (2021), and the Inflation Reduction Act (2021) underlined Biden’s priorities in social and economic policy.

References Bartels, L. M. (2016). Unequal democracy. The political economy of the new gilded age (2nd ed.). Princeton University Press. Biden, J., & Harris, K. (2020). Build back better. https://joebiden.com/build-back-better/. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Brookings Institution. (2020). Tracking deregulation in the Trump era. https://www.brookings.edu/interactives/tracking-deregulation-in-the-trump-era/. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Bump, P. (2017). What Trump has undone. Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost. com/news/politics/wp/2017/08/24/what-trump-has-undone/?utm_term=.3859c42066f9. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Cavaillé, C., Gidron, N., & Hall, P. A. (2016). Trumpism as a transatlantic phenomenon. The American Prospect. https://prospect.org/article/trumpism-transatlantic-phenomenon. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Democratic Party. (2020). Democratic Party Platform 2020. https://www.demconvention. com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/2020-07-31-Democratic-Party-Platform-For-Distribution.pdf. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Friedman, T. L. (2020). Biden made sure ‘Trump is not going to be President for four more years’. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/02/opinion/biden-interviewmcconnell-china-iran.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Gordon, R. J. (2016). The rise and fall of American growth. Princeton University Press. Hacker, J. S., & Pierson, P. (2010). Winner take-all politics. How Washington made the rich richer and turned its back on the middle class. Simon and Schuster.

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Hall, P. A. (2008). Comments to Huffington Post, In: Thomas B Edsall: Global Economic Crisis Likely to have profound Consequences for US Politics, World Relations. Huffington Post. 13. October 2008. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/13/global-economic-crisis-li_n_134393.html. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Hochschild, A. R. (2016). Strangers in their own land. Anger and mourning on the American right. New Press. Iversen, T., & Soskice, D. (2019). Democracy and prosperity. Reinventing capitalism through a turbulent century. Princeton University Press. Krugman, P. (2017). The biggest tax scam in history. New York Times. https://www.nytimes. com/2017/11/27/opinion/senate-tax-bill-scam.html. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Krugman, P. (2020). Arguing with zombies. Economics, politics and the fight for a better future. Norton. Meyer, G., & Williams, A. (2020). US-farmers in line for record $37bn in government handouts this year. Financial Times. https://www.ft.com/content/3031e45f-0d95-4c1b8b54-a4f8bd9a4ae5. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. New York Times. (2020). Unexpected drop in U.S. unemployment helps markets rally. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/05/business/jobs-report-stockmarket-coronavirus.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Packer, G. (2013). The unwinding. An inner history of the new America. Farrar (dt. Die Abwicklung. Eine innere Geschichte des neuen Amerika 2015). Pew Research Center. (2017). 7 Key findings on the state of the middle class in Western Europe. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/04/24/7-key-findings-on-the-stateof-the-middle-class-in-western-europe/. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Pew Research Center. (2020). Important issues in the 2020 election. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2020/08/13/important-issues-in-the-2020-election/. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Reich, R. (2020). The system. Who rigged it and how to fix it. Alfred Knopf. Sevastopulo, D., & Williams, A. (2020). Why Trump no longer talks about the trade deficit with China. Financial Times. https://www.ft.com/content/081e6d25-8d67-4caa-918a2765a66f0052. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Smialek, J. (2021). A look at what’s in Biden’s 1,9 trillion stimulus plan. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/14/business/economy/biden-stimulus-plan.html. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Social Progress Index. (2020). Social progress summary 2020 – United States. https:// www.socialprogress.org/?code=USA. Accessed 12 Dec 2020. Solow, R. M. (2005). Rethinking fiscal policy. Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 21(04), 509–514. Stiglitz, J. E. (2013). The price of inequality. How today’s divided society endangers our future. Norton. The White House. (2021). Fact Sheet: The American Jobs Plan. https://www.whitehouse. gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/03/31/fact-sheet-the-american-jobs-plan/. Accessed 28 March 2021. United States Bureau of Economic Analysis. (2020). Gross domestic product, third quarter 2020 (second estimate); corporate profits, third quarter 2020 (preliminary estimate). https://www.bea.gov/news/2020/gross-domestic-product-3rd-quarter-2020-second-estimate-corporate-profits-3rd-quarter. Accessed 28 Jan 2021.

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United States Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2020). Labor force statistics. https://www.bls. gov/webapps/legacy/cpsatab2.htm. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. United States Census Bureau. (2020). Quarterly residential vacancies and homeownership. https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/files/currenthvspress.pdf. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Urban Institute & Brookings Institution. (2020). Tax Policy Center: Where the candidates stand on tax policy. https://2020-presidential-candidates-tax-policy.urban.org. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Vance, J. D. (2016). Hillbilly Elegy. A memoir of a family and culture in crisis. Harper. Viola, L. A. (2020). Die Rolle der USA in internationalen Organisationen: Primus Inter Pares? In C. Lammert, M. Siewert, & B. Vormann (Eds.), Handbuch Politik USA (pp. 541–558). Springer VS Verlag. Volcovici, V., Groom, N., & DiSavino, S. (2017). Trump declares end to ‘war on coal’, but utilities aren’t listening. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-climatepower-idUSKBN1770D8. Accessed 28 Jan 2021.

7

A Society Without a Safety Net: Social Issues in the Election Campaign

Given the social and economic inequalities in American society, controversies about social policy issues came to a head during the election campaign. Republicans have been trying for a long time to keep the federal government’s expenditure on health, education, infrastructure, justice and other community tasks as low as possible. In these areas, they prefer market-based supply forms and decentralized benefits provided by the individual federal states. According to the Republicans, this also means that the federal state’s tax revenue can be kept low and allocated mainly to expenditures in security and defense. This position is represented in particular by the group of libertarian and conservative Republicans in Congress known as the Freedom Caucus. Originally, this position goes back to the Reagan presidency, which cut back on social welfare benefits and implemented far-reaching deregulation. Against this background, it is not surprising that Ronald Reagan was repeatedly cited by Donald Trump as a role model during the election campaign. For the Democrats, however, social welfare benefits are a key building block of modern American society. Although progressive and moderate Democrats certainly have different ideas about the scope and extent of social policy—most clearly visible in the 2020 campaign in the contrasting positions of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren on the one hand, and moderate Democrats like Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar on the other—they all agreed that the federal government should be striving to create equal opportunities for all citizens. Accordingly, Joe Biden repeatedly presented himself during the election campaign as the one who wanted to tackle central social issues, especially in view of the simultaneity of COVID-19, the economic crisis and nationwide protest waves. Accordingly, these issues are also addressed in detail in the election program of the Democrats (Democratic Party Platform, 2020).

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2022 C. Lemke and J. Wiedekind, The Battle for the White House, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-38934-5_7

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There were particularly sharp disagreements in the election year 2020 on two topics: health care and the demands for judicial and police reform. Due to the Coronavirus pandemic, the already controversial issue of health care between the parties had deepened even further. According to a study by the Pew Research Center (2020a), around three quarters of voters said in August 2020 that the economy was the most important issue in their voting decision; the second most important issue is already health care with 68%, followed by the appointment of the Supreme Court judge (64%) and the Coronavirus pandemic (62%). There are also clear differences along party lines: health care is decisive for 84% of Democrats, but only for 48% of Republicans. When it comes to the Coronavirus pandemic, the differences are even more pronounced. While 82% of Democrats say that the pandemic is the most important issue for them, this is only the case for Republicans with 39%. The controversies surrounding health policy will be analyzed in more detail below before other controversial social issues such as judicial and police reform and the appointment of the judge to the Supreme Court are discussed. The latter is important since the Court often has the last word on social issues such as abortion, citizenship policy, or same-sex marriage (see Obergefell v. Hodges).

7.1 The Crisis in the Health Care System The 2020 presidential elections were overshadowed by the social and economic consequences of the Coronavirus pandemic. In this context, the controversy over health care has become much sharper, not only because the pandemic challenges the health care system in ways that have not been seen before, but also because the process has highlighted the gaps and problems in health care. Due to the fragmented health care system, the provision of health care to the American population shows significant differences. Unlike in most OECD countries, there is no general health insurance, but rather a mix of market- and statebased insurance systems. This not only leads to the fact that the level of care in the population varies greatly according to income, employment and social status. Rather, it also became apparent that ethnic minorities, especially the Hispanics as well as the African-Americans, are disproportionately affected by the pandemic because of their income and employment status. The parties’ dispute focused primarily on the statutory health insurance, which, according to the Democrats, should be a basic right for all citizens, but which the Republicans reject as an disproportionate state intervention in personal freedom of choice, and as “socialist”. In the election year 2020, this controversial issue was further exacerbated by the Coronavirus pandemic.

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At the first peak of the pandemic in spring 2020, almost 2,000 people died from an infection with the coronavirus (Sars-CoV-2) and the resulting condition of COVID-19 within a single day. According to the Johns Hopkins University (2020), this was the highest increase within a day since the beginning of the crisis in March. By December 2020, the number of registered infections in the USA had already risen to over 15 million according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2020a). By January 2021, this number had risen to 23.2 million. A total of 387,255 people had died from the infection by January 15, 2021 (CDC, 2020a). At this time, over 3,500 people were dying from COVID-19 every day—that is, more people were dying every day than were killed in the 9/11 terrorist attacks in total. It was therefore of crucial importance that the USA was able to approve the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine as one of the first countries on December 11, 2020. The vaccination process could then begin quickly (U.S. Food and Drug Administration, 2020). In view of the rapidly increasing number of cases and the enormous efforts of doctors, nurses and rescue forces in all parts of the country—first in the hotspots New York, New Orleans and Detroit, but then also in all other regions of the East, West, South, and Midwest—and against the backdrop of the numerous complaints of governors about a lack of equipment with protective clothing, missing respirators and overloaded test facilities at the beginning of the pandemic, one thing became increasingly clear: The health care system had deep-seated structural deficiencies that have existed for a long time, but were now particularly evident through this stress test. On the one hand, the USA has highly qualified personnel and outstanding research centers in the medical field, but on the other hand, the basic care of the population is extremely patchy, often depending on the state or the region citizens lived in. Federal regulation remained patchy; President Trump largely delegated management of the pandemic on the ground to the governors of the federal states and did not take over coordination himself; neither was a nationwide mask requirement like in most European countries ordered, nor were recommendations for social distancing implemented. Trump himself refused to wear a mask, both in the White House and during election events, even after he was infected with the Coronavirus in October 2020. In the election campaigns of the last decades, health policy has always been a bone of contention between Republicans and Democrats—as it was in 2020. While Democrats favor an expansion of the general health insurance, Republicans in particular reject the reforms introduced during the Obama administration (“Obamacare”) vehemently. The President repeatedly denounced an expansion of the state health care as socialism. He favored private insurance based restructuring of the health care system and rejected federal responsibility for health policy and health insurance—a position that is closely related to the Republican tradition of being skeptical of federal regulations and of burdening businesses with health insurance requirements.

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Unlike in European countries, health insurance in the US is linked to the market; the idea of a solidarity community that lies at the heart of many European countries’ healthcare systems is lacking in the US. The majority of all Americans (18+) are today insured through private providers (68%), while state insurance, i.e. Medicare (for seniors) or Medicaid (for the socially disadvantaged), is used by 34%; around 8% of the population has no insurance. The different types of insurance can overlap. Although medical research, treatment methods, and diagnostics are on a highly professional level, the unequal access to the healthcare system nevertheless has severe consequences. Thus, the loss of a job often also means the loss of insurance, which is why the rapidly increasing unemployment as a result of the coronavirus crisis not only led to immediate income losses, but also the loss of the so important health insurance. In March 2020 alone, 10 million employees were reported unemployed (Deutsche Welle, 2020). The unemployment rate reached its peak in April at 14.7% and was still at 6.7% in November—in February, before the crisis, the rate was still at 3.5% (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2020). In addition, continuation of wage payment is not guaranteed in the event of illness. While wage continuation has been established to a large extent in the public sector, this is not the case in the private sector, where this right is usually only available to the better-paid. In the lowest income bracket, only one third of employees have the possibility of receiving wage continuation in the event of illness (Desilver, 2020). While the idea of a universal health care system was able to gain ground in other Western countries during the twentieth century, the United States is the only OECD country without a universal health care system. This not only led to a large number of people without health insurance, but also to relatively high costs in the health care system, which were further increased by the high use of emergency rooms, the rampant chronic diseases with severe consequences, and the high costs for drugs and medical services that were raised by market mechanisms. The intensive lobbying of leading pharmaceutical companies such as Gilead, Pfizer, Merck or Johnson & Johnson is often controversially discussed in this context in Congress. For example, CNN (Scutti, 2019) reported, based on the research network “Open Secrets”, that the pharmaceutical industry’s lobby group in the United States, the “Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturer of America” or PhRMA for short, spent 27.5 million USD on lobbying in 2018 alone, in an attempt to nip criticism of overpriced drugs in the bud, among other things. Trump’s announcement in mid-December 2020 that the vaccine against COVID19 will be available free of charge to all Americans cannot disguise the fact that drugs are often very costly and that insurance companies frequently require high co-payments for all treatments and drugs.

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Following the comprehensive health reform during the Obama administration, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (often also Affordable Care Act, ACA or “Obamacare”), which stipulates obligatory health insurance, the high number of the uninsured slowly decreased. At the time the law was passed, about one quarter of Americans (22.3%) between the ages of 18 and 64, or almost 50 million people, had no health insurance. By 2016, the proportion of the uninsured had decreased to 12.4% (Goodnough et al., 2020). The expansion of the already existing Medicaid program for socially disadvantaged people, especially the poorer groups of the population, including many Hispanics and African-Americans, was the largest gain. Although the Supreme Court decided in 2012 that the states could not be forced to expand Medicaid, all but 14 states have now expanded this health insurance for the socially disadvantaged. The Obamacare law also provides that those who are not insured through their employer or cannot take advantage of any of the state insurance programs such as Medicare (for seniors) or Medicaid (for the socially disadvantaged) must purchase insurance on a new insurance market to be set up by the states at more favorable terms than established private health insurances. Also, no one should be excluded from this state insurance due to a pre-existing condition, a regulation that has great approval among the population. It is among the most important successful building blocks of Obamacare (Goodnough et al., 2020). Those who did not get insurance had to pay tax compensation. As Fig. 7.1 shows,there is a fairly clear effect of the ACA in the data. The proportion of the uninsured reached its lowest level two years after the law came into full force. This represents a significant improvement compared to the values ​​between 2007 and 2013. In addition, the ACA succeeded in providing more Americans with public health insurance. The value in this category reaches its peak two years after the full implementation of health reform. However, after the implementation of tax reform during the Trump administration which undermined an important incentive structure of ACA, a reversal of these trends can be seen in both graphs, which endangers the progress that could be achieved through the health reform. Resistance of the Republicans against the ACA was immense: between 2010 and 2020 alone, Republicans in Congress tried to repeal Obamacare and replace it with another law approximately sixty times (Goodnough et al., 2020). Not surprisingly, in the 2016 election Donald Trump declared repealing Obamacare to be the key point of his election platform. He found support for this goal primarily from the Tea Party movement, an initially libertarian but then increasingly right-wing populist movement founded to repeal the health care reform of Obama by denigrating it as “socialist”. However, the legislative proposal the Trump

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22.3%, Obamacare passed

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5

0

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Fig. 7.1   Status of health insurance in the USA, 2007–2018. Source Own figure based on data from CDC (2020b)

a­ dministration introduced after entering the White House failed in Congress in March 2017 due to disagreements of the party wings within the Republican Party. In particular, the libertarian “Freedom Caucus” rejected the proposal arguing that it did not go far enough. However, a new legislative proposal, as announced several times by Trump, was not brought before Congress during his term of office and in the 2020 election campaign his remarks about a possible alternative that should replace the ACA remained more than vague. The pandemic highlighted significant differences in access to health facilities and services as well as in the general health status of the American population. Although there were initially no national statistics on ethnic differences in infection and death rates from COVID-19, numerous cities and states have published alarming data since the beginning of the pandemic (Elgion, 2020). In the state of Illinois, for example, 43% of those who died from COVID-19 in the spring of 2020 and 28% of those tested positive were African Americans, although they make up only 15% of the state’s total population. In Michigan, one third of those tested positive and 40% of those who died were African Americans, although they make up only 14% of the population. Disproportionate ratios were also reported from other states; for example, in Louisiana, 70% of those who died from COVID-19 were African Americans, although they make up only a third of the

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population. Similarly, alarming statistics on the disproportionately high number of African Americans affected were also reported from North and South Carolina. As studies showed, it is primarily socio-economic reasons, i.e. the living and working conditions, that cause the higher infection rate with the virus in minority groups (Ogedegbe et al., 2020; Kolata, 2020). Among the important reasons are the structure of the employment. Only few Hispanics and African-Americans work in industries that are well paid and/or allow for home office. They are disproportionately often employed in lower-paid areas of manual work, in supermarkets, in construction, in city cleaning as well as in nursing and care facilities that do not allow for work from home during the crisis. The employment contracts of poorly paid jobs also rarely include comprehensive health insurance. At the same time these jobs are often above the income limit that would allow access to the state Medicaid program. Even before the pandemic, the higher rate of pre-existing conditions, such as diabetes, hypertension or chronic diseases, which caused the lower average life expectancy of the African-American population, had been pointed out by health experts. In addition, there are often cramped living and household conditions with several generations that neither allow individual isolation in the event of an infection, nor a separation of age groups. Although people in the USA are less concerned about the widening gap between rich and poor than is the case in European countries, the current crisis is not only exacerbating these differences, but is also bringing them to the attention of many Americans as a social issue of concern. By the end of March 2020, a clear majority of the population already regarded the challenge posed by COVID-19 not only as a severe crisis for their personal financial situation and health; rather, two-thirds believed that the country would also face a deep economic recession due to the pandemic (Pew Research Center, 2020b). As a result, the approval ratings for Donald Trump’s performance in office remained at a low level throughout the election year, at around 40%. Given the rapidly spreading virus, at the end of March 2020 less than half (48%) believed that Trump was doing a very good job of dealing with the crisis; among Republicans this was 83%, among Democrats only 18% (Pew Research Center, 2020c). These different perceptions of reality were, among other things, a result of the media echo chambers highlighted in Chap. 4, in which party ideological shaped perceptions which are then hardly questioned. The health reform introduced by Obama with the general health insurance has, despite some administrative and management-technical deficiencies, continuously received support from the population because the regulations had offered millions of people access to affordable insurance for the first time. Nevertheless,

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it has been a special thorn in the side of the Republicans since its introduction. According to a Gallup poll from 2020, public opinion remained divided along party lines, with 52% of those surveyed in favor of maintaining the ACA and 47% against it (Younis, 2020). In his 2020 election campaign, as in 2016, Trump announced the abolition of Obamacare and repeatedly criticized the reform as “socialist”. However, it remained unclear during the election campaign how Republicans would design a new law and solve the problem of the estimated 20 million Americans who would have fallen out of any insurance if Obamacare had been abolished. It was also unclear how people with pre-existing conditions would experience affordable insurance coverage after the abolition of Obamacare. The pandemic brought questions of crisis prevention and general health care to the forefront of the political discourse. The improvement of access to the health care system and the expansion of general health insurance proposed by Biden and the Democrats during the election campaign were popular demands in the crisis of 2020. The withdrawal of Bernie Sanders from the primaries led to one of the most prominent advocates of universal health care leaving the race, but the progressive wing of the Democrats continued to vehemently demand the expansion of health care. Health care and dealing with the consequences of the Coronavirus pandemic thus became one of the most dominant issues in the duel between Joe Biden and Donald Trump for the White House.

7.2 Social Justice: The Demand for Social Justice as a Controversial Issue The two candidates also had very different ideas when it came to social justice in relation to different ethnic groups. Against the background of the protests and demonstrations in many US cities, which were triggered by police violence, the two candidates took completely different positions. While the Democrats argue that police violence against minority groups and, above all, against AfricanAmericans points to a still existing structural racism, the Republicans categorically reject this view. The demands of civil rights groups, including “Black Lives Matter”, for a fundamental police and justice reform are rejected by them as left-wing, by Donald Trump also as anarchist, although many studies show that there are still racist prejudices and discrimination in the police and justice system (Butler, 2017).

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Although the US government has been trying to reduce racial segregation and discrimination on a legal level since the 1960s—in particular through the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 during the Lyndon B. Johnson administration—tensions and social disadvantages of African Americans remain in many respects. Despite legal alignment and targeted support programs, such as affirmative action regulations for hiring and promotion, as well as in the education system, the continuing social, economic and cultural disadvantages remain today. In the past and present, criticism has been directed at the police and justice system, at subtle and open discrimination in housing policy, in the education system and in job and career opportunities. The situation of AfricanAmerican children is particularly precarious. Even today, relatively more black children live in poverty than white children and their child mortality is almost twice as high (Peterson-KFF, 2019). Early dropout from school is also a widespread problem in many US states. Minority groups such as African Americans are particularly affected by economic developments in the course of globalization with the relocation of traditional jobs in industry, the increase in living costs and the shrinkage of the middle class (see Chap. 6). The economic and financial crisis of 2007/2008 also left deep marks on the socio-economic situation of African Americans. The unequal treatment that exists in the police and justice system has been a topic of political debate for some time now. The probability of being stopped and arrested by the police as a young black person is many times higher than for young white people, and among prisoners and those sentenced to death, African Americans are significantly overrepresented in relation to their share of the total population. Based on data from the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics and the American Community Surveys from 2018, an analysis by the Pew Research Center provides insights into this issue: African Americans, with a population share of around 12%, still made up about one-third of those incarcerated in prisons in 2018, even though the trend has been declining since 2006. The white population, with a 64% share of adults in the United States, made up significantly less with one-third of prison inmates. Even though the incarceration rate is declining overall and fewer African Americans are being incarcerated, the proportion of African American inmates in 2018 is out of proportion to their share of the adult population (Gramlich, 2020). It is also important to note that in many states prisoners lose their right to vote while they are incarcerated, and that in some cases they do not regain their right to vote automatically, but only after a certain period of time or—as in Mississippi—only after being pardoned by the governor (National Conference of State Legislatures, 2020). During the COVID19 pandemic, it also became clear that the poorer health care in many states and

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the employment structure led to a significantly higher infection and death rate among African Americans (Eligon et al., 2020). Even successful black personalities, such as in film, media, and sports, are subject to discrimination. Intellectuals, such as Ta-Nehisi Coates (2015), vividly describe this alienation in their own society and criticize the persisting racism, which, according to his observation, was reinforced and, as his thesis goes, stoked by Trump’s 2016 election to the White House and even by the highest political representative. There is now a wide range of literature on the historical-cultural and political causes of these persistent prejudices and still existing discrimination. The historian and cultural scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. (2019) shows, for example, how the meaning of “blackness” and the white supremacy ideology change over time, but do not disappear. Other authors attribute this discrimination, which still persists today, to a modern “caste system” in which people are still primarily perceived and devalued as “black” despite social advancement and economic improvement, and from which they cannot escape, but rather remain in this “caste” (Wilkerson, 2020). The widespread and long-lasting nature of racist attitudes in American society is also experienced by African-American scholars who teach at renowned universities in the USA, such as the historian John Hope Franklin (2005), who describes discrimination he encountered in his biography. The African-American civil rights movement has indeed been able to change a lot on the legal and social level, but especially in the election year 2020 the debate about racism and racial discrimination flared up again. In light of the demonstrations and social unrest in many cities during the election year following the violent death of George Floyd in May 2020 and several other African-Americans by police forces, the public debate in the election year sharpened considerably. The protests against racially motivated police violence spread like wildfire throughout the country and demonstrations took place in over one hundred cities. The protests also found resonance in European countries and led to solidarity demonstrations in cities such as in Berlin, Paris and London. In the course of the summer, governors in 40 American states declared a state of emergency and the National Guard was temporarily mobilized in more than 20 states. In the aftermath of the mostly peaceful protests and demonstrations, violence and looting occurred in many places, which in turn intensified the deployment of police and National Guard, as in Portland, Kenosha and other cities in the USA. At the same time, then-president Trump’s rhetoric sharpened as he denounced the demonstrations as unjustified. In the course of the social protests, groups such as the “Black Lives Matter” movement, which also enjoyed high popularity on social media, voiced demands

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for “social justice” and many new activists joined it in summer 2020 (Garza, 2020). The “Black Lives Matter” movement was founded in 2013 on the occasion of the acquittal of a police officer who had killed an African-American teenager, Treyvon Martin. Organized in a decentralised manner and uniting with other political groups, the movement repeatedly drew attention to the violence against African Americans and the mild or missing punishments of policemen, which are widely perceived as unfair. During the election year 2020 it became one of the most important and influential social movements in the country. One of its demands, to cut police funding (“defund the police”) and redirect it to social projects, was also taken up by the progressive wing of the Democrats, but not by Joe Biden. For him and Kamala Harris the consistent fight against police violence was above all about striving for the broader goals of social justice and the gradual dismantling of the structural racism. In contrast, Donald Trump repeatedly referred to activists of the “Black Lives Matter” movement as anarchist lawbreakers. He used the protests as an opportunity to call for a strong police presence and drastic penalties for those involved in the demonstrations, in the hope of winning over his conservative white voters. The demand of “Black Lives Matter” to cut police spending became the target of his criticism when he repeatedly—but falsely—claimed that the Democrats wanted to abolish the police entirely. Because of their election campaign and the strong support of social movements, the Biden-Harris administration on the other hand raised clear expectations about the scope and success of their fight against structural racism and police violence.

7.3 The Ideological Balance in the Supreme Court and its Social Consequences During the presidential election campaign, Donald Trump unexpectedly had the opportunity to fill another vacancy on the Supreme Court, a development that gave his campaign a significant boost. In June 2020, it was announced that the prominent judge on the Supreme Court, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, an icon of liberal jurisprudence in the USA, was seriously ill with cancer. Three months later, in September, she died at the age of 87 from the illness. The resulting vacancy on the Supreme Court gave President Trump the opportunity to appoint a new judge even before the November elections—the third appointment during his term. Shortly after the news of Ginsburg’s death was announced, Trump declared that he would immediately proceed with the appointment. In many ways, this situation offered the chance for a long-awaited boost for the Trump-campaign in the

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fall, because in the face of persistently low approval ratings and unfavorable poll results, especially in contested states, the appointment of another conservative judge to the highest court of the US could mobilize more voters in the conservative and religious spectrum and increase their voter participation. The nine judges on the Supreme Court are each appointed for life. Ruth Bader Ginsburg was considered a champion of liberal values and equality for women after she was nominated by President Bill Clinton in August 1993 and confirmed by an overwhelming majority of 93 to three votes in the Senate. Her voice and vote on the court would clearly be missing. In the past decade, there have often been 5:4 votes in favor of liberal interpretations of the law, and thus far-reaching decisions were passed, such as the legalisation of same-sex marriage. Now it has become possible for Trump to appoint another judge with a conservative leaning, thus changing the majority ratios in the long term, after he had already placed two judges—Neil Gorsuch (2017) and Brett Kavanaugh (2018)—against the strong resistance of the Democrats. With the appointment of another judge with conservative interpretation of the law, the majority in the Supreme Court is shifting in their favor for the foreseeable future. Although the judges are supposed to be independent and not politically bound, as has been shown in the past, the procedure for appointing Supreme Court judges has increasingly been dominated by the respective government’s “favorable” people and their appointment in the Senate. If the president’s party has a majority in the Senate - as was the case in 2020 -, opposition to the nomination can be fierce but is nevertheless hopeless. In this sense, the principle of chance, i.e. the unexpected departure of a judge appointed for life, will open options for the president in office and the corresponding majorities in the Senate because it plays the decisive role in the re-appointment. As late as 2016, Republicans, led by Senate Republican Majority Leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, blocked a replacement for the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, citing the fact that it was the last year of the Obama administration and the nomination should be left to the next president. But in 2020, the Republicans pursued a different strategy, using their majority in the Senate and a united front in the Republican party to quickly confirm the conservative Judge Amy Coney Barrett which had been nominated by Trump (Fandos, 2020). For many Republicans, this fulfilled a long-held dream to overhaul the majority in the Court which was also one of Trump’s campaign promises. The Democrats, on the other hand, unsuccessfully tried to delay the filling of the vacancy until after the presidential election. The resulting fierce controversy is indicative of the partisan confrontation characterized by ideological polarization (see Chaps. 4 and 5). The decisive conservative majority in the Supreme Court has far-reaching social, political and legal consequences. Although Trump’s calculation did not

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materialize, to challenge the results of his electoral defeat in November legally and to call on the Supreme Court and its conservative majority, similar to 2000, to decide in his favor. All lawsuits filed by Trump and the Republicans in 2020 have been dismissed for lack of evidence of widespread electoral fraud. A particularly controversial lawsuit came from the federal prosecutor of the state of Texas who argued that votes cast should not count in numerous contested states, such as for example Pennsylvania because the extended mail-in voting due to the pandemic was deemed illegal. The Supreme Court dismissed this lawsuit in a very brief and decisive manner. The conservative leaning of the Court, however, became very clear in other pivotal decisions in social policy disputes such as the abortion issue. In June 2022, the Supreme Court repealed “Roe vs. Wade” and declared abortion to be illegal. Access to legal abortion has long been attacked by conservative and religious activists, and the Court’s decision marked a clear setback for women’s rights in the US. The legality of same-sex marriage, which the Supreme Court confirmed in 2015, could also be put to the test, as could the legal status of those who immigrated to the USA as children without legal papers and who can now live legally in the USA with the DACA regulation (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals). In summer 2020, the Supreme Court had already rejected the deportation decree issued by the Trump administration as unlawful and excessive, but a final legal protection of this group is still pending. The very rapid appointment of Judge Coney Barrett in the middle of a heated and polarised election campaign has certainly damaged the reputation of the Supreme Court as independent arbitrator due to the politicization of the judiciary. The now-enshrined conservative majority is an advantage for the Republicans and explains at least partially the high mobilization of Trump’s supporters during the election campaign, who not only credited him with keeping his 2016 election promise, but also hoped for a clear conservative shift in jurisprudence, especially with regard to abortion law.

7.4 Summary The 2020 presidential election was overshadowed by the social and economic consequences of the Coronavirus pandemic. This is particularly evident in the controversy surrounding health policy, which had become much more divisive and polarised. The approaches of Democrats and Republicans differ sharply from each other, due to ideological polarization and exacerbating it. While it was the declared goal of the Republicans to completely abolish the general health ­insurance obligation known as “Obamacare”, the Democrats advocated for the

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expansion and improvement of this insurance; in addition, private health insurance should remain. Biden’s electoral success is therefore indicative in this policy area. With Joe Biden and the Democrats’ victory in the House of Representatives and in the Senate, the repeal of the existing health insurance law is no longer on the immediate agenda, but Biden now has to face the precarious health care of a large part of the population in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic and its consequences. Without a safety net and a double bottom, the situation for many of those affected by the pandemic will further deteriorate. In addition, when drafting legislative changes, Biden will not only have to involve Republican representatives, but also bring together the different wings of the Democrats. In terms of demands for a more consistent fight against racism and police violence, the two opponents, Trump and Biden, have taken the most irreconcilable positions. This is not only due to their political and ideological convictions, but also to the beliefs of their respective followers. Of all the socio-demographic factors in the voting decision, it is striking how clearly Trump’s followers are concentrated among the white population. Many of them categorically reject the idea of structural racism and are therefore not in favor of a reform of the police and justice system. Overcoming legal and social disadvantages, however, requires a systematic approach to these problems. Accordingly, the expectations of the Democrats’ voters are high that the Biden-Harris administration will contribute to addressing these disadvantages. In line with the American political system, the Supreme Court plays a key role in all major social controversies. Here, Trump used the election campaign - while still in office - to push through a very rapid appointment of the vacant judge’s position, even though the Democrats had demanded to postpone an appointment until after the elections. As a result of this development, the conservative turn desired by Trump is at least firmly anchored in the institution of the Supreme Court for the foreseeable future, unless the Democrats actually resort to the means of “court packing“, i.e. an expansion of the number of judges as demanded by the progressive wing. However, this strategy is itself controversial among the Democrats (Herndon & Astor, 2020). In this case as in the above mentioned policy areas, the positions differed greatly between Democrats and Republicans. The ideological cleavages and the culture wars are thus destined to overshadow the Biden presidency in the years to come.

References

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References Butler, P. (2017). Chokehold. Policing black men. Free Press. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2020a). CDC COVID data tracker. https:// covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/?CDC_AA_refVal=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cdc. gov%2Fcoronavirus%2F2019-ncov%2Fcases-updates%2Fcases-in-us.html#cases_casesper100klast7days. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2020b). Health insurance coverage, by type of coverage: 2007–2018. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/2018/fig20.pdf. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Coates, T.-N. (2015). Between the world and me. Notes on the first 150 years in America. Spiegel & Grau. Democratic Party Platform. (2020). https://www.demconvention.com/wp-content/ uploads/2020/08/2020-07-31-Democratic-Party-Platform-For-Distribution.pdf. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Desilver, D. (2020). As Coronavirus spreads, which U.S. workers have paid sick leave – and which don’t? https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/03/12/as-coronavirusspreads-which-u-s-workers-have-paid-sick-leave-and-which-dont/. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Deutsche W. (2020). Zehn Millionen neue Arbeitslose in den USA allein im März. https://www.dw.com/de/zehn-millionen-neue-arbeitslose-in-den-usa-allein-immärz/a-52998211. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Eligon, J., Burch, A. D. S., Searcey, D., & Oppel, Jr., R. A. (2020). Black Americans face alarming rates of covid infections in some states. New York Times. https://www. nytimes.com/2020/04/07/us/coronavirus-race.html?action=click&module=Top%20 Stories&pgtype=Homepage. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Fandos, N. (2020). With court prize in sight, Republicans Unite behind Trump once again. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/22/us/politics/ruth-bader-ginsburg-republicans.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Franklin, J. H. (2005). Mirror to America. Autobiography. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Garza, A. (2020). The purpose of power. Penguin Random House. Gates, Jr., H. L. (2019). Stony the road. Reconstruction, white supremacy, and the rise of Jim Crow. Penguin Random House. Goodnough, A., Abelson, R., Sanger-Katz, M., & Kliff, S. (2020). Obamacare turns 10. Here’s a look at what works and doesn’t. New York Times. https://web.archive.org/ web/20200330105840/https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/23/health/obamacare-acacoverage-cost-history.html. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Gramlich, J. (2020). Black imprisonment rate in the U.S. has fallen by a third since 2006. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/05/06/share-ofblack-white-hispanic-americans-in-prison-2018-vs-2006/. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Herndon, A. W., & Astor, M. (2020). Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death revives talk of court packing. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/19/us/politics/what-iscourt-packing.html. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Johns Hopkins University. (2020). Coronavirus Resource Center. Critical trends. https:// coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/state-timeline. Accessed 30 Dec 2020.

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Kolata, G. (2020). Social inequalities explain racial gaps in pandemic, studies find. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/09/health/coronavirus-black-hispanic. html. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. National Conference of State Legislatures. (2020). Felon voting rights. https://www.ncsl. org/research/elections-and-campaigns/felon-voting-rights.aspx. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Ogedegbe, G., Ravenell, J., & Adhikari, S. (2020). Assessment of racial/ethnic disparities in hospitalization and mortality in patients with COVID-19 in New York City. JAMA Network. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2773538. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Peterson-KFF. (2019). Health system tracker. What do we know about infant mortality in the U.S. and comparable countries? https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/ chart-collection/infant-mortality-u-s-compare-countries/#item-mortality-rates-arehigher-than-average-among-infants-born-to-mothers-who-are-black-american-indianand-alaska-natives-and-pacific-islanders. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Pew Research Center. (2020a). Important issues in the 2020 election. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2020/08/13/important-issues-in-the-2020-election/. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Pew Reseaerch Center. (2020b). Worries about coronavirus surge, as most Americans except a recession or worse. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2020/03/26/worriesabout-coronavirus-surge-as-most-americans-expect-a-recession-or-worse/. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Pew Research Center. (2020c). Views of how officals, public have responded to Covid-19. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2020/03/26/views-of-how-officials-public-haveresponded-to-covid-19/. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Scutti, S. (2019). Big Pharma spends record millions on lobbying amid pressure to lower drug prices. https://edition.cnn.com/2019/01/23/health/phrma-lobbying-costs-bn/index. html. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2020). Labor force statistics from the current population survey. https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. U.S. Food and Drug Administration. (2020). FDA news release: FDA takes key action in fight against COVID-19 by issuing emergency use authorization for first COVID-19 vaccine. https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-takes-key-actionfight-against-covid-19-issuing-emergency-use-authorization-first-covid-19. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Wilkerson, I. (2020). Caste. The origins of our discontents. Random House. Younis, M. (2020). Americans’ approval of ACA holds steady. Gallup. https://news.gallup. com/poll/287297/americans-approval-aca-holds-steady.aspx. Accessed 28 Jan 2021.

8

Minorities in the USA: The Controversial Immigration Debate

The immigration of people from different geographical regions, ethnic backgrounds, religious beliefs, and cultural practices has led to an extraordinarily heterogeneous population in the United States. This diversity of lifestyles and the various identities are also reflected in political preferences and voting behavior as well as in social policy debates. Hardly any other issue has influenced presidential elections in recent decades as much as immigration policy. Although the pandemic and the resulting economic crisis overshadowed the issue of immigration during the 2020 election campaign, it remained a salient topic for both presidential candidates. There are several reasons for this. On the one hand, the number of immigrants to the USA has steadily increased since the end of the Cold War. According to the US Census, in 2017, about 14% of the US population was born in another country, a total of 44 million people, more than ever before (Pew Research Center, 2019a). The current heterogeneity of society is therefore based on two contrasting social concepts: While some welcome the continuous immigration as a enrichment of society, others reject it as an increasing alienation of the “American way of life”. The Democrats have, for historical reasons, supported the former concept—as did Joe Biden’s election campaign and Kamala Harris. Many immigrants have turned to the Democrats politically in recent decades, while their share of the population has increased over time. Their party political preference has accordingly strengthened the positioning of the Democrats as supporters of social diversity. In contrast, the Republican Party has developed more and more into a party that wants to throttle immigration and defend traditional American lifestyle. Accordingly, Donald Trump had distinguished himself during his presidency by implementing an anti-immigration policy on various levels.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2022 C. Lemke and J. Wiedekind, The Battle for the White House, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-38934-5_8

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One second reason why the question of immigration has been so politicized is that the group of undocumented immigrants, i.e. those who enter and stay in the USA without papers, has been steadily growing in the past two decades. Estimates range from 10.5 to 12 million people (Kamarck & Stenglein, 2019). Most of them come from Mexico as migrant workers. Moreover, their children who came to the USA illegally with their parents now face the problem of a permanent stay as adults. The controversies about immigration often ignite precisely around these groups of immigrants, for example when it comes to their status and citizenship. In the past, Democrats have taken an integrative position, for example with the DACA program (“Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals”) of the Obama administration, while Republicans have been much more restrictive and, especially during the Trump administration, openly rejected a path to citizenship for this group and repeatedly tried to overturn the program, which grants a (temporary) residence status and a work permit to the now adult children of immigrants who entered illegally. A rising number of refugees is the third reason why the question of immigration provides fuel for political controversy. In recent years, more and more people who are fleeing the turmoil of civil wars and violence in their home countries are seeking refuge in the United States (Aleinikoff, 2019). These are mostly refugees from Central and South America who want to enter the United States via the border with Mexico in order to apply for asylum here. Although the numbers are rather small in comparison to the groups mentioned above, with these refugee movements questions of entry and recognition of asylum have come into focus. By 2020, the asylum program at the Mexican border even came to a complete standstill due to the pandemic. At the same time, the Trump administration tried to delegitimize asylum recognition not only rhetorically but also legally with its divisive and negative approach, a practice that both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have repeatedly criticized during the election campaign. The controversial immigration debate can be understood not only as an expression and mirror of transformation processes in American society, but also as an expression of party-political differences and ideologies. The debate has become so heterogeneous and multi-layered due to increasing immigration that parties, political groups and various social movements relate to this change in different ways. According to a recent Gallup study, more than three quarters (77%) of Americans are of the opinion that immigration is positive for society. This view is shared across society and is therefore less politically polarized along party lines than the political disputes between the parties suggest (Younis, 2020). According to the same study, about a third think that immigration should be increased. This is the highest level since 1965. This view is most commonly held among Democrats and

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Independents. 28% think, however, that immigration should be reduced and about a third agree that it should remain at the same level. To explore these differences further, the next section will be devoted to contrasting models of society.

8.1 Contrasting Models of Society The heterogeneity of the population in terms of ethnic origin, cultural preferences and religious orientation has increased noticeably in recent decades. It contributes to the diversity of the country, but also to a change in the political and cultural milieus that influence political attitudes and choices. Supporters of the diversity of society, who highlight the enrichment resulting from continous immigration, do not only want to maintain it, but also want to perpetuate it through a liberal immigration policy, while at the same time improving the integration of immigrants living in the country. The challenges are similar in other Western countries and migration researchers Richard Alba and Nancy Foner even find a convergence between the USA and Europe in their comprehensive comparative study (Alba & Foner, 2017). In light of the increasing diversity of American society, the issue of immigration in the United States is highly relevant. The ideal points of the two parties have moved further apart, indicating contrary ideals of the two parties. Because of the polarization between the two parties, the views are often pressed into irreconcilable concepts. The Republicans and the Democrats represent opposite positions on the question of what role immigration plays and should play in American society. Already in his election campaign 2016, Donald Trump had spoken out for a particularly restrictive immigration policy. His motto “America First” was explicitly directed against the openness of the USA and its hitherto rather liberal immigration policy. He announced drastic measures for the repatriation of the undocumented people living in the country, stricter border controls to Mexico and a limitation of new immigration. In order to implement the restrictive approach, the President issued a highly controversial decree (executive order 13769) shortly after taking office in January 2017, which provided that citizens of seven predominantly Muslim countries should be denied entry to the USA. This decree, known as the “Muslim Travel Ban”, led to years of legal disputes and fierce protests from the business community, politics and civil society, and also attracted international criticism. Only after several amendments did the Supreme Court of the United States declare the entry ban to be legal in its third version. Other controversial measures followed, such as the strict control of migrants from Mexico and other Central American countries and the plan to build a wall to Mexico. Other measures included the

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temporary freezing of the naturalization process, and entry restrictions for certain groups of students and employees. Overall, the Trump administration changed and tightened the entry and residence possibilities in all areasof the asylum- and immigration policy (New York Times Editorial Board, 2020). In the 2020 elections, the immigration debate played a central role again and showed how different Trump’s ideas were from those of the Democrats. Differences became already apparent before this campaign and during his presidency, but the irreconcilable sharpness was now more accentuated. The rhetorical confrontation fits into the picture of a radicalized discourse, as we have already examined in Chap. 4. With regard to the immigration policy, the fact that the two rivals in the race for the White House were courting voter groups among ethnic minorities also played a role. The “America First” concept of Trump accentuated a social model that was primarily directed at white Americans and, with the demand for a strict limitation of immigration, corresponded to wishes as well as fears in this voter group. The strict rejection of Muslim immigrants, for example, found support especially among the Christian right and among the supporters of the Tea Party movement, who are considered the most loyal voter group of the Republicans. The rejection of the continuing immigration from Mexico, often combined with a rejection and defamation of the undocumented, illegal immigrants, in turn wove prejudices and ethnic stereotypes together with an accentuation of differences between the immigrants and the traditional, white identity of Americans. Opposition to Mexican and Latin American immigration during the Trump administration came to a head in Trump’s project to build a wall along the approximately 3,100 km long border with Mexico. For this project, the President dedicated funds from the defense budget, since the Democrats, who held the majority in the House of Representatives since the midterm elections 2018, rejected the wall in the form planned. In the 2020 election campaign, Trump repeatedly emphasized the importance of strict monitoring and closure of the border with Mexico. Due to the Coronavirus pandemic, not only stricter entry restrictions could be imposed, but the special circumstances finally also provided an excuse to throttle entry into the USA altogether. With the rhetoric of fear and the loss of one’s own identity as well as the classification of immigration as a security risk, Trump not only hoped to secure votes in the traditional strongholds of Republicans in the Midwest and in the south of the USA, but he also tried to win back voters in the suburbs of the urban areas who had already voted for him in 2016. Democratic challenger Joe Biden vehemently rejected Trump’s restrictive immigration policy during the campaign. He repeatedly called immigration policy

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a “fight for the soul of America”. Based on the liberal tradition of migration, Joe Biden’s counter-model is not only based on a support of immigration. It also actively involves various minorities living in the country in the shaping of the political future. While ethnic minorities have so far mostly supported the Democrats, it remained open in the election year 2020 whether they would actually participate in the election in sufficient numbers. With demands to grant citizenship for undocumented immigrants living in the country for some time, the lifting of entry restrictions for students and citizens from various countries, and the re-regulation of entry and asylum applications, Biden tried to win over the minority groups during the campaign. In this context, the nomination of Kamala Harris as vice presidential candidate was noteworthy, as she identifies belonging to both the African American and the Asian minority and she emphasized this repeatedly during the campaign with stories about her origin and biography. Minority groups mobilized support for the candidates of the Democrats in the election, not least because many of them vehemently rejected the policy of the Trump administration. This grassroots mobilization then also contributed to the unusually high voter turnout in November 2020 and, for example, in Georgia caused slightly surprising results in favor of Joe Biden’s narrow victory. The mobilization potential hinted at here is based on social developments and political orientations of ethnic minorities that were of particular importance in the election year 2020. They will be analysed in the following section.

8.2 Social Development and Political Orientations of Minorities Historically, the USA has always understood itself as an immigration society, even though the proportion of migrants in the total population is around 14% and lower than in other classical immigration countries, such as Australia (29%), New Zealand (23%) and Canada (21%). Many European countries also have a higher proportion of foreign-born residents today. For example, this was 30% in Switzerland or 18% in Sweden in 2017 (Pew Research Center, 2019b). In the USA, most of the immigrants who live there today come from Mexico (25%), followed by China and India (both 6%). Immigration from Asian countries in total makes up 28% of the total, as a study by the Pew Research Center (2020a) shows. More than a million people move to the USA every year. In 2018, immigration from Asia overtook that from Latin American countries, with the largest group of 149,000 people coming from China (including Macau, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Mongolia). This has led to a significant increase in the number of annual immigrants from China and surpassed those from Mexico.

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The United States has been experiencing a steady immigration since the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, coming mainly from European countries, but also from Asia, Central America, and the Pacific. Due to the rapid expansion of settlement on the continent, the demands of infrastructure development, especially the construction of railways connecting the East and West coasts, as well as the rapid industrialization in the cities of the East coast and the Great Lakes in the North, workers were urgently needed. In addition, there were push factors such as the political turmoil caused by wars in Europe, famines, and oppression, which prompted people to emigrate. Since the United States was founded at the end of the eighteenth century, the immigration of new citizens has steadily increased and reached its peak with 14.8% in 1890, a situation that eventually caused resistance in parts of society (Pew Research Center, 2020a). Chinese, Jewish immigrants, but also European Catholics were targeted in this period, most of whom came from poorer countries in Europe, including Ireland and Italy. Finally, a series of restrictive measures were introduced in the 1920s, culminating in an Immigration Act with a quota system based on nationality in 1924. In fact, this Immigration Act remained in place until the US government introduced a changed legal basis with the “Immigration and Nationality Act” in 1965 and abolished flat-rate quotas based on nationality. This legal basis still exists today, although there have been calls for revision and modernization. Strikingly, several presidents from both political camps later failed to introduce a new major immigration law, as most recently George W. Bush and Barack Obama. The interest in immigration has become further complicated because not all states benefited from the (mostly cheap) labor from Asia, Mexico and Latin America. Furthermore, the terrorist attacks of 2001 had shocked the population and global politics shifted towards fighting terrorism and establishing stricter border control. Security policy no longer relied on ending wars in Africa and the Middle East only, but to minimise security risks at home. President Barack Obama, who saw immigration as an enrichment for US society but wanted to throttle the sharply growing number of undocumented immigrants, subsequently failed with a new immigration law in Congress, but introduced some partial changes to immigration rules. This included in particular the DACA program (“Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals”), which Obama introduced by a presidential decree in 2012. According to this regulation, those illegal immigrants who came to the USA as minors up to the age of 16 with their parents should be protected from deportation for two years and have access to the labor market. The children of migrants affected by this decree are often referred to as “dreamers”. Until 2019 around 800,000 people have been able to make use of this regulation (Kamarck & Stenglein, 2019). Many of them were able to secure a permanent status in American society through education

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and profession. The DACA regulation was also supported by wide parts of the business community and in higher education institutions. The Trump administration first tried to nullify the regulation by a presidential decree in 2017, but this move was put on hold due to multiple court challenges, while no new applications were allowed. In June 2020, the Supreme Court finally ruled that it had been arbitrary and disproportionate to stop the DACA program. This left the Trump administration with the challenge of finding a new regulation. For those affected, who often received support because they were usually welleducated and integrated, the situation remains precarious, however. Against this background, it was clear that the immigration debate would also play a dominant role in the 2020 presidential election campaign. Meanwhile, supporters demanded an end to the uncertainties of the legal status of the “Dreamers” by a new law, as frequent shifts between tolerance and threat with deportation represent an disproportionately high burden. In addition to the partial integration policy for the “Dreamers”, the Obama administration also enforced stricter deportation practices. About 2.8 million people were deported to Mexico, including not only convicted immigrants, but also many who had lived in the United States for decades. The Trump administration not only continued the strict repatriation policy, but also focused on the tightened border security to Mexico through the construction of the wall—a prestige project of Donald Trump and an election promise of 2016, and finally financed from the military budget in hard confrontations with Congress. However, by the election year 2020, the Trump administration had only fortified about 300 miles (540 km) of the 1,984 miles (about 3,600 km) long border to Mexico with a wall, and in some cases it was only repair and modernization work (Giaritelli, 2019). However, the rhetoric and practice of border security intensified dramatically, not only to prevent immigration to the United States, but also to deter potential immigrants. Among the highly controversial measures during that time was the separation of small children from their families and their temporary accommodation in cage-like enclosures at the border which caused harsh criticism and was condemned as inhuman. In October 2020, the New York Times reported that there were still 545 children who had been separated from their parents at the border and were without their parents or their identity and whereabouts were unknown (Dickerson, 2020). Figure 8.1 shows that in 2018, around 45% of all immigrants living in the USA were naturalized. Another quarter have a legal status with permanent residence and another five percent have a temporary, time-limited residence status. The undocumented immigrants made up an estimated quarter of the total foreign-

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Undocumented 23% Naturalized 45%

Unlimited residence status 27%

*Total number of all residents who were not born in the USA = 45.6 million

Fig. 8.1   Percentage of each residence status among all immigrants. Source Own figure based on Pew Research Center overview (2020b)

born American population in 2018, according to estimates by the Pew Research Center based on data from the US Census Bureau American Community Survey. The core message of Fig. 8.1 is therefore that undocumented and migrant people with limited status make up a significant proportion of all immigrants, highlighting the relevance and the far-reaching consequences of the often heated political debate. In the USA, the immigration debate is now multi-faceted and often refers to specific segments of the immigrant population. Controversies arise over religion and ethnicity, job opportunities and education, similar to Europe and other immigrant countries such as Canada. Especially among younger people, there is a greater openness to the multi-cultural experiences. Being ethnic is often considered cool among young people. According to surveys, the general social tolerance towards minorities in society and towards immigration has overall increased significantly in recent decades (e.g. Younis, 2020).

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However, the increased migration has also generated fears and caused rejection, so that on the other side of the debate are those who not only want to slow down immigration, but also support restrictive regulations with regard to the immigrant groups, the asylum law and the border security. The proponents of stricter immigration policy cite not only social tensions or competition on the labor market, but they also react to a demographic trend that is becoming increasingly apparent in the USA and which some, mostly members of the white population, see as a cultural threat to the “true” American way of life. According to the 2010 Census of the United States, the white population of the USA will be in the minority by 2050; a significant increase is expected for the population with Asian roots as well as the Hispanics. The latest Census figures for 2020 are not available at the time of writing this book, but they are likely to confirm the trend. The increasing heterogeneity of society poses new challenges for the two parties, Democrats and Republicans. While the Democrats have opened up significantly to new immigrant groups, the Republicans have, especially with the presidency of Donald Trump, intensified their rejection of immigration, although at the state level there are also Republican politicians and some governors who position themselves positively towards immigrants. In the election year 2020, both parties were also striving to expand or mobilize their voter base, with varying degrees of success. In the course of the past decades, the political orientations of ethnic minorities have changed and shifted. Historically, the Democrats have been better able to bind the new, mostly lower and middle income immigrants from various parts of Europe to themselves, such as the Irish, Italians and Eastern Europeans who migrated in larger groups in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Looking at the religious affiliations of the new citizens, the Democrats have been able to win over members of non-Christian religious communities, such as members of Jewish communities, who have tended to vote Democrat since the 1930s, as well as the Asian immigrants, who are mostly from the educated classes. Also, the five to seven million American Muslims living in the USA have mostly voted Democrat in the past. In Congress, this development is reflected in the fact that, by now, about a quarter of the Democrats in Congress belong to a minority; among the Republicans, this is significantly less. In particular, the Hispanic population and African-Americans are better represented among the Democrats. In the past, Democrats have therefore been repeatedly accused of becoming a party of minorities, for whom the various identities are more important than social and economic problems in the population as a whole. The identity politics of the liberal wing of the Democrats has been criticised as a problem, not as a driver of a new political orientation of the Democrats, as it would give too much

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weight to sub-political groups (Lilla, 2017). Nevertheless, it can be seen that the ethnic groups have mainly moved in similar, affine milieus and are also politically engaged there. An increasing proportion, especially among the younger population, now also lives in ethnically mixed families and thus grows up in hybrid cultures of African-American and white culture (Alba, 2020). This diversity favors the positions of the Democrats, although the research on the political preferences of the younger generation is still in its infancy.

8.2.1 The Hispanic Minority While relatively secure knowledge about the political affiliations of many immigrant groups has now emerged from attitude and election research, knowledge about the political attitudes and behavior of a few groups of immigrants is still quite patchy. One of the groups strongly courted in the elections are immigrants from Central and South America —the Hispanics. Their share of the American population has steadily increased and they now make up the largest minority in the USA. While in 1990 about nine percent of the American population belonged to the Hispanics and in 2002 a total of 13.5%, their share rose to 18.5% in 2019, corresponding to about 60.7 million people, primarily in the states of California, Texas, Florida, New Mexico and Arizona (US Census Bureau, 2019). Although the voting participation of Hispanics is lower in comparison to other population groups, their importance for the presidential elections 2020 must not be underestimated. As a study of the Pew Research Center shows, Hispanics with a share of 13.3% of eligible voters will be the largest minority group for the first time in the 2020 presidential elections, ahead of African Americans (Pew Research, 2020c). In New Mexico, 43% of eligible voters are Hispanics, in California and Texas around 30%, in Arizona 24% and in Florida at least 20% of those eligible to vote. The growing share of Hispanics among the voting population benefited the Democrats. They have been intensively dedicated to the Hispanic vote since the 2000 elections and have been striving to develop strategies to win these voters (Judis & Teixeira, 2002). However, sometimes exaggerated expectations were directed at the demographic change; the political orientations of Hispanics vary greatly among the different groups and Hispanics constitute a divers group, even though most of them lean towards the Democratic party (Lemke et al., 2020). Studies of their political attitudes show that they voted for the Democrats in the majority in the past four presidential elections. Also in 2020, the studies showed that around 62% of the registered Hispanic voters described themselves as Democratic or tending to the Democrats; but 34% tend to the Republicans (Pew

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Research, 2020c). Trump finally won votes among Hispanics in 2020, especially in rural areas and among the more conservative immigrants from Cuba (2020: 27%; 2016: 18%) (FiveThirtyEight, 2020a). In Arizona, however, the votes of Hispanics were apparently decisive for Joe Biden’s election success. When considering political views, it is important to keep in mind that Hispanics come from very different countries of origin and that their political and historical experiences also shape their views on US elections. Empirical studies show that the political views of the individual groups of Hispanics differ significantly from each other; subgroups are citizens with Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, and South and Central American family background (Suro, 1998). The majority of them are often employed in low-paid jobs in agriculture, manufacturing, and service sectors and therefore tend to support government programs in health and education. They therefore more often support the positions of the Democrats on issues such as universal health care, better protection for low-paid jobs, and affordable education, even though they often hold socially conservative views in their personal lives, often due to the mostly Catholic communities they belong to, on issues such as family policy, women’s rights, and abortion. The most important issues in the 2020 presidential elections, according to them, were COVID-19 and health care, economic policy, and jobs (FiveThirtyEight, 2020a). While these groups tend to vote Democratic, this is not the case for immigrants, who come from Cuba and today mostly live in Florida. They are particularly critical of government regulation. This also applies to immigrants from Venezuela, who reject the form of socialism under Hugo Chavez. The immigrants from Cuba have been a safe conservative voting group for the Republicans in the state of Florida since the 1960s, and even the immigrants from socialist countries like Venezuela seem to be more inclined towards the Republicans, as they are receptive to the Republican aversion to any form of socialism. This is how Donald Trump specifically targeted these groups by repeatedly conjuring up the nightmare of socialism that would move into the White House with a Democratic victory. In addition, Trump has repeatedly targeted their socially conservative attitudes, such as their rejection of abortion and their support for traditional family values; he has also highlighted their economic productivity at numerous campaign appearances in Arizona, Nevada, Texas and Florida in an attempt to win them over. For example, he was able to generate a majority in the aforementioned group in Florida; in parts of Texas Hispanics also voted for him, despite his harsh rhetoric and drastic measures against immigrants from Central and South America. One possible explanation for this is that some voters are “one-issue voters” who base their voting decision on only one single leading issue that is particularly important to them. According to this assumption, religious people would vote for

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Trump as long as he is against abortions and for conservative family models, even if his rhetoric in the immigration debate is unacceptable to them. The following figure shows attidutes about the complex immigration issue both in terms of border security through increased patrols along the US-Mexican border, and in terms of approval for the identification and deportation of illegal immigrants in different population groups. Figure 8.2 uses the 2016 Cooperative Congressional Election Survey (CCES) as a data basis to take a closer look at the political views of Hispanics. Figure 8.2 shows that regarding immigration, a particularly heterogeneous attitude structure of the Hispanics can be observed. The special status of Americans of Cuban origin within the Hispanic population group is striking. Their attitudes can be clearly classified as fundamentally different from the positions of citizens of Mexican, Puerto Rican or South and Central American origin. With regard to the political attitudes of the “Cubans” shown in Fig. 8.2, it can be seen that they tend to be more open to Republican positions than is the case for other Hispanics. This difference is also true for other key issues, such as health care, security policy and the fight against terrorism (Lemke et al., 2020). The immigration debate will play a central role in the Biden-Harris administration. The importance of Hispanics as a voting base for the Biden presidency is shown, for example, by the nomination of Alejandro Mayorkas for the Department of Homeland Security. Mayorkas, who fled to the United States with his family as a child from Cuba, is responsible, among other things, for the protection of the border to Mexico, the issue of deportations and the controls at the borders. His nomination indicates a change of course in immigration policy, which was often discussed by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris during the election campaign. However, as the aforementioned examples under Barack Obama and George W. Bush show, comprehensive reforms in this field are particularly difficult to implement. In addition to the Hispanics focused here, the Asian-American minority is also gaining in importance socially and politically. The candidacy of Andrew Yang for the Democratic primaries is exemplary for this.

8.2.2 The Asian-American Minority Another minority group which received some attention in the 2020 elections are the Asian-Americans, whose numbers have increased significantly in recent years. Throughout history, the population groups immigrating from Asia have received varying degrees of attention in the immigration debate and in election studies. Anti-Chinese attitudes, prevalent during the Trump administration, are for exam-

Fig. 8.2   Political views on deportations and border patrols. Source Own figure based on CCES 2016 data

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ple not new. They already influenced debates on the Immigration Act of 1925 with its national quotas. Japanese immigrants, on the other hand, experienced harsh discrimination during World War II when some of them were interned in camps. After the Vietnam War and the reunification of the country under communist rule, the USA took in a larger group of Vietnamese. Migrants also came from Korea and China who fled the communist regime and were mostly conservative and anti-communist. Many of them also belonged to Christian minorities. The dynamic economic development of the following decades, the increasing openness of the USA with the expansion of global trade and the development of new communication technologies changed the framework conditions and, with them, the social composition of the immigrants (Okamoto, 2014). Immigration from Asia played an increasingly important role in the service and trade sector, as well as in the healthcare sector, especially since the 1990s with the rapid development of new technologies. The new arrivals, who were mostly well-educated and ambitious and who also tended to settle in the big cities, subsequently favored the more progressive and liberal Democrats rather than Republican candiates, unlike earlier Asian immigrants. As early as the 1990s, the majority of Asian immigrants supported the Republican candidate, George H. W. Bush. But by 2004, the tables had turned and the majority of Asian immigrants have since preferred the candidates of the Democrats, i.e. John Kerry 2004, Barack Obama 2008 and 2012 as well as Hillary Clinton 2016. Only a relatively small minority of this minority group favored Donald Trump 2016 (FiveThirtyEight, 2020b). However, it should be noted that this minority group, like the Hispanics, also differs in its political orientation according to countries of origin. A survey before the 2020 elections showed that around 44% of the surveyed “Asian-Americans” saw themselves as Democrats, compared to 23% as Republicans. Nevertheless, 25% described themselves as Independent and thus have no clear political affiliations (2020 Asian American Voter Survey). Above all, immigrants from Japan, India and Korea felt, according to the study, more than 50% as Democrats, while the highest support for the Republicans was expressed by those immigrated from Vietnam, followed at a distance by those from the Philippines and Korea. When asked about their preferences for the presidential elections, 54% said they would vote for Joe Biden compared to 30% for Donald Trump. Although immigration from Asia is not one of the core issues of the 2020 immigration debate and the anti-Chinese rhetoric of the Trump administration arose primarily from the trade war with China, it also shows how differentiated the preferences of Asian-Americans are. In addition, it is not only ethnic affiliation that is decisive, but rather also social status and the urban or rural environment. In this respect, there is an overlap of several factors along ethnic,

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socio-economic and cultural dimensions. With their support for cultural and ethnic diversity and their positive attitude towards immigration, the Democrats have been better able to include the Asian-American minority group in the political activities of the party, as the candidacies of Andrew Yang and Kamala Harris in the primaries of the Democrats showed. For the first time, with the economic expert Katherine Tai, a fluent Mandarin speaking American with Chinese roots, was nominated as trade representative by Joe Biden, which underlines the importance that Biden attaches to the existing trade conflict with China.

8.2.3 The African-American Minority While other minority groups have both Democratic and Republican political orientations, the African-American minority is one of the most reliable voter groups of the Democrats. As African-Americans the approximately 40 million citizens of the United States, whose ancestors were mostly abducted from the part of Africa located south of the Sahara in the slave trade, count in this minority group (Berg, 2014; Franklin & Moss, 1999). Black immigrants from South America, the Caribbean and African countries are also referred to as African-American. According to the last US census (2010), around 12.5% of Americans identify themselves as African-Americans. In the American South their share is significantly higher, as is in some large cities of the North like Chicago, Detroit and New York. The political orientation of African-Americans is now well researched, as they are considered one of the most important and politically active voter groups. Historically, the Republican Party also had influence among African-Americans, especially after it was President Abraham Lincoln, a Republican, who had abolished slavery in 1865. However, in the twentieth century and especially since the civil rights and voting reforms of the Lyndon B. Johnson administration in the 1960s, African-Americans clearly support the Democrats (see Chap. 4). They are one of their most constant voter groups; in both congressional and presidential elections, they have voted for the Democrats since then. In the midterm elections for Congress in 2018, for example, they voted for Democratic candidates with around 95%; among women, the proportion was even higher and was almost 99% (Pew Research Center, 2018). 87% of this ethnic minority voted for Joe Biden in 2020. But that he won the election in 2020 was due not least to the wide and successful mobilization by activists on the ground in metropolitan areas like Atlanta, Philadelphia, and Detroit. As a result he was able to win the Swing States Michigan and Pennsylvania as well as Georgia, which was ultimately decisive with regard to the Electoral College.

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According to a study by White and Laird (2020), the long-term, continuous loyalty of the African-American minority to the Democrats can be traced back to the special historical experience of African Americans. They argue that the fight against slavery, oppression and discrimination has led to the formation of a particularly close social cohesion in order to ensure their survival, which is also reflected in a high group expectation. This was particularly evident in the decades after the civil rights movement of the 1960s in the fight for equality and social justice. From then on, they directed their expectations collectively towards the Democrats, pushing alternative voting decisions further into the background. Even before the political affiliation with the Democrats, African Americans had been politically engaged and had formed associations to demand their civil rights. The NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) is one of the oldest and largest black civil rights organizations (Berg, 2005). It was founded as early as 1909 by black intellectuals such as W.E. de Bois and others together with white social reformers. It has fought against all forms of racial discrimination, such as the notorious lynching, and for equality through lobbying, voter mobilization and protest campaigns (Berg, 2014). In the 1930s during the “New Deal”, it also vehemently advocated for an end to discrimination in economic and employment life. In the 1960s, the NAACP took a back seat to the new activism of the civil rights movement with Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and others, but as an organization against racism and for the rights of African Americans it still exerts a far-reaching influence today. Among the multitude of grassroots organizations, municipal and state initiatives against racism and discrimination, the “Black Lives Matter” movement, which has been around for a few years, played an important, mobilizing role in the election year 2020, with targeted, mostly decentralized actions against police violence and racism. Unlike in the 1960s, mobilization took place in broader layers of the population; this includes not only many white Americans, but also other “People of Color”. The high participation of younger protesters was also striking. Voter mobilization also plays an important role for the African American minority. Historically, equal participation in elections has been hard-fought. The Voting Rights Act for example only removed obstacles in 1965 that primarily existed in the southern states to make it more difficult for African Americans to vote, through regulations such as literacy and writing tests or proof of ancestry. The Voting Rights Reform also stipulated that changes to the election laws in certain, mostly southern states and some districts with a high black population require the approval of the Department of Justice or a federal court. However, this regulation was abolished by a majority decision of the Supreme Court despite

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vehement criticism from civil rights groups in 2013. Constitutional Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg expressed her divergent legal opinion in sharp form by calling the repeal of the provision a betrayal of the legacy of Martin Luther King and the commitment to justice, a core value of American society (Liptak, 2013). However, the ongoing voter suppression, especially in southern states of the US, but also in cities with a majority African American population, is repeatedly criticized—as in the election year 2020 (see Chap. 3). Initiatives like the one founded by civil rights activist Stacey Abrams in Georgia, called “Fair Fight”, were able to counter this practice between 2018 and 2020 (Abrams, 2020). Voter suppression had a long, problematic history in Georgia. For example, in 2017, the authorities removed 670,000 voters from the register just because they had not voted for seven years. 70% of them were African Americans. In 2018, the authorities blocked 53,000 registrations. They referred to a law that requires the information in the voter register to match that which is stored at the Social Security office or the Division of Motor Vehicles. This resulted in the denial of voting rights on the grounds of minor changes or deviations—two thirds of those affected were African Americans. It is estimated that, as a result of the campaign organized by Stacey Abrams, around 800,000 new voters could be registered (Misteli, 2020). Due to the high voter turnout, a Democrat, Joe Biden, was finally able to win the state of Georgia in the presidential election for the first time since 1992. Furthermore, on January 5, 2021, the two Democratic candidates Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock also won the runoff elections for the two Senate seats from Georgia, much to the surprise of many observers. Warnock, who is a pastor at the former church of Martin Luther King in Atlanta, is the first African American senator to represent Georgia in the Senate. In contrast to the demands for social justice and equality put forward by electoral initiatives and the “Black Lives Matter” movement, Donald Trump positioned himself during the election campaign as the one who wanted to enforce “law and order” against the “Black Lives Matter” activists referred to as “anarchists” and “antifa”. With his law and order rhetoric, he followed the strategy that Richard Nixon successfully used in the 1968 election campaign and thus won the election at that time. In contrast, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris described the fight against structural racism in the police and justice system as a priority. In this respect, the strategies of the Republicans and the Democrats in the race for the White House in 2020 were fundamentally different. While Trump aimed to stir up fears and mobilize white America against the protest movement, the Democrats relied on social justice as a mobilizing force, astrategy that ultimately proved to be successful, as the injustices and discrimination experienced by many citizens have a high resonance value and lead to high voter turnout. Accordingly,

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the expectations - especially of the progressive wing of the Democrats - were high after the electoral success, that demands for social justice would be met. This proved to be a central challenge for President Joe Biden, who has to meet these high expectations during his term in office.

8.3 Summary Because of the deep political polarization in the immigration debate, the 2020 election was often referred to as a “decisive election.” The Democratic presidential candidate Biden made it clear during the election campaign that it was a “struggle for the soul of America.” Similarly, former President Obama said early June 2020 that the situation called for a balance and patient reforms. Trump, on the other hand, relied primarily on stirring up his supporters to profit even more from resentment against social change processes. His approach was not aimed at reconciliation and dialogue, but at polarization and division. The controversies surrounding immigration policy and the still existing discrimination of minorities refer to deeper transformation processes in American society. The political mobilization and the influence of the various minority groups have increased significantly in recent decades. This includes not only the debate about rights, justice and identities. The partisan polarization around these issues also poses problems that the new administration, but also the states and municipalities would have to address. In order to reduce tensions, the polarizing rhetoric in immigration policy would have to be transformed to reach a compromise and legal restrictions would have to be lifted in order to address immigration as a positive development, because the reality of American everyday life has long since corresponded to this diverse composition of society. In order to win votes the Republicans would also have to adjust to this changed reality in the medium term. Otherwise they could be left behind by social and demographic trends. The dismantling of forms of exclusion of ethnic minorities is a long-term process that, in addition to institutional changes and a political will to act, also requires concrete reforms, both at the local and national level. Biden has already underlined the need for such reforms, but will face great difficulties in their implementation without a cooperative Republican partner in Washington D.C. as well as at the state level. Among other measures Biden intends to provide for an easier naturalization of undocumented immigrants living in the country and to grant them a legally secure status. He also intends to lift the entry ban on citizens from Muslim countries and to provide for procedures of asylum applications

References

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to Mexico. Many of these steps could be regulated by decrees and ordinances. Whether there will be a “big” immigration reform, however, remains an open question in view of the close majority situation in Congress and can also be influenced by the next midterm elections in November 2022.

References Abrams, S. (2020). Our time is now: Power, purpose, and the fight for a fair America. Holt. Alba, R. (2020). The great demographic illusion: Majority, minority, and the expanding American mainstream. Princeton University Press. Alba, R., & Foner, N. (2017). Strangers no more. Immigration and the challenges of integration in North America and Western Europe. Princeton University Press. Aleinikoff, A. T. (2019). The arc of protection: Reforming the international refugee regime. Stanford University Press. Ansolabehere, S., & Schaffner, B. F. (2017). CCES Common Content, 2016. Harvard Dataverse. https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/GDF6Z0. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Asian American and Pacific Islanders Data. (2020). Asian American Voter Survey (National). https://aapidata.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/aavs2020_crosstab_ national.pdf. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Berg, M. (2005). „The Ticket to Freedom“: The NAACP and the struggle for black political integration. University Press of Florida. Berg, M. (2014). Lynchjustiz in den USA. Hamburger Edition. Dickerson, C. (2020). Parents of 545 children separated at the border cannot be found. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/21/us/migrant-children-separated.html. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Eligon, J., Burch, A. D. S., Searcey, D., & Oppel, Jr., R. A. (2020). Black Americans face alarming rates of coronavirus infection in some states. New York Times. https://www. nytimes.com/2020/04/07/us/coronavirus-race.html?action=click&module=Top%20 Stories&pgtype=Homepage. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. FiveThiryEight. (2020a). What we know about how white and Latino Americans voted in 2020. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-we-know-about-how-white-and-latinoamericans-voted-in-2020/. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. FiveThirtyEight. (2020b). How Asian Americans are thinking about the 2020 election. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-asian-americans-are-thinking-about-the2020-election/. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Flores, A. (2017). How the U.S. Hispanic population is changing. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/09/18/how-the-u-s-hispanic-population-ischanging/. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Franklin, J. H., & Moss, Jr., A. A. (1999). Von der Sklaverei zur Freiheit. Die Geschichte der Schwarzen in den USA. Propyläenverlag. Giaritelli, A. (2019). Trump hasn’t built a single new mile of ‘border’ wall, but construction is underway. Washington Examiner. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/trumphasnt-built-a-single-new-mile-of-border-wall-but-construction-is-underway. Accessed 28 Jan 2021.

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Hajnal, Z. L., & Lee, T. (2011). Why Americans don’t join the party: Race, immigration, and the failure (of political parties) to engage the electorate. Princeton University Press. Jordan, M., & Shear, M. D. (2020). ‘They’re Playing with Our Lives’: What happens next for DACA’s ‘Dreamers’. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/05/us/ daca-immigration-what-next.html?action=click&module=News&pgtype=Homepage. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Judis, J. B., & Teixeira, R. (2002). The emerging democratic majority. Lisa Drew/Scribner. Kamarck, E., & Stenglein, C. (2019). How many undocumented immigrants are in the United States and who are they? Policy 2020 Brookings Institution. https://www.brookings.edu/policy2020/votervital/how-many-undocumented-immigrants-are-in-the-unitedstates-and-who-are-they/. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Lemke, C., Nyhuis, D., & Wiedekind, J. (2020). Hispanics bei der Präsidentschaftswahl. Eine entscheidende Minderheit oder mehrere? Blog-Beitrag XIII. Leibniz Universität Hannover. https://www.ipw.uni-hannover.de/de/institut/arbeitsbereiche/internationalebeziehungen/unser-blog-zum-wahljahr-2020-in-den-usa/blog-beitrag-xiii/. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Lilla, M. (2017). The once and future liberal. Harper Collins. Liptak, A. (2013). Supreme Court invalidates key part of the Voting Rights Act. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/26/us/supreme-court-ruling.html. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Misteli, S. (2020). Die Rache der Stacey Abrams. Neue Züricher Zeitung. https://www. nzz.ch/international/wahl-usa-wie-stacey-abrams-joe-biden-in-georgia-zum-sieg-verhalf-ld.1586053. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Okamoto, D. G. (2014). Redefining race: Asian American panethnicity and shifting ethnic boundaries. Russell Sage Foundation. Pew Research Center. (2016). Asian American voices in the 2016 election. Report on Registered Voters in the Fall 2016 National Asian American Survey. https://naasurvey.com/ wp-content/uploads/2016/10/NAAS2016-Oct5-report.pdf. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Pew Research Center. (2018). The 2018 midterm vote: Divisions by race, gender, education. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/11/08/the-2018-midterm-vote-divisions-by-race-gender-education/. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Pew Research Center. (2019a). Facts on U.S. Immigrants, 2017. https://www.pewresearch. org/hispanic/2019/06/03/facts-on-u-s-immigrants-2017-data/. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Pew Research Center. (2019b). International Migrants by Country. https://www.pewresearch.org/global/interactives/international-migrants-by-country/. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Pew Research Center. (2020a). Key findings about U.S. immigrants. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/08/20/key-findings-about-u-s-immigrants/. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Pew Research Center. (2020b). Measuring illegal immigration: How Pew Research Center counts unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. https://www.pewresearch.org/facttank/2019/07/12/how-pew-research-center-counts-unauthorized-immigrants-in-us/. Accessed 28 Jan 2021.

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Pew Research Center. (2020c). Where Latinos have the most eligible voters in the 2020 election. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/01/31/where-latinos-have-themost-eligible-voters-in-the-2020-election/. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Suro, R. (1998). Strangers among us. Latino lives in a changing America. Vintage Books Random House. The New York Times Editorial Board. (2020). Trump’s overhaul of immigration is worse than you think. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/10/opinion/sunday/trump-immigration-child-separations.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. US Census Bureau. (2019). Quick facts United States. https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/ fact/table/US/RHI725219#qf-headnote-b. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. White, I. K., & Laird, C. N. (2020). Steadfast democrats: How social forces shape black political behavior. Princeton University Press. Wilkerson, I. (2020). Caste. The origins of our discontents. Random House LCC. Younis, M. (2020). Americans want more, not less, immigration for first time. https://news. gallup.com/poll/313106/americans-not-less-immigration-first-time.aspx. Accessed 28 Jan 2021.

9

The Strategies in the 2020 Election Campaign

The campaign strategies of Donald Trump and Joe Biden differed fundamentally from each other in the presidential election of 2020, which was often referred to as the election that would determine the nation’s destiny. This was not only due to the special conditions of the restrictions caused by the pandemic, to which the candidates reacted in different ways. Rather, the strategies revealed opposing political views and ideas about the design of the office of President. While Joe Biden based his campaign on his long-standing political experience and focused on political and social issues, Trump pursued a strategy that can best be described as populist. This strategy, which was already practiced in 2016 and successfully secured his election, is based on polarization and escalation. Trump also applied skills taken over from his time as an entertainer and show manager and now perfected them with the stage of the White House in the background. Expectations that Trump would strive for moderation and reconciliation once elected President in 2016 was shattered within a very short time after his inauguration in January 2017. Rather, his presidency has led to a further deepening and radicalization of controversial positions, which manifested itself shortly after the 2020 election in the violent storming of the Capitol in January 2021. Polarization has become a structuring leitmotif of his presidency. Politics is driven by two exclusive categories and decided on the classification according to the perception of the other as a friend or enemy. However, it would be misleading to assume that this political and social polarization only began with Trump. He himself had recognized this clearly and politically exploited cleavages to his advantage. As has been pointed out elsewhere in this book, he said in January 2017: “I didn’t come along and divide this country. This country was seriously divided before I got here.” (White House, 2017). In the 2020 election campaign, he also resorted to the populist, successful polarizing campaign strategy, while Joe Biden’s message focused on overcoming the ideological divisions in society. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2022 C. Lemke and J. Wiedekind, The Battle for the White House, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-38934-5_9

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First, the following will focus on the two candidates’ strategies, Biden’s more established strategy, and Trump’s populist strategy, in order to then analyze some highlights of the campaign, such as the nomination conventions. Again, clear differences in the strategic performance and narratives of the Republicans and Democrats were visible. This chapter will end with the transition phase between the election on November 3, 2020, and Joe Biden’s inauguration on January 20, 2021. This transition of power was overshadowed by Trump’s refusal to accept the election results and his attempts to delegitimize the election results.

9.1 Biden’s Classical Approach as an Antithesis to Trump’s Populism With regard to the 2020 election campaign and Trump’s sharply polarizing rhetoric during his entire term in office, it was to be expected that the Republicans’ strategy would be based fundamentally on exploiting polarization to the extent that it would lead, if not to a majority of the votes cast, then at least to a majority in the Electoral College. Trump himself repeatedly claimed a second term in office and emphasized that he could only lose in the event of widespread election fraud. Due to the Coronavirus pandemic, the possibility of public election campaign events was severely restricted from March 2020 onwards, which were usually important in American election campaigns, including all folklore. This time Trump remained true to his populist election rhetoric and tactics in this pre-election campaign phase, now relying heavily on social media. In the digital space, the previously mentioned echo chambers even had a stronger effect since negative campaigns as well as conspiracy theories circulate more swiftly and are unrestricted (see Chap.4). Social media are also easily accessible to everyone and they allowed direct communication between Trump and his supporters/followers. This strategy was then continued when local relaxations made public campaign events possible again. A central element of Trump’s platform was his self-staging as the only true representative of the American people. Even in the run-up to his impeachment proceedings, Trump shared a video on Twitter in September 2019 in which he said: “They are trying to stop me because I am fighting for you.” (Trump, 2019). Behind this is a classic populist way of thinking, in which only a strong political leader can represent the true people and protect them from the machinations of a corrupt elite (Norris, 2021). For Trump’s narrative, the Democrats fulfilled that image of the enemy and this leitmotif remained true in the 2020 election campaign.

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Traditionally, the Republicans do not belong to the family of populist parties. However, in his comparative work on right-wing populism, Cas Mudde (2019) shows that there is a wide range of populist parties and currents. The common characteristic is the distinction between the “true people” and a corrupt elite, which can be politicians, business leaders, journalists or intellectuals (Mudde & Kaltwasser 2017, Mudde 2019). Other characteristics are the rejection of a plurality of voices and free speech, separation of powers and checks-and-balances principles, i.e. of principles of pluralism as well as of democratic principles and norms. The dichotomous understanding of politics usually also goes hand in hand with the exclusion of third parties, allegedly not belonging to the “people”, which are often immigrants or refugees, but also members of other religious groups or ethnicities. Jan-Werner Müller also points out that in the USA populism has been historically seen in a more positive light because democratic reform movements in the 19th and 20th centuries referred to themselves as populist and were able to implement some changes (Müller, 2016, p. 28). In this more positive perception, which is far from Trump’s populism, populism can therefore mean striving for more direct forms of representation and social reform. In recent times, however, George Wallace (Levitsky/Ziblatt 2018, p. 46) paved the way for a mixture of populism and white nationalism in the 1968 presidential election campaign, which Donald Trump would later also follow. With his anti-elitist and anti-pluralist rhetoric, Trump meets essential criteria of populist politics (Cavaillé et al. 2016, Pierson 2017, Mounk 2018, Norris/Inglehart 2019). He is not a classical Republican and does not come from a populist party, but he embodies a new type of populist conception of power, which is based ona populist performance made possible in the age of new social media (Benkler et al., 2018). As Andrea Schneiker (2020) argues, Trump perfected his appearance as a charismatic leader in the sense of Max Weber in such a way that he staged himself as a “superhero” who saved the American nation in times of deep crisis. The stylistic devices and techniques come from the repertoire of entertainment, according to Schneiker, the content is rather classical populism oriented towards the securing of jobs (“America First”) at home. Calculated provocations, surprise effects and breaking taboos are just as much part of the populist election campaign as the direct, unmediated communication with the followers via Twitter, while the resonance of his messages is increased by media echo chambers, such as those maintained by Fox News (see Chap. 4). Trump has thus created his own trademark. The “branding” is a strategy of marketing one’s own person to exercise power and to maintain power. “Drawing on the literature on celebrity politicians and based on a sample of 1469 tweets that were posted by Donald Trump’s personal Twitter account “@realDonaldTrump” between March 2016 and April 2017, I argue

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that Donald Trump’s image marketing strategy produces a new brand that distinguishes Donald Trump from his competitors and predecessors: the superhero antipolitician celebrity.” (Schneiker, 2018, p. 1). According to this analysis, Trump succeeds in selling himself as a unique political leader who knows the political establishment inside and out without being part of it and who, in the absence of political experience, nevertheless has the necessary skills to successfully combat the threats American society is facing. Following this logic, Trump is a superhero who, like Clark Kent, lives the life of an ordinary citizen and is still the only one who can save the US in case of impending disaster. Myths about the person of Donald Trump have acquired special significance in the cult formed around him, which many Trump supporters in social media follow. According to these narratives, Trump possesses special powers as a “savior”. These powers are important to combat a criminal political class and fight the “deep state”. Prominent representatives of this view subscribed to the rapidly spreading “QAnon” movement which exists since 2017. Its followers spread the claim that the USA is controlled by a criminal organization, to which former presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, billionaire George Soros and various Hollywood stars are said to belong. The starting point of the movement was an anonymous internet post in 2017, which was about allegedly bizarre rites of child molesters and political conspiracies. Many “QAnon” messages have an anti-Semitic and right-wing character. Trump is, in their opinion, president in order to uncover the “great conspiracy” and to free the US from these criminal elites. In the elections for the House of Representatives and the Senate in 2020, about a dozen candidates ran who followed these conspiracy theories and at least two of them won a seat in the House of Representatives (Pew Research Center, 2020a). Among the “QAnon” followers are also militant people and the US security authorities have therefore classified the movement as a threat to national security since July 2020. “QAnon” followers were also involved in the storming of the Capitol in January 2021—partly recognizable by their bizarre costumes. A simple, direct language, stark images and obvious lies are not a lack of communicative competence, but they fulfill exactly the function that the sender wants to achieve. They spread a “we against them” mentality that is fueled by perceptions of threat and justifies an authoritarian leader (Norris, 2021). This also fits into the picture that his followers believe that Trump dares to express his opinion directly and to stand up to dictators, as he made it clear to the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in a Twitter exchange, simply and brazenly stating, for example, that his (nuclear) button is “bigger” than the other side’s (Baker & Tackett, 2018). At the same time, Trump attacked news media as “fake news”, journalists were personally insulted and press freedom was repeatedly called into question, as documented in the latest report by the New York-based independent non-governmental organization “Committee to Protect Journalists” (CPJ, 2020). In this

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way, the credibility of critical reporting is deliberately undermined and the strategy is aiming to silence critical journalists. At the same time, the “superhero” always needs the confirmation of his power by the masses. Therefore, large events and elaborately staged spectacles are central components of the populist election campaign strategy. After a sparsely attended election campaign event in Tulsa, Oklahoma at the end of June 2020, Trump or his de facto election campaign manager and son-in-law Jared Kushner even replaced the long-time official election campaign manager in order to avoid further dissapointments and to guarantee maximum presence at events even in the context of the Coronavirus pandemic (Haberman, 2020). The radicalization of the election campaign strategy should above all improve Trump’s persistently low poll numbers in view of his often criticized crisis management in the context of the Coronavirus pandemic. Even under Coronavirus conditions, Trump used the strategy of mass events and often disregarded recommended protective measures. Self-staging was simply too indispensable. Contrary to the recommendations of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and often against the wishes of governors and local politicians, Trump staged larger campaign shows, mostly without observing distancing rules and hygiene regulations. This did not change much after Trump himself became infected with Coronavirus in the fall of 2020. On the contrary: he continued to play down the dangers of the infectious disease. He also used opinion polls which are always a popular means of reflecting one’s own power. Significantly, in his tweets, Trump only referred to such polls that confirmed and overestimated his popularity and performance in the context of the pandemic. That these polls often only relied on a limited population of respondents and could easily be countered by broader, more reputable surveys was irrelevant, because only confirmation of one’s own conviction counted and the data were often accepted unquestioned by the followers. The “engaged misinformed” (Hochschild & Levine-Einstein, 2015), i.e. those who actively intervene in politics on the basis of misinformation, finally belong to the enthusiastic, reliable voter base of Donald Trump, which is also an expression of the overall radicalized political discourse (see Chap. 4). In contrast, Biden’s election campaign was designed along a more classical strategy. In addition, Biden strictly adhered to the pandemic rules by, for example, not holding any public events during the lockdown in spring, but holding digital meetings and events from his house—in the basement of his house, as Trump always polemically emphasized. Fundraising events were also held digitally via the video conferencing platform “Zoom”. Biden, who always appeared with a mask, held some public election events in autumn 2020, but refrained from the otherwise usual larger events and repeatedly emphasized that the recommendations of relevant virologists

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such as Anthony Fauci should be followed. The same applied to his vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris, who also only held her assemblies with smaller groups and often digitally. The appointment of Kamala Harris on August 11, 2020 was based on an important strategic decision. When choosing the vice presidential candidates, two aspects are basically taken into account: on the one hand, the candidate should mobilize additional voter groups that are more difficult to reach for the presidential candidates. On the other hand, there should be a relationship of trust between the presidential candidates and their vice-candidates, because they stand together for a program, supplement and support each other in the election campaign. The term Running Mate, running partner, expresses this aspect of complementary partnership well. Even before the nomination of Kamala Harris, the expectation among the Democrats was high that Biden would name a woman as his vice presidential candidate. In the last selection round, well-known established female politicians were considered as potential candidates: in addition to Kamala Harris also Elizabeth Warren, Stacey Abrams, Karen Bass, Susan Rice, Val Demings and Tammy Duckworth—all women with extensive political experience in various areas. A few years earlier, younger women of the progressive wing had been able to achieve considerable success in the midterm elections for Congress in 2018 and now demanded a more distinct representation at the highest level of politics. Furthermore, Joe Biden owed his lead in the primaries to the African-American voter groups, which had secured him in South Carolina and other southern states decisive victories in the Democratic primaries when his campaign was already close to failing (see Chap. 2). Consequently, many factors spoke in favor of Biden not only nominating a woman, but also for the first time a woman from the African-American minority. With the selection of Kamala Harris as Vice President, Biden had also initiated the necessary upcoming generational change within the Democrats and was able to at least partially dispel the concerns that he was too old for the office of President at 78 years of age upon taking office (Lerer & Ember, 2020). The progressive wing in particular had been pressing for a significant rejuvenation of the Democratic Party. In the person of Kamala Harris, the first woman, the first Asian-American and the first African-American Vice President was elected—a historic breakthrough with high symbolic value for the Democrats (Lerer & Ember, 2020). Harris, as a former Attorney General and Senator from California, has extensive political experience and is also known in Washington D.C. for her relentless questioning in Senate hearings . Kamala Harris had initially run for President herself, but then withdrew her candidacy in December 2019. Politically, she is considered part of

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the progressive wing of the Democrats, but represents a more moderate position in some policy areas, such as healthcare reform (Cancryn & Marinucci, 2020). Biden’s campaign strategy can therefore be classified as conventional because it refrained from populist mobilization strategies and focused more on traditional messages for presidential candidates. Early on, he made it clear that he wanted to be a president for all Americans—even for those who did not vote for him. He referred to his political experience and focused on usual topics such as economic policy and health policy. When choosing the position of Vice President, the strategic calculus followed traditional patterns and resulted in a heterogeneous electorate of Democrats, as his campaign thought that Kamala Harris was the best option. During the TV debates with Trump, he often addressed the American population directly and, in addition to his presence on social media, also cultivated his appearance on traditional media. Even though the Democrats’ campaign looked different in the pandemic, strategic decisions followed more traditional patterns. This can be seen as the goal of the Democratic Party to contrast the four controversial and turbulent years of the Trump administration, marked by disruption, two impeachment proceedings as well as the storming of Congress in January 2021. The contrasting strategies highlighted here also included very different narratives about the political shaping of American society, which will be discussed in more detail in the next section focussing on the nominating conventions of the two parties.

9.2 Contrasting Narratives: The Democratic and Republican Conventions The nomination conventions of the Democrats and the Republicans, at which the candidates for the presidential election are officially nominated, have always been part of the regular election campaign. Unlike party conventions of European parties, this is not primarily about content and positions that ultimately lead to a party program, but rather about mobilizing the delegates and the many volunteers for the upcoming election campaign and preparing them for election campaign activities. The party base should be mobilized and prepared for a strenuous election campaign. But it is also about presenting the candidates in the most convincing way possible on a platform that has particularly large reach due to the high media attention. The location and time of the nomination conventions are selected just as carefully according to electoral strategy considerations including the nomination of the Vice-presidential running mate. Due to the Coronavirus pandemic, the largely standardized script had to be rewritten and digitized in the election year 2020. In view of further increasing

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numbers of new infections, both conventions were finally held mainly virtually, although the final speech by Donald Trump was followed by a closely seated audience of about 1,500 people in front of the White House who were not wearing masks. In the virtual format, much remained similar in terms of the schedule of the multi-day event, and the two conventions opened a window into understanding how Democrats and Republicans positioned themselves for the upcoming election campaigns at all levels of the political system and what America they envisioned for the next four years and beyond. That the narrative already includes some sharp attacks on the opposing candidate is as much a part of the repertoire as fireworks and pathos-filled speeches by party leaders. Storytelling, building emotional narratives, and inviting special guests are basic building blocks of political messaging. Drawing on traditions and the rich American history, interpretations and images should mobilize, arouse emotions, and thus secure the conviction of majorities. Due to the complicated voting system already described above, both parties aim to use these means to link interpretations of social problems with specific solutions in order to generate supreme and convincing narratives. In the election year 2008, for example, Barack Obama succeeded in winning over a majority of the population tired and disappointed by the economic and financial crisis as well as the military operations abroad with his vision of “change” and the messages “hope” and “yes we can”. In 2016, Donald Trump was able to successfully stage his message of “America first“ with his catchy apocalyptic description of “American carnage”, a supposed “massacre” in large cities and at the border to Mexico supposedly challenging the US and by citing tough economic opposition to globalization. Hillary Clinton set counterpoints in content and programmatic terms at that time, from health reform to affordable higher education to job creation, but there was no convincing narrative, no coherent story that generated enough emotional resonance. The first woman as a presidential candidate was obviously not a sufficiently inspiring story in the presidential election campaign shaped by gender stereotypes, and so Clinton received the majority of votes cast (the so-called popular vote), but not the majority of votes in the electoral college. The 2020 election year presented Democrats and Republicans with the challenge of conveying narratives largely virtually, and this against the background of several serious crises: the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic, the deep economic crisis triggered by it, and the renewed debate about police violence and racism. The Democrats, who had postponed their party convention due to the pandemic to August 17–20, 2020, immediately demonstrated which America they wanted to address and reach: With a diverse mix of greetings, musical contributions, video clips, speeches and gestures, they presented a colorful, multi-layered America,

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supported and amplified by the new medium of virtual presentation. Their goal to be perceived as a party of diversity, which today shapes American society, was impressively underscored in this way. Furthermore, no less than three former presidents (Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama) spoke out in favor of the nomination of Joe Biden—a significant form of support that Trump was denied by George W. Bush. Prominent speakers also included former First Lady Michelle Obama, who set the tone for the campaign message at the outset, determined to prevent a Trump reelection. The nomination of California Senator Kamala Harris as vice presidential candidate, which was enthusiastically commented by many observers, also underlined the Democrats’ desire to present themselves primarily as a party of diversity, openness, and plurality. In his much-anticipated acceptance speech, Joe Biden eloquently and forcefully picked up on the narrative of a fateful choice, which had been previously addressed by Barack Obama and Kamala Harris (Stevens, 2020). He recalled the five million infected Americans and the more than 170,000 deaths from COVID-19 at that time, the 50 million people who had applied for unemployment benefits by then, and the estimated 10 million who would lose their health insurance during the year. In many ways, therefore, the Democrats and Biden were looking for a way out of these crisis developments and to renew and rebuild America. From their perspective, the presidential election was a choice of fate, a matter of life and death (“life changing election”). In the words of Joe Biden: “Character is on the ballot. Compassion is on the ballot. Decency, science, democracy. They are all on the ballot. Who we are as a nation. What we stand for. And, most importantly, who we want to be.” (CNN, 2020a) It is about more than just a majority of votes, Biden said. Rather, he called the question of the election as a decision about the soul of America, in metaphorical form, as a choice between light and darkness. Such a sharply delineated, pictorial, and compelling narrative was less about content than about the emotional resonance it was supposed to create. The Republicans, who held their party convention from August 24–27 after several course corrections also largely virtually, relied on a similarly emotional narrative, entitled “Honoring the Great American Story.” The personal presence that Donald Trump had clearly favored for the entire convention could only be partially realized due to pandemic safety regulations of the federal states. Nevertheless, the appearances were carefully choreographed and moderated by employees of the television show “The Apprentice,” which once made Trump a media star. Even the first day, on which the delegates voted on the nomination of Trump and his vice presidential candidate Mike Pence, set important milestones. The delegates partly met in person in Charlotte in the state of North Carolina, one of the hotly contested

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swing states in the November election, to underline the importance of this state and to reproduce the sense of community of the usual nomination conventions. The nomination of Donald Trump and Mike Pence was not in question at this point. The Republican Party was already fully committed to Trump at this point. However, the party convention was faced with the challenge of turning around the mood in the country in the face of low poll numbers. Moreover, unlike in 2016, Trump could no longer stage himself as an untarnished political newcomer who is running against the establishment. In the polls of the last weeks before the nomination party, Joe Biden consistently led Donald Trump, which also applied to decisive swing states like Michigan or Wisconsin. Biden also led in the average poll values calculated ​​ by RealClearPolitics from the most important polls at this point, with around eight percent ahead of the then incumbent US president (RealClearPolitics, 2020). In accordance with his populist election campaign strategy, Trump in his carefully prepared speech at the end of the nomination convention painted the picture of a country that was in chaos and anarchy and could only be saved from final collapse by his government skills. In doing so, he repeated a strategy that had already been successfully used in 2016 by presenting himself as a savior, in particular as a savior in a crisis situation (Schneiker, 2020). According to Trump, the blame for the chaos in the country lies with the “left” and the “anarchists”, who wanted to destroy the American Dream with a “socialist agenda”. In contrast, he staged himself as the candidate who stands up for law and order in turbulent times and as the president who not only mastered the Coronavirus pandemic, but also allegedly did more for the African American population than all of his predecessors. The contrast between the narrative of law and order and the images of Trump supporters, who stormed the Capitol, could hardly be greater. Nevertheless, Trump remained true to his story of the savior of the American dream: “At no time before have voters faced a clearer choice between the parties, two visions, two philosophies or two agendas. This election will decide whether we save the American dream or whether we allow a socialist agenda to demolish our cherished destiny.” (CNN, 2020b). However, as reality checks of his claims showed, his speech was marked by false and misleading statements that conveyed a distorted image of reality and exaggerated his achievements (New York Times, 2020). Despite the increasingly acute situation in the health care system due to the pandemic, this problem was surprisingly hardly mentioned. This largely corresponded to the mood among Trump’s core supporters. Only about one third of them described the pandemic as a major challenge (Pew Research Center, 2020). Many Republicans not only openly opposed the warnings of doctors and epidemiologists, but also gave priority to the rapid opening of the country for economic reasons, but not to health protection. Of crucial importance for the Republican

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narrative was also the construction of perceptions of threat that promote emotional responses and legitimize more extreme positions, such as those advocated by Trump. On the one hand, Trump wants to protect the USA from the allegedly radical left forces of the “socialist” Democrats. On the other hand, China served as a target of criticism. Again, a clear friend-enemy image was constructed. The threat from China was also linked to Trump’s Democratic challenger: “Joe Biden’s agenda is made in China. My agenda is made in the USA” (CNN, 2020b). Overall, it became clear that the core message of Trump’s narrative was clearly characterized by polarization and fear rather than reconciliation and confidence. In conclusion, it can be seen that there are clear differences between the narratives of the Democrats and the Republicans, not only in terms of tone and general staging, but also with regard to the respective core messages. This is not only a symbol of a polarized political landscape, but also a consequence of Trump’s controversial term in office and his populist election campaign strategy. The strong contrast between the two narratives underlines the finding that this election could be considered a turning point. An important part of Trump’s narrative was already mentioned briefly before and needs to be examined in more detail: his anticipatory and, in the aftermath of his election defeat, intensified challenge of the election results. Here Trump used numerous conspiracy theories to sow doubts about the correct conduct of the election. The fact that, in particular, the extended mailin voting in reaction to the pandemic was a popular target of his attacks becomes more understandable in light of the fact, for example, that it was decisive for the election in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in favor of Joe Biden, (see Chap. 3 on postal voting).

9.3 The Delegitimization of the Election and its Consequences Donald Trump’s repeated announcement in the fall of the election year that he would not accept the election if he did not win because the election would then be fraudulent led to speculation time and again before the November election as to how he would react in the event of a defeat. An article in The Atlantic very clearly formulated this notion: “Let us not hedge about one thing. Donald Trump may win or lose, but he will never concede. Not under any circumstances. Not during the Interregnum and not afterward.” (Gellmann, 2020). As it turned out, this expectation proved fateful. Trump never conceded his defeat and he did not attend the inauguration of his successor, marking a break with the traditional procedures

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of the democratic transfer of power despite the fact that Biden had won the election clearly with around 81 million direct votes (51.4%) and 306 electoral votes. The time between the election on November 3, 2020 and the inauguration of Joe Biden on January 20, 2021—the Interregnum—was characterized by tensions, divisions and speculation, which in view of Biden’s very clear election results raised the fundamental question of why Trump did not accept the election even after the Electoral College of the states had voted unambiguously on December 14 in favour of Biden. It is also important at this point to ask about the political implications of the refusal to accept the election by a large part of the Republican Party, or to do so only rather late. Contrary to the tradition in previous presidential elections, for example, the influential Republican majority leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, only accepted Biden’s election on December 15, five weeks after the vote in the Electoral College. When Hillary Clinton lost to Trump on November 3, 2016, she recognized her defeat as early as November 9 and followed the democratic norm of congratulating the election winner Donald Trump. In order to turn the election result in his favor, Trump and his team used several strategies. First, his lawyers filed lawsuits in several states and demanded audits of alleged irregularities. More than 60 lawsuits were filed in this way in eight states, but they all failed due to lack of evidence (Liptak, 2020). Trump also tried to bring about a change in conversations with Republican members of Congress in individual states where the election result was close and the state was governed by Republicans such as Michigan and Georgia. Legally, the legislative chambers of the states could have nominated and sent a competing group of electors from their state to vote in December. This would have created an unpredictable and constitutionally complicated situation. However, these interventions remained without result—the risk for the individual state politicians seemed too high to bring about such a controversial decision in the face of the counted majority of votes for Joe Biden. So even the Republican Brad Raffensperger, who as Secretary of State was responsible for the election in the contested state of Georgia, refused Trump’s outlandish demand to “find” enough votes to overturn the result (Gardner & Firozi, 2021). Finally, the Republican-governed state of Texas filed a lawsuit with the Supreme Court challenging the election results. Texas wanted to achieve that the four states of Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin could not cast their electoral votes for Joe Biden because the expansions of absentee voting supposedly had been illegal and thus the votes of voters in Texas would have been devalued (Liptak, 2020). This would have invalidated millions of votes. The challenge was flanked by more than a dozen supporting statements, including from attor-

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neys general from several Republican states and a group of about 100 members of the House of Representatives, including the Republican Minority Leader, Kevin McCarthy. 20 Democratic states supported the four states in question and turned against the lawsuit (Liptak, 2020). Here, Trump’s strong influence on the Republican Party is particularly pronounced. The lawsuit by Texas was rejected by the Supreme Court and marked a particularly dilettantish attempt by this lawsuit to completely devalue several million votes. Trump had already brought the strategy of a lawsuit before the Supreme Court into play in September 2020 and—as can be assumed—not least of all because of this, he pushed ahead with the appointment of a new Surpreme Court judge shortly after the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg (see Chap. 7). However, his calculation and that of the Republicans who supported him did not work out. The Supreme Court denied Texas the right to take action against elections in other states because the right to vote is determined by the individual states themselves due to the federal principle. With the failure of this lawsuit against the election results on December 12, the legal possibilities to challenge the election were effectively at an end. On December 14, the Electoral College delegates from all states finally cast their votes according to the election results. Not a single delegate deviated from the respective election result in the respective state as a socalled unfaithful elector (Herb, 2020). On the way to the inauguration, only one formality remained: The votes cast in the Electoral College are sent to Congress for certification. The joint session of the House of Representatives and of the Senate is supervised by the incumbent Vice President and always takes place on January 6 (Congressional Research Service, 2020). Although this step is usually more ceremonial in nature on the way to the transition of power, a mob of violent Trump supporters decided to storm the Capitol after a speech by Trump in front of the White House. During this unprecedented violent attack approximately five people were killed and dozens wounded, including 140 police officers. The raid, followed by a second impeachment procedure against Trump, led to an investigation by Congress, several convictions and prison sentences. However, this attempted coup could only interrupt the process of certification for a few hours before the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris was finally and definitively confirmed. Immediately after the election, Trump already began raising money to finance the costly legal steps to challenge the election results and to pay back debts from his expensive campaign. Within a week, he had raised around $170 million for the “Election Defense Fund.” However, as the New York Times reported, three-quarters of this amount went to a new political action committee, “Save America,” which Trump can also use for his future political activities, including travel and personnel

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costs. One quarter of the amount went directly to the Republican National Committee (Goldmacher & Haberman, 2020). This action not only demonstrates the seriousness with which Trump is preparing for his continued political engagement, but also underscores his ambitions to run again for the 2024 presidential election. Trump’s persistent refusal to accept the clear result of the vote count after the election and his attempts to change the result in various ways brought the United States to the brink of a constitutional crisis and contributed significantly to the escalation of the situation in Washington D.C. on January 6, 2021. The stress test for the US election system and for American democracy thus initially had a positive outcome in that Trump was unable to change the clear election result in his favor. The gears of democracy meshed: baseless lawsuits remained unsuccessful in court, despite a widespread pandemic, the elections were carried out properly with an unusually high voter turnout, and the change of power took place. However, as the renowned historian and specialist in American presidential elections, Michael Beschloss, points out in an interview, the President’s maneuvers to reverse the election result and stay in power were unique in the history of American presidential elections (Sanger, 2020). Up to this day, Trump continues to maintain the claim that the election result was fraudulent, even though the Supreme Court had rejected the fraud lawsuit and all legal remedies had been exhausted. However, the attempts at delegitimization have far-reaching consequences for political culture, the Republican Party, and future elections in the United States. If the Republicans are able to maintain the myth of election fraud even after the legal clarification, not only the election result of 2020, but also the credibility of the entire election process will be damaged which might come into play prominently again in the next midterm elections in November 2022. Doubts about the reliability and legality of elections remain virulent. In addition, this means for the Biden presidency that millions of Americans do not recognize Joe Biden as a legitimate, elected president. A continuation of this belief would not be a marginal problem, but a fateful legacy for times to come and it would deepen the irreconcilable polarization of society even further (see Chap. 5). But the radical rejection of the election result is also a problem for the Republicans. While the persistent refusal of Donald Trump to accept the election result and his announcement to run for president again in 2024 finds enthusiastic support among his supporters, “NeverTrump” conservatives are already thinking about a new party. One of their supporters writes: “Will we return to a Republican Party liberated of fear, corruption and authoritarianism, or will we attempt to replace it with a new conservative alternative? Our hope is that we can still help foment a broad rejection of extremism inside the GOP. But our immediate task is to build our home for either eventuality, and to continue the fight for liberty, equality and truth.”

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(McMullin, 2020). If Trumpism continues to exert such a strong influence within the party as it has in the past four years, a split of the Republican Party is by no means excluded. Against the background of limited successes of third parties in American history, however, this scenario remains highly unlikely. It is more likely that Trumpism will continue as a dominant wing within the Republican Party. To what extent the American democracy will be damaged by these fundamental attempts at delegitimization can only be assessed in the coming years. The democratic researcher Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt (2018) had already warned early on of the strategies employed by Trump. Drawing on typical benchmarks of democratic systems, they examined authoritarian, non-democratic behavior in relation to historical and comparative events. The five indicators include: a weak commitment to democratic rules, the non-recognition of legitimate opposition, tolerance of violence, willingness to restrict civil rights, including freedom of the press (Levitsky & Ziblatt, 2018, pp. 23 ff.). If one takes these criteria as a basis, then Donald Trump has partially or even completely fulfilled or tried to fulfill all of these criteria during his presidency according to the authors list. However, as the election results in November show, he has not been able to transform society and elections accordingly to these non-democratic dispositions. The discussion about the relationship between constitutionally relevant institutional foundations and (civil) society political behavior as well as the “benchmarks” of democracy continues in the USA. The radicalization of parts of the Trump supporters, which led to the storming of the Capitol, was an attack on democratic principles and institutions, the ideological foundations of which are by no means obsolete.

9.4 Summary It becomes clear from this chapter that the strategies of the Republicans and the Democrats in the election campaign could hardly be more different. While Donald Trump mainly resorted to populist strategies and further exacerbated polarization in society, Joe Biden chose more established campaign strategies, albeit restricted and transformed by the Coronavirus pandemic. In retrospect, Trump’s strategy can be described as successful in that he gained votes compared to 2016, including among minority groups that he had discredited during the campaign. However, the gap that has been further deepened by his polarizing rhetoric will remain a lasting legacy of Trumpism. The influence of social media in election campaigns will also remain, although it is unclear whether the strategy of extreme, radical communication will continue as it was during Trump’s time. For example, Twitter showed increased responsibility for content shared on the p­ latform during the

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2020 campaign and provided numerous tweets by Trump with corrective warning messages until his account was permanently blocked in January 2021. In contrast, Biden’s strategy is more in line with t more established patterns of American campaigns, in that he not only generated political content, but also sought to address the various groups in society in order to reach and mobilize the traditionally very heterogeneous voter coalition of the Democrats. In addition, he relied primarily on balance and repeatedly appealed for reconciliation between the various and often estranged groups. After his election, he again emphasized that he wanted to be president of all Americans, a claim that places him in the tradition of most American presidents before him. Accordingly, a return to a certain normality in the White House can be expected with Biden’s traditional approach. In his inaugural address, Joe Biden emphasized this goal of uniting the nation once again emphatically, framed by the ritual of inauguration, which took place on January 20, 2021, in front of the Capitol under strict security measures and due to COVID-19 rules without an audience. The term “unity” appeared eleven times in this twenty-minute speech. Biden said, “Today, on this January day, my whole soul is in this: Bringing America together. Uniting our people. And uniting our nation. I ask every American to join me in this cause.” (White House, 2021). Especially in view of the ever-spreading pandemic, it is important, according to Biden, to stand together as a nation. The fight for social justice and against racism as well as against white supremacist ideologies were mentioned in his political message, as were targeted measures against climate change. On his first day in office, Biden revised several of his predecessor’s controversial decisions. He stopped the construction of the wall to Mexico, ordered the return to the Paris Climate Agreement and re-joined the World Health Organization (WHO). Regulations for containment of the Coronavirus pandemic, economic development and social policy measures were also on his agenda. As some observers expected, Biden quickly implemented a comprehensive political agenda in his first 100 days in office, which showed his determination to be viewed as a determined reformer. The expectations of the Biden-Harris administration have been correspondingly high to reduce the division in society and to improve the living conditions of the population noticeably.

References Baker, P., & Tackett, M. (2018). Trump says his ‘nuclear button’ is ‘much bigger’ than North Korea’s. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/02/us/politics/ trump-tweet-north-korea.html. Accessed 28 Jan 2021.

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Benkler, Y., Faris, R., & Roberts, H. (2018). Network propaganda: Manipulation, disinformation, and radicalization in American Politics. Oxford University Press. Cancryn, A., & Marinucci, C. (2020). What Kamala Harris believes: Key issues, policy positions and votes. https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/11/what-kamala-harrisbelieves-key-issues-positions-and-votes-393807. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Cavaillé, C., Gidron, N., & Hall, P. A. (2016). Trumpism as a transatlantic phenomenon. The American Prospect. https://prospect.org/article/trumpism-transatlantic-phenomenon. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. CNN (2020a). Transcript: Joe Biden’s DNC speech. https://edition.cnn.com/2020/08/20/ politics/biden-dnc-speech-transcript/index.html. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. CNN (2020b). Transcript: Donald Trump’s RNC speech. https://edition.cnn. com/2020/08/28/politics/donald-trump-speech-transcript/index.html. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Committee to Protect Journalists CPJ. (2020). The Trump administration and the media. https://cpj.org/reports/2020/04/trump-media-attacks-credibility-leaks/. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Congressional Reserch Service. (2020). Counting electoral votes: An overview of procedures at the joint session, including objections by members of congress. https://fas.org/ sgp/crs/misc/RL32717.pdf. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Gardner, A., & Firozi, P. (2021). The full transcript and audio oft he call between Trump and Raffensperger. Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/ trump-raffensperger-call-transcript-georgia-vote/2021/01/03/2768e0cc-4ddd-11eb83e3-322644d82356_story.html. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Gellmann, B. (2020).The election that could break America. The Atlantic. https://www. theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/11/what-if-trump-refuses-concede/616424/. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Goldmacher, S., & Haberman, M. (2020). Trump raises $170 Million as he denies his loss and eyes the future. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/30/us/politics/ trump-campaign-donations.html. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Herb, J. (2020). Electoral College affirms Biden win, shaking loose fresh Republican recognition. https://edition.cnn.com/2020/12/14/politics/2020-election-electoral-collegevote/index.html. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Hochschild, J. L., & Levine-Einstein, K. (2015). Do facts matter? Information and misinformation in American politics. University of Oklahoma Press. Lerer, L., & Ember, S. (2020). Kamala Harris makes history as first woman and woman of color as vice president. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/07/us/politics/kamala-harris.html. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Levitsky, S., & Ziblatt, D. (2018). How democracies die. Crown. Liptak, A. (2020). Supreme Court rejects Texas suit seeking to subvert election. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/11/us/politics/supreme-court-election-texas. html. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. McMullin, E. 2020. If the Republican party doesn’t shape up, we will challenge it. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/15/opinion/politics/never-trump-republican-party.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage. Accessed 28 Jan 2021.

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Mounk, Y. (2018). The People vs. Democracy. Why our freedom is in danger and how to save it. Harvard University Press. Mudde, C. (2019). The far right today. Oxford University Press. Mudde, C., & Kaltwasser, C. R. (2017). Populism. A very short introduction. Oxford University Press. Müller, J.-W. (2016). Was ist Populismus? Ein Essay. suhrkamp. New York Times. (2020). Fact-checking Trump’s speech and more: Night 4 of the Republican National Convention. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/08/27/ us/rnc-fact-check. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Norris, P. (2021). It happened in America – Democratic backsliding shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Foreign Affairs. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/unitedstates/2021-01-07/it-happened-america. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Norris, P., & Inglehart, R. (2019). Cultural backlash: Trump, Brexit, and authoritarian populism. Cambridge University Press. Pew Research Center. (2020a). 5 facts about the QAnon conspiracy theories. https://www. pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/11/16/5-facts-about-the-qanon-conspiracy-theories/. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Pew Research Center. (2020b). Important issues in the 2020 election. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2020/08/13/important-issues-in-the-2020-election/. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Pierson, P. (2017). American hybrid: Donald Trump and the strange merger of populism and plutocracy. British Journal of Sociology. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-4446.12323. RealClearPolitics. (2020). National polls. https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2020/ president/us/trump-vs-biden-national-polls-2020-vs-2016/. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Sanger, D. E. 2020. Trump’s attempts to overturn the election are unparalleled in US history. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/19/us/politics/trump-election. html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Schneiker, A. (2018). Telling the story of the superhero and the anti-politician as President: Donald Trump’s branding on Twitter. Political Studies Review. https://doi. org/10.1177/1478929918807712. Schneiker, A. (2020). Populist leadership. The superhero Donald Trump as savior in times of crisis. Political Studies, 68(4), 857–874. Stevens, M. (2020). Joe Biden accepts presidential nomination: Full transcript. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/20/us/politics/biden-presidential-nominationdnc.html. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Trump, D. (2019). Tweet vom 28. September 2019. https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1178055467987275776. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. White House. (2017). Remarks by President Trump in press conference. issued: February 16, 2017. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trumppress-conference/. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. White House. (2021). Inaugural address by President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. https://www. whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2021/01/20/inaugural-address-bypresident-joseph-r-biden-jr/. Accessed 28 Jan 2021.

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The election results speak for themselves: Joe Biden won the election by a clear margin in the Electoral College of 306 to 232 votes (U.S. National Archives, 2020; Holder et al., 2020). With just over 81 million votes cast, Biden also broke the previous record of just under 70 million votes received by Obama in the 2008 presidential election. Although Trump gained just over 10 million more votes compared to his 2016 victory, Biden’s margin at the end was just over 7 million votes. In addition, Biden won in five states (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin), which went to Trump in 2016. Biden’s victory also meant that with Kamala Harris for the first time in US history, a woman and a person belonging to two ethnic minorities will assume the office of Vice President. Even though Trump continuously tried to undermine the legitimacy of the results after his election defeat, it must be emphasized that the outcome of the election is lawful and clear. It is particularly noteworthy that the USA was able to successfully carry out the elections, which were additionally characterized by an unusually high voter turnout of about 66% (McDonald, 2020), even in the context of the Coronavirus pandemic and in the shadow of the delegitimization attempts by a ultimately defeated incumbent that endanger democracy. With regard to the election procedures in the USA, democratic processes seem to have weathered the storm in terms of Trump’s attempts to change the outcome. Even after a violent mob had gained access to the Capitol on January 6, the certification of votes from the Electoral College proceeded shortly after the building had been secured again. Despite all the interference from Trump and his supporters, the votes cast by voters were counted—sometimes even several times—before the votes of the states were determined according to the election results in the Electoral College and finally confirmed in Congress. At no time was there any evidence of widespread elec© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2022 C. Lemke and J. Wiedekind, The Battle for the White House, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-38934-5_10

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tion fraud—let alone to the extent that would have been necessary to overturn the clear result in favor of Trump. Nevertheless, Trump filed numerous legal proceedings in contested states like Pennsylvania or Wisconsin, which failed in the absence of evidence. A particularly striking example is the attempt by the Attorney General from Texas, Ken Paxton, to file a lawsuit before the Supreme Court, which essentially aimed to disqualify the election results in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin—a futile endeavor based on unsubstantiated allegations that was rejected by the judges, especially since the conduct of elections is the responsibility of the individual states according to the American Constitution (Liptak, 2020). The futility of the legal challenges became clear not only from the defeats in court, but also from the statements of the Attorney General appointed by Trump, William Barr, who rejected allegations of widespread election fraud in early December (Balsamo, 2020). As with any election, there were also irregularities in 2020, but no serious mistakes emerges despite the difficult context. However, the extent of minor irregularities was so distorted by Trump and his supporters that Trump’s message not only called Biden’s victory into question, but even propagated a landslide victory by the Republican candidate. The accusation of election fraud is not a new strategy of Trump. Already in 2016, when he won the election, he made unfounded accusations of election fraud and claimed that millions of votes for his rival Hillary Clinton were invalid (Shear & Huetteman, 2017). In 2020, he stuck with this lie and increasingly intensified his rhetoric as polls showed that the probability of an election defeat increased. This is an indication of a general disrespect for democratic institutions and processes, which ultimately led to the fact that Trump is the only president in American history against whom two impeachment proceedings have been pursued. Trump was primarily interested in establishing the myth of a stolen election victory, so that no doubts arise about his populist self-portrayal as an invincible political leader (see Chap. 9). The long-term damage that Trump has done to the trust of the American people in democratic processes and institutions can only be guessed at in reference to the storming of the Capitol by Trump supporters. However, the sharply condemned events of January 6 show that Trump’s misleading narrative of a stolen election, which he reaffirmed in a speech shortly before the unrest, turns into violence and destructive anger in a radicalized minority of Trump supporters. The results were not only clear despite all the challenges of an election in times of crisis, but followed established dynamics in many respects. This chapter first breaks down the election results in more detail and compares them to previous elections in the United States. In this way, the outcome of the fight for the White House, which was finally completed with Joe Biden’s inau-

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guration on January 20, 2021, can be examined more closely before turning to the implications of the transition of power in Washington D.C. from a transatlantic perspective. From the perspective of European observers, a lot was at stake in the election on November 3, 2020, as the transatlantic alliance was strained by Trump’s “America First” approach and its transactional and confrontational guiding principles, which caused plenty of turbulence (Wiedekind, 2020). On this side of the Atlantic, Biden is expected to return to a more cooperative and respectful working climate that meets existing tensions between partners in a more diplomatic manner and thus enables a re-empowered partnership to turn to global challenges such as the fight against the pandemic and climate change. Biden’s support for a return of the USA to the Paris Climate Agreement shows how important the elections of 2020 are also for international politics.

10.1 The Results of the 2020 Presidential Elections in Historical Perspective It took longer for the results of the 2020 elections to be finalized than was usual in previous elections. The fact that more patience was required was due in particular to the fact that the race in many contested states was very close and that absentee ballots were given greater importance. It was well known in advance that the Coronavirus pandemic would change the election process in the United States and that crucial states like Pennsylvania would extend deadlines for the submission of absentee ballots in order to ensure participation in the elections while still complying with restrictions on public life. In Pennsylvania, for example, ballots received up to three days after the election were accepted as long as they had a postmark from November 3, even though the formal hurdles for voting by mail remained relatively high in this state (see Chap. 3). Other states like California took more far-reaching measures to relax absentee voting, but were hardly the target of Trump’s accusations. In fact, his allegations of voter fraud focused primarily and almost exclusively on a handful of states that he narrowly lost. An important part of his narrative of the allegedly stolen election was the claim that on election night it initially looked like a victory for Trump, before the counting of absentee ballots in some states, such as Wisconsin, turned the tide in Biden’s favor. Often, close states were not decided until days after the election because it simply took longer for all ballots to arrive by mail. Absentee ballots are also more time-consuming to process than ballots cast on election day, which can be easily counted automatically.

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The example of the state of Georgia is quite impressive. In the 2016 presidential election, just over 200,000 people voted by mail. Both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump received about 100,000 votes by mail at that time. There was thus no clear partisan difference in the preference for this way of voting and the mailin ballots were a rarely used option in comparison to the just under 1.6 million votes that came in at the polling station on election day. Early voting at the polling station, which is typically a popular voting mode in the USA, was particularly popular in 2016. Here too, no greater difference between Democratic and Republican voters became apparent—for Trump 1.1 million and for Clinton about one million votes came in this way, so that the total number of votes cast was just under four million (Georgia Secretary of State, 2016). In 2020, absentee voting was used by more than 1.3 million people, while only about 970,000 voters cast their votes at the polling station on election day. The share of early votes also rose to just under 2.7 million, indicating a slight advantage for Trump, who received 1.4 million votes. The increase in absentee voting is therefore clearly visible in comparison to 2016, which was difficult to handle for the local election-administration. In addition, the data shows that a clear preference for a voting mode is associated with the preferred candidate. About 850.000 Biden voters preferred absentee voting, while only about 450.000 Trump voters used this mode. The votes cast on election day also showed a strong contrast. Almost 590.000 votes were cast on election day for Trump, while Biden received only about 370.000 votes in this way. So on election night, votes were counted that came more from the Trump camp, which is why it initially looked like a clear victory for Trump. Only when the absentee ballots, which delivered more votes for Biden, were counted, was it possible for the Democratic challenger to catch up with Trump’s strong interim result step by step until Biden ultimately overtook him. With almost 5 million votes cast, Georgia also had a particularly high voter turnout (Georgia Secretary of State, 2020). In the contested states of Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin similar dynamics can be traced, even though the race was particularly close in Georgia. The clear preference of Democratic voters for mail-in voting under pandemic conditions is evident in all contested states and explains why it initially looked like a victory for Trump. That this effect would occur was clear even before the election, as polls pointed to the different preferences regarding voting methods among American voters that largely split along partisan lines (Pew Research Center, 2020). The aforementioned states account for 89 votes in the Electoral College and Biden’s victories in these states secured the necessary majority to beat Trump. That a few contested states can make all the difference in presidential elections is by no means unusual, but rather a result of the American electoral

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system. The delay in certainty about the results clearly resulted from more frequent mail-in ballots under the impression of the pandemic. What Trump cast as suspicious delays for his baseless claim of election fraud is actually a quite plausible consequence of the shift in preferred voting methods. It is worth taking another look at this elections’ contextual factors that were described in detail throughout this book. The USA was kept in suspense by the Coronavirus pandemic, which caused substantive economic damage – one of Biden’s biggest challenges as President. The protests of early summer 2020 also threw a spotlight on deep social divisions and highlighted the sharply contrasting ideas of the two parties about their image and their ideas of America (see Chap. 9). Not least for this reason, these elections were perceived as particularly important and decisive for the future by American voters and international observers alike. The fact that the elections had one of the highest voter turnout in American history underlines their importance. Against this background, it becomes clear why the elections were so special. Yet, it is all the more remarkable how ordinary their results were in many respects. An unwritten law that applies to national elections in the USA and was not set aside in 2020 states that the outcome of the elections is decided in a few states because the results in the other states are somewhat predictable. Since only a simple majority of the votes cast is required to win all the votes of a state in the Electoral College, states that are traditionally in the hands of one of the two parties are difficult to flip. There are numerous examples of this. The state of California was last won by a Republican in a presidential election in 1988, while a Republican victory in the state of Minnesota was last possible in 1972. Conversely, a Democratic victory in the state of Texas dates back to 1980, while a Democratic presidential candidate was last successful in the Republican state of Oklahoma in 1964. Based on the findings from Chap. 4 and 5 some election results are already foreseeable on the eve of the election in that Republicans win many states in the South and Midwest, while Democrats traditionally achieve strong results on the West Coast and in the Northeast of the country. The decision in favor of a majority in the Electoral College then typically comes about in a few states that are alternately won by Republicans and Democrats, which is why they are called Swing States. This also applied to the elections in 2020, with the addition that Georgia is a fairly new member on the list of contested states. The results from Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin were decisive for the presidential election in 2020 and had a major impact on the change of power and direction in Washington D.C. on January 20, 2021. These four states together award 57 votes in the Electoral College and all went to Trump in 2016. In 2020, a total of about 18.6 million votes were cast in all four states. Biden’s cumulative advan-

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tage, which ultimately led to victory in all the mentioned states, was only 125,000 votes, which indicates how close the individual results actually were. The number of states with close election results is not unusual in historical terms. Fig. 10.1 shows the number of contested states for each election year and understands a close election as a result in which the victory was achieved by a margin of two percent or less. The period under consideration includes all presidential elections between 1968 and 2020. In this way, the results from 2020 can be interpreted in a larger historical context that, in addition to the upheavals in the context of the 68er movement and the Republican Southern Strategy (see Chap. 4), also covers the increasing party political polarization over time. The data for Fig. 10.1 come from the corresponding state authorities and were compiled by the Pew Research Center (DeSilver, 2020). As Fig. 10.1 shows, the elections in 2020 are part of a long tradition of elections that have been characterized by a few very close election results in each state. Whoever can decide these close elections usually wins the presidency, and that did not change in 2020. Over time, there may be occasional shifts in the states that are actually contested, as the examples of Obama’s narrow victory in North Carolina in 2008 or Biden’s success in Georgia in 2020 showcase. The

Number of contested states

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11

10 8

8

6

6 4

6 5 4 3

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2 0

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1

1

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0 1968 1972 1976 1980 1984 1988 1992 1996 2000 2004 2008 2012 2016 2020 Year of the presidential election

Fig. 10.1   Number of states with close results in presidential elections, 1968–2020. Source Own figure based on the overview of the Pew Research Center (DeSilver, 2020)

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Share of total votes

elections in 2020 did not change the fact that, of 50 states, only a few can shift the election result in one direction or the other, which is why election campaigns are usually focused on Swing States. Fig. 10.1 shows that Trump also only won by a narrow margins in six states in 2016 to get the necessary majority in the Electoral College. It must be noted that, at least from this perspective, the uncertainties of the election year 2020 do not result in a significant deviation from the pattern of other elections. This does not preclude surprising turns, as the example of Georgia shows. Here, a gradual shift in favor of the Democrats has started to take hold. This is indicated not only by the majority in favor of Biden in the presidential election, but also by the two victories of the Democratic candidates for the Senate, Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, after the Democrat Stacey Abrams had lost the gubernatorial election by a narrow margin in 2018. Another regularity that did not lose importance in the unusual election year of 2020 is the discrepancy between the vote ratio in the Electoral College and the distribution of all votes actually cast by voters (the Popular Vote). Fig. 10.2 shows the share of the ultimate winner in the votes of the electors in the Electoral College in contrast to the share of votes in the Popular Vote. As a result, Fig. 10.2 shows how the result achieved by the winner in the votes cast translates into a

Share of Popular Vote

Percentage of votes in the Electoral College

Fig. 10.2   Popular Vote and victory in the Electoral College, 1968–2020. Source Own figure based on data from the American Presidency Project (2021)

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victory in the Electoral College. For an election victory, only a majority in the Electoral College is required, not a lead in all votes cast. Through a series of close election results in some states, the lead in the Electoral College often grows much more than the often narrow distances in the Popular Vote suggest. The time period between 1968 and 2020 is again considered for Fig. 10.2, while the underlying data come from the American Presidency Project (2021). Before evaluating Fig. 10.2, we note that in 1968 there was a strong third candidate, George Wallace, who won 8.4% (45 votes) in the Electoral College and 13.5% of the Popular Vote, which affected the values shown for the winner Richard Nixon that year. In 1992, Ross Perot won 18.9% of all votes cast by voters, without winning a state for votes in the Electoral College. However, this circumstance leads to the comparatively small share of winner Bill Clinton of all votes cast. Taking these details into account, Fig. 10.2 shows that the final election winners typically just barely exceed the 50% mark (dotted line) for the Popular Vote, while the different decisiveness of the successes, measured by the distance from the result in the Electoral College of each year, indicates that even landslide victories like those of Richard Nixon (Republican, 1972) or Ronald Reagan (Republican, 1980 and 1984) rest on narrow margins in the Popular Vote. In addition, it is clear that Joe Biden’s victory in the Electoral College is comparable to Trump’s from 2016, while Biden received significantly more votes in the Popular Vote. In relation to the previous presidential elections, 2020 followed the system-induced regularity of Electoral College victories, which are based on less clear results in the distribution of the Popular Vote. Since 2000, moreover, a trend emerges: the distance between the Popular Vote and the Electoral College shrinks. Election victories with more than 70% share of the vote in the Electoral College, which were not unusual prior to 2000, can no longer be found in the last six presidential elections. One possible explanation could be the previously analyzed political polarization, which makes it increasingly difficult for candidates to gain a foothold in areas that typically vote for the other side in addition to the states with clear party preferences in their favor and a handful of contested states. Overall, Fig. 10.2 shows quite clearly that the democratic processes in the USA in 2020 have produced results that are not unusual in historical terms, which, in a national election with particularly high voter turnout and under difficult conditions, suggests a certain resilience of the electoral system. Regardless of this resilience, from a democratic theory perspective, the system of the Electoral College must be questioned, since the election of Donald Trump in 2016 again showed that even a quite clear defeat in the Popular Vote can lead

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to a significant victory in the Electoral College. In national elections, the system accentuates the winner-takes-all results in the individual states and their disproportionate representation in the Electoral College, while actual voting ratios of all votes cast matter less. Therefore, the question is repeatedly raised whether the Electoral College should be reformed or abolished entirely. This subchapter shows that the election results in the particularly challenging election year 2020 were decided as usual by a few close states and that a noticeable distance between the votes cast by the voters and the final votes of the electors is not unusual in historical comparison. This election year was challenged by the culmination of many crises. Nevertheless, the results follow broader trends in terms of the number of close federal states and the ratio between the Popular Vote and the victory in the Electoral College, which stands out as particularly remarkable against this background and counters Trump’s narrative of a manipulated or even stolen election. The outcome is clear and, with the inauguration of Joe Biden on January 20, 2021, ushered in a change of direction in Washington D.C. With regard to the domestic dimension, the previous chapters have already shown the vision for America that Joe Biden promoted on his way to the White House. First and foremost, his goal is to overcome the deep social divisions and initiate a clear change in economic, health and environmental policy. This is indicated by the first executive orders, which he issued shortly after his inauguration. From a European perspective, it remained to be seen what implications for the transatlantic relationship network arose from Biden’s move into the White House, which is why the following chapter widens the perspective and looks at international politics.

10.2 Transatlantic Relations under President Biden: A New Beginning? “As a nation, we have to prove to the world that the United States is prepared to lead again – not just with the example of our power but with the power of our example.” (Biden 2020).

The transatlantic relationship clearly needed a new beginning after four difficult years of the Trump administration. In addition, transnational challenges such as climate change are increasingly coming to the fore and require consistent and coordinated responses. One of Joe Biden’s central messages during the election campaign was the call for unity in the fight for the soul of America. Even if he was primarily trying to contain the clear centrifugal forces of a progressively deep-

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ening polarization within his own country with this messages, it becomes clear from the opening quote that it also entails a reorientation in foreign policy. The United States are typically seen as a model of a liberal democracy that is particularly attractive to the global community with its values and constitution. In foreign policy, this has led to varying degrees of consequences for the United States to assume a clear leadership role on the international stage. As political scientist Joseph Nye points out: “Americans often describe their place in the world as ‘exceptional.’” (Nye, 2019, p. 63). At the beginning of the 20th century, it was first Woodrow Wilson who, based on his vision for international politics, derived a liberal internationalism that was supposed to move the United States from a rather cautious international position that was skeptical of overseers engagement and motivate the US to take a resolute stand for democracy worldwide. Wilson also saw the need to build multilateral institutions to ensure the continued existence and expansion of democracy through collective security. At home, Wilson met strong resistance from an American population that was only slowly warming up to this new level of international engagement (Nye, 2019, pp. 65–66). It was not until the Second World War that the United States then rose as a world power. The question of how involved the United States should be internationally created tension between cautious realists, who were more guided by considerations of power preservation of their own nation and more willing liberals, who envisioned greater responsibility for promoting liberal democracy. As a result, periods of high involvement and more reserved American foreign policy are clearly visible in history (Sestanovich, 2014; Nye, 2019). However, since the end of the Second World War, there has been a constant, a traditional consensus: Both sides of the political spectrum held on to the special importance of transatlantic relations for American foreign policy, even if this web of alliances was never free of disagreements. In the aftermath of the Second World War, numerous multilateral institutions such as the NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) were created, which were meant to strengthen interdependence and build mutual trust (Ikenberry, 2006). A fundamental discrepancy between Joe Biden and Donald Trump is that Biden emphasizes the traditional consensus on this special position of the transatlantic partnership in American foreign policy, while Trump rather paints the relations with Europe in the colors of opposition and competition. Trump’s transactional understanding of international politics pushed traditional and more complex links into the background and thus often put them to the test, which, unlike before, shook transatlantic foundations. The “America First” doctrine was also applied to European partners. Observers therefore also speak of a devastating legacy of Trump’s foreign policy (Clüver Ashbrook, 2020). His foreign policy legacy with regard to transatlantic relations not only includes broken-down trust,

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but also differences in a number of policy areas in which European partners could not count on a reliable ally beyond the Atlantic. A central characteristic of Trump’s approach to international relations was the uncompromising way in which he tried to achieve unilateral advantages for the USA from power asymmetries in multi- and bilateral confrontations. This is based on a concept of power that assumes that international relations are characterized exclusively by opposition and superiority, and not by cooperation. In this approach, the reciprocal values of institutionalized alliance structures that strengthen multilateralism in the complex environment of international relations and thus create mutual trust are lost. “[…] Trump is an idiosyncratic realist who focuses on a narrow definition of American national interest and downplays democracy as a source of American soft power.” (Nye, 2019, p. 68). As a result, the United States increasingly turned away from its international leadership role in multilateral institutions during Trump’s tenure. The Biden-Harris administration will, on the other hand, rely on multilateral strategies and seek to regain an international leadership role. “In a world of growing complexity, the most connected states are the most powerful. […] In the past, the openness of the United States enhanced its capacity to build networks, maintain institutions, and sustain alliances.” (Nye, 2020, p. 210). The Biden administration aims to follow this understanding of international relations and bring about a clear change of direction in comparison to Trump, which will certainly be recognizable to European partners at different speeds and with varying degrees of clarity, but which clearly follows more liberal patterns of thought. “We are facing adversaries, both externally and internally, hoping to exploit the fissures in our society, undermine our democracy, break up our alliances, and bring about the return of an international system where might determines right. The answer to this threat is more openness, not less: more friendships, more cooperation, more alliances, more democracy.” (Biden, 2020). Biden’s foreign policy compass is clearly shaped by his time as vice president under Obama and on his map of international relations, alliance structures are signposts as well as part of American power and not obstacles to American ambitions. President Biden’s foreign policy orientation can be understood against the background of Joseph Nye’s (2004) established distinction between hard and soft power, which Nye developed to characterize different concepts of power in international relations. Soft power is essentially cooperative power that is based on diplomacy and persuasion, not coercion, as hard power tools do. This is essentially a function of the attractiveness of a state, which is conveyed through communication and cooperation. Biden also relies on concepts that highlight the importance of network structures that increase, rather than restrict, America’s

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scope of action in foreign policy, as Anne-Marie Slaughter (2017) has set out in her image of the web as opposed to the chessboard of the realists. Cooperation and the use of soft power are therefore much more effective means in international politics than threats, coercion and rhetoric of superiority. Programmatic statements during Biden’s election campaign, his inauguration speech and the view of his long political career suggest that the United States will return to transatlantic relations under Biden in order to cooperate with partners and allies to address global issues. The fact that the United States’ democratic institutions withstood the fouryear stress test that culminated in the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021, has a particularly significant implication for transatlantic relations: democracy is not a given. Joe Biden’s victory and the resulting change in power is both hope and warning. They mark a versatile hope because a change of direction towards strengthening traditional alliances is becoming apparent, which can rebuild mutual trust. But they are also a warning of the abysses that open up at deeper social divisions. “First and foremost, we must repair and reinvigorate our own democracy, even as we strengthen the coalition of democracies that stand with us around the world.” (Biden, 2020). While it is assumed here that the democratic renewal of American society is a long-term and conflict-ridden process, there are certainly policy areas in which the transatlantic relationship can undergo a noticeable change very quickly with the change in power. First of all, it should be noted that the upgrading of transatlantic relations is already apparent in personnel and institutional decisions. With the Foreign Minister Anthony Blinken, an experienced diplomat in European politics is in a key position, who has already made a name for himself as an active proponent of transatlantic friendship in previous years. Also, the announcement to better equip the Foreign Ministry, which was severely restricted in personnel under Trump, gives hope for a continuous and competent European policy. Among the policy areas that the Biden administration wants to improve specifically, climate policy is to be mentioned first, which is to regain renewed importance both domestically and internationally. This is indicated, among other things, by the appointment of the politically experienced John Kerry as the President’s Special Envoy for Climate, who is to coordinate international action and highlight climate policy in its relevance as a security problem for society and world politics. During Joe Biden’s election campaign, climate policy was an important issue and he announced that the United States would return to the Paris Climate Agreement. He implemented this plan shortly after taking office as the 46th President of the United States in the form of an executive order (Biden, 2021). This ground-

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breaking decision not only symbolically represents a return of the United States to the value of multilateral problem-solving approaches, but also shows that climate protection is recognized as a global task of the highest urgency. Under the Biden administration, a clear proximity to the European Union’s climate goals can be seen in this area. Both sides have the goal of intensifying international cooperation and making their own economy climate-neutral by 2050. On the European Union side, the Climate Protection Act adopted by the European Parliament in 2020 and the Green Deal stand out as the central pillars of this project. For the United States, Biden has announced a series of concrete measures to reduce emissions, save energy in public buildings, and protect the environment. His return to the Paris Climate Agreement is accompanied by targeted measures to restore important environmental regulations that were drastically reduced under Trump. Biden immediately ordered a stop to the Keystone XL pipeline, which has been characterized by high-pitched controversies for years and is designed to transport additional oil from Canada into the United States, and he imposed a ban on oil drilling in the Arctic Ocean (Hanlon, 2021). The production of fossil fuels on federal land and in waters is to be drastically restricted and strictly regulated, as it accounts for almost a quarter of all American CO2 emissions (Merrill et al., 2018). During Trump’s term of office, a number of measures to protect the climate were also taken at state and local level in line with the Paris Agreement. A particularly striking example of this is the so-called “Under2 Coalition”, which consists of individual states such as California or the German state of Baden-Württemberg, countries, regions and municipalities from six continents and has been working since 2015 on a Memorandum of Understanding for a number of long-term and ambitious climate goals (Ministry for the Environment, Climate and Energy Economy Baden-Württemberg, 2020). In addition, the Alliance “C40 Cities” shows that subnational engagement for climate protection is far-reaching. This alliance of around 100 large cities that are committed to climate protection measures includes cities such as Barcelona, Copenhagen, Athens, Berlin, London in Europe and Boston, Chicago, Miami as well as New York in the USA (C40 Cities, 2021). The congruence in the sense of urgency regarding climate change between the new US administration, the European Commission and the active subnational level shows that in the most important issue of the future, an urgently needed agreement is possible, which creates a favorable moment in history to achieve farreaching and sustainable progress in the sense of a coordinated strategy. The return of the United States to the Paris Climate Agreement also stands symbolically for a general upgrading of multilateral institutions under President Biden, which can provide new impetus for numerous policy areas that are of central importance for European foreign relations. The G7 summits or the United

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States’ support for the World Health Organization (WHO) would be exemplary here (European Parliament, 2020). In addition, Biden not only emphasized during the election campaign, but also during his first days in office, that negotiations on the maintenance of the Iran Nuclear Agreement as well as on the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) with Russia are part of his foreign policy agenda. This indicates an upgrade of European security interests in the American foreign policy strategy, which will also be transferred to the heart of the transatlantic security architecture. This dynamic was accelerated by Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. The NATO lives from the mutual guarantee of assistance laid down in Article 5 of the NATO Treaty. During his presidency, Trump repeatedly called this central pillar into question, undermining confidence in the reliability of the United States in this sensitive policy area. In particular, American security guarantees for the EU are of paramount importance in the field of nuclear deterrence, but also in the field of conventional defence capacities, the EU will remain at least medium-term dependent on the United States. A prerequisite for a closer partnership is, however, also for Biden that the European partners meet the United States halfway in particular with regard to the distribution of burdens in security and defence policy. In China policy, it is expected that with the change of power to Joe Biden, the United States will act more diplomatically in its confrontation with China. However, Biden, like Trump, believes that China is the biggest rival on the international stage. This is primarily due to trade policy disputes, but also China’s increasingly assertive posture towards Hong Kong, Taiwan and in the South China Sea is causing strong security policy concerns, which are further aggravated by Chinese violations of human rights against the Muslim minority of the Uighurs. China is seen as a systemic rival. Even under Obama, the United States called for a “pivot to Asia” (a realignment towards Asia), which had cooperative elements, but still saw China’s rise as a threat to the United States’ global supremacy. Biden has repeatedly made it clear that his foreign policy approach towards China will be marked by a certain degree of toughness: “The United States does need to get tough with China. If China has its way, it will keep robbing the United States of their technology and intellectual property.” (Biden, 2020). Biden then calls on traditional allies to join the United States and develop a joint approach to the country. After the EU-China summit 2020, however, there seem to be some ambivalences towards China on the part of the European Union. “[…] China is seen as being at once a partner for cooperation and negotiation, an economic competitor and systemic rival.” (Scientific Service of the European Parliament, 2020). While the United States therefore choose a clear confrontational focus on China, the clarity of purpose on the European side seems to be less pronounced.

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For transatlantic relations, this raises the question of whether the interests of the challenged superpower USA correspond to those of the EU, which looks at China more from a trade policy perspective than a geopolitical one. The fact that both sides need each other as force multipliers in the multidimensional confrontation with China is an important finding for the EU, which could trigger a re-evaluation of China during Biden’s tenure. The transatlantic implications of Biden’s victory are manifold and a new beginning is possible in many ways, provided both sides of the Atlantic are aware of their shared responsibility for revitalizing their relations and actively work on it. However, at the end of the day, it is also important to take into account the domestic policy scope of action of the Biden administration in order to moderate European expectations, especially in the early days. The broader conditions for Biden to implement his foreign policy agenda are therefore not bad because the Democrats control both the House of Representatives and the Senate in his first two years in office. This is particularly crucial for the financial support of Biden’s foreign policy because Congress approves the budget annually. For America’s foreign relations, for example, the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) is in the foreground, which sets the security and defense budget for the following fiscal year. That this law often leads to strong tensions was most recently shown by Trump’s veto of the NDAA, which was eventually overruled by a rare two-thirds majority in both chambers of Congress (United States Senate, 2021). So the law was passed despite Trump’s resistance. However, the Democratic majority in the Senate is currently very slim, as both parties have 50 of the 100 seats, so that possible deadlocks could be decided with the vote of the Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris. So the Democrats have an advantage, but in the Senate the minority has powerful means of obstruction at its disposal to slow down or even stop legislative processes—such as the filibuster, which is explained elsewhere in this book. In the House of Representatives, the Democrats held a narrow majority of 221 out of a total of 435 seats, so that even a few members who do not remain loyal to the party line could damage the Democrats in close votes. A central theme of this book is the political polarization in the United States, which restricts Biden’s foreign policy scope of action for two reasons. First, Biden will be keen not to further exacerbate social divisions, meaning he will have to navigate his foreign policy course within conflicting priorities between Republicans and Democrats. Second, the political polarization reduces the willingness to compromise in the legislative bodies and at least a significant part of the Republican Party is likely to see some confirmation of its policy in the more than 74 million votes Trump received on November 3, 2020. Nevertheless, one finding of the 2020 elections is that Trump’s message of “America

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First” continues to resonate, indicating that public support for costly international engagements is waning. This is also illustrated by the accelerated withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan in 2021. In addition, it is assumed that the Coronavirus pandemic has deepened socio-economic and social divisions in the United States, which necessarily directs Biden’s focus inward at first. In the end, the scope for action will also be limited by a highly indebted state budget, which will come under further pressure as a result of the rescue packages. The domestic dimension therefore acts as a constraint in many ways and, from a transatlantic perspective, it will be important to keep the urgency of national challenges in the United States in mind despite high expectations of a change of direction.

10.3 Summary A number of central findings emerge from this chapter, which are of decisive importance for the classification of the election results and for the realignment of the transatlantic relationship. In summary, we find that the election results followed typical patterns even in the year of the Coronavirus pandemic and that special features, such as delays in the evaluation, can be explained with a view on the shifts in preference for voting methods. In an extraordinary election year, the United States was therefore able to conduct an election with particularly high voter turnout to master and to determine a winner who, as provided for by constitutional law, took office as President on January 20, 2021. On the way to the change of power, Trump’s attempts to reverse the election results in his favor failed because the democratic institutions proved to be resistant. That Donald Trump ignored the strong symbolism of a peaceful change of power and broke with the long tradition of taking part in the inauguration of his successor underlines his previously stated contempt for democratic principles. With Joe Biden, both domestically and with regard to US foreign policy, a clear change of direction is taking place, which often evokes memories of a time before Trump. However, international relations have not stood still and Biden is facing a multipolar world in foreign policy that has experienced fundamental shifts with the rise of China, while transnational challenges remained unanswered under Trump, especially with regard to climate change. Even if Joe Biden is repeatedly, also in this book, associated with Barack Obama, it is clear that the new government is taking its own path domestically and internationally. The second subchapter therefore offered a look at the foreign policy compass of President Biden and was able to work out numerous transatlantic implications of the change of power in the USA.

References

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That in this context also limitations of the scope of action result from the numerous domestic challenges is a logical consequence of greater societal trends in the United States, among which political polarization certainly plays a special role. A fresh start is urgently needed and the determination of the European partners will also be decisive for its success.

References American Presidency Project. (2021). Statistics on election years. https://www.presidency. ucsb.edu/statistics/elections/2012. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Balsamo, M. (2020). Disputing Trump, Barr says no widespread election fraud. Associated Press. https://apnews.com/article/barr-no-widespread-election-fraudb1f1488796c9a98c4b1a9061a6c7f49d. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Biden, J. (2020). Why America must lead again – Rescuing U.S. Foreign Policy after Trump. Foreign Affairs. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/unitedstates/2020-01-23/why-america-must-lead-again. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Biden, J. (2021). Statements and releases: Paris climate agreement. The White House. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/01/20/paris-climate-agreement/. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. C40 Cities. (2021). The power of C40 cities. https://www.c40.org/cities. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Clüver Ashbrook, C. (2020). Verheerendes Vermächtnis. https://internationalepolitik.de/de/ verheerendes-vermaechtnis. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. DeSilver, D. (2020). It’s not just 2020: U.S. presidential elections have long featured close state races. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/12/04/ its-not-just-2020-u-s-presidential-elections-have-long-featured-close-state-races/. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Europäisches Parlament. (2020). US foreign policy after the 2020 Presidential election: Issues for the European Union. https://www.europarl.europa.eu/thinktank/en/document. html?reference=EPRS_BRI(2020)659382. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Georgia Secretary of State. (2016). Georgia election results – General election 2016. https://results.enr.clarityelections.com/GA/63991/184321/en/vts.html?cid=5000. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Georgia Secretary of State. (2020). Georgia elections results – General election 2020. https://results.enr.clarityelections.com/GA/105369/web.264614/#/detail/5000. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Hanlon, T. (2021). Biden immediatly slams the breaks on oil drilling in Arctiv refuge. Alaska Public. https://www.alaskapublic.org/2021/01/20/biden-to-immediately-slamthe-brakes-on-oil-leasing-in-arctic-refuge/. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Holder, J., Gabriel, T., & Grullón Paz, I. (2020). Biden’s 306 electoral college votes make his victory official. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/12/14/ us/elections/electoral-college-results.html?action=click&pgtype=Article&state=defau lt&module=styln-elections-2020®ion=TOP_BANNER&context=election_recirc. Accessed 28 Jan 2021.

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Ikenberry, J. G. (2006). Liberal order and imperial ambition. Polity. Liptak, A. (2020). Supreme Court rejects Texas suit seeking to subvert election. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/11/us/politics/supreme-court-election-texas. html. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. McDonald, M. P. (2020). 2020 November general election turnout rates. United States Elections Project. https://www.electproject.org/2020g. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Merrill, M. D., Sleeter, B. M., Freeman, P. A., Liu, J., Warwick, P. D., & Reed, B. C. (2018). Federal lands greenhouse gas emissions and sequestration in the United States: Estimates for 2005–14. https://pubs.usgs.gov/sir/2018/5131/sir20185131.pdf. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Ministerium für Umwelt, Klima und Energiewirtschaft Baden-Württemberg. (2020). Under2 coalition. https://um.baden-wuerttemberg.de/de/klima/internationaler-klimaschutz/under2-coalition/. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Nye, J. S. (2004). Soft power. The means to success in world politics. Public Affairs. Nye, J. S. (2019). The rise and fall of American hegemony from Wilson to Trump. International Affairs, 95(1), 63–80. Nye, J. S. (2020). Do morals matter? Presidents and foreign policy from FDR to Trump. Oxford University Press. Pew Research Center. (2020). Voter engagement and interest, voting by mail and in person. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2020/10/09/voter-engagement-and-interestvoting-by-mail-and-in-person/. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Sestanovich, S. (2014). Maximalist: America in the world from Truman to Obama. Alfred A. Knopf. Shear, M. D., & Huetteman, E. (2017). Trump repeats lie about popular vote in meeting with lawmakers. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/23/us/politics/donald-trump-congress-democrats.html. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Slaughter, A.-M. (2017). The chessboard and the web. Strategies of connection in a networked world. Yale University Press. United States Senate. (2021). Vetoes by President Donald J. Trump. https://www.senate. gov/legislative/vetoes/TrumpDJ.htm. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. U.S. National Archives. (2020). 2020 Electoral college results. https://www.archives.gov/ electoral-college/2020. Accessed 28 Jan 2021. Wiedekind, J. (2020). Der außenpolitische Kurs der Trump Administration und europäische Antworten darauf – Turbulenzen zwischen miteinander fremdelnden Freunden. In S. Arnautović (Eds.), Die europäisch-amerikanischen Beziehungen unter US-Präsident Trump – Eine Bilanz mit Politikempfehlung (p. 105–139). Tectum. Wissenschaftlicher Dienst des Europäischen Parlaments. (2020). EU-China relations: Taking stock after the 2020 EU-China summit. European Parliamentary Research Service Blog. https://epthinktank.eu/2020/07/01/eu-china-relations-taking-stock-afterthe-2020-eu-china-summit/. Accessed 28 Jan 2021.

Final Considerations

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“It has become a dubious thing with the self-evident nature of democracy all over the world. The time has come […] for a self-reflection of democracy, for its remembrance, re-examination and awareness—in other words: for its renewal in thought and feeling.” Thomas Mann “On the future victory of democracy”, 1938 (translated by the authors)

Donald Trump’s presidency is certainly one of the most controversial in American history. Historically, the evaluations of presidents have been very different. Some presidents of the United States were revered, like George Washington, others highly respected, including Abraham Lincoln or Franklin D. Roosevelt. Many were criticized in their time, like Jimmy Carter, who was denied a second term, or Bill Clinton, against whom an impeachment was initiated. Some also left their successors a controversial legacy, like George W. Bush, who involved the United States in long-term wars in the Middle East and Central Asia. The legacy of Donald Trump will have to be evaluated along different dimensions. But it is already clear that his presidency ranks among the most unusual in US history. Rejected and criticized by many voters of the Democratic Party, the person of Donald Trump became a cult figure for many Republican voters. With his carefully staged public appearances, countless messages sent directly via Twitter to his followers, his often simple, inciting rhetoric, but also due to his powerful office, he overshadowed all other political actors. He perfected his populist performance using social media, the stage of the White House and his relationships with often equally controversial advisers, which he could quickly replace if necessary. Even his family played a central role in his unusual style of governing. Nevertheless, the democratic process withstood the pressure of delegitimizing the elections. State election authorities, politicians and courts resisted attempts to change the election results. A second impeachment showed that Trump’s power is © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2022 C. Lemke and J. Wiedekind, The Battle for the White House, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-38934-5_11

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not ultimate. With the end of his presidency, he is now deprived of the platform for his populist messages and politics. Nevertheless, it will be decisive how the Republicans position themselves in the future, whether they hail Trumpism and what campaign strategies they pursue in the upcoming elections. In this sense, the midterm elections in November 2022 are decisive. The next few years will not be easy for the Democrats either, as the severe economic and health crisis requires not only resolute measures, but also political skill and coherent strategies. This study has shown that the roots of the deep polarization that characterized the Trump presidency were already visible before and conditioned an increasingly irreconcilable political discourse. The foundations were laid in the decades of rising prosperity but also increasing inequalities in the post-war period. Economic boom and social change in the 1960s and 1970s led to the emergence of new social movements with social attitudes that aimed to change the conservative foundation of American society. While some welcomed the liberalization with the increasing diversity and openness of society, conservative Republicans saw this development as a threat to the traditional American “way of life”. In the 1990s, a younger, more radical generation of Republicans was able to advance to key positions. They relied not on balance and compromise, but on a conservative ideology that prioritized the outstanding role of personal freedom while rejecting social responsibility. Last but not least, the Tea Party movement was able to gain significant influence in the Republican Party with a combination of Christian fundamentalist, libertarian and anti-government positions. As the Republican Party moved further to the right, the Democrats positioned themselves as a progressive alternative that not only denounced the increasing gap between a rapidly growing upper class and an economically increasingly disadvantaged middle class, but also opened up more room for minority groups to speak and articulate their agenda. Trump assumed the office of president at a time when American society was additionally challenged by the contradictory forces of globalization. The opening of society and the continued immigration, socio-economic transformation processes and cultural diversity were largely welcomed and promoted in urban centers, but the advancements of the increasingly interconnected world did not benefit everyone in American society equally. The traditional milieus around the industrial centers changed through the emigration of jobs, while in the high-tech centers completely new income and employment opportunities emerged. In rural areas, it was no longer the smaller farms with their independent way of life that determined the image, but increasingly large agrarian industries, which in turn revolutionized the social fabric and employment relations in rural areas. The socio-economic developments in the course of social change towards the knowledge society found their expression in voting preferences and the contrast between the “Heartland” of the Midwest and

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the coastal regions became increasingly distinct. This study shows that differences between urban and rural regions within a state are becoming increasingly apparent. The ethnic differences also play an important role, because the electorate had changed partly through immigration and partly through the mobilization of minority groups. The election year 2020 reveals the political consequences of these developments. Above all, in the south, living conditions and attitudes have changed significantly, as the evaluation of the election results shows impressively in Georgia. The same is true for the close results in Texas. On the one hand, Trump and the Republicans positioned themselves as defenders of the white majority population with their traditional way of life, even if that meant to cater to openly racist activities and attitudes. On the other hand, the country experienced a multifaceted and ultimately decisive mobilization of new groups. Minorities who were either not active before or, like the African-American minority, were excluded by rather subtle mechanisms such as voter suppression in the election process. Which forces will shape and influence the political landscape of the USA in the future is therefore a challenging question for further research. The Trump presidency leaves Biden with a difficult legacy. Trump deliberately and strategically broke with established norms, circumventing democratic procedures and continuously provoked and attacked the “opponent”. All of this has shaken the democratically constituted society. Not only has communication between representatives of different political backgrounds and orientations become more difficult, but also the population’s trust in democratic institutions has been further undermined. Hence, the Biden-Harris administration inherited a difficult legacy. An important task during their term of office will be to bridge the deep divisions between the parties, but also within society in order to strengthen American democracy, which seems to have weathered a storm that might be indicative of future turmoil. The image that unfolded during the election year about the existing power relationships is multi-layered and ambivalent in its result. Our findings suggest that overcoming polarization and blocking division requires more than just appeals to peaceful coexistence. Rather, the political will must be present to use the potential of American civil society productively for the benefit of society as a whole and to strengthen the qualities of an open society. With her poem for the inauguration on January 20, 2021 in Washington D.C., the young poet Amanda Gorman expressed this hope for renewal with a view to the future with commitment and eloquence: “We are striving to forge a union with purpose, to compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters and conditions of man.” (Gorman, 2021).

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References Gorman, A. (2021). The hill we climb. An inaugural poem for the country. Viking Books for Young Readers. Cited here in “Gedicht zur Inauguration”, 21.01.2021. https://www. rnd.de/kultur/amanda-gorman-gedicht-auf-deutsch-lesen-sie-hier-die-ubersetzungund-das-original-the-hill-we-climb-QOXSZUHXRREFJNXHXKM2S4VEUY.html. Accessed 25 Jan 2021. Mann, T. (1938). „Vom zukünftigen Sieg der Demokratie“. Hier zitiert nach: https://www. literaturhaus-muenchen.de/ausstellung/thomas-mann-2. Accessed 25 Jan 2021.

Index

A Abrams, Stacey, 44, 156, 175 Absentee ballot, 7, 28, 32–34, 36, 41, 171, 172 Absentee voting, 13, 28, 29, 32, 34, 36, 37, 162, 171, 172 Affordable Care Act, 23, 102 Africa, 134 African Americans, 44, 118, 121, 123, 144, 145 African-Americans, 21, 114, 119, 120, 122, 137, 143 Alabama, 15, 52, 53, 63 Alaska, 12, 27 America First, 2, 55, 101, 104, 131, 132, 153, 158, 171, 178, 183 American carnage, 158 Apple, 100 Arizona, 27, 31, 52, 138, 139, 169, 172, 173 Arkansas, 15, 52, 56 Asia, 133, 134, 142, 182 Asian-Americans, 140, 142 Asien, 140 Asylum, 130, 132, 133, 137, 146 Atlanta, 32, 57, 60, 143, 145 Australia, 37

B Barr, William, 170 Bass, Karen, 156 Belgium, 37 Biden-Harris administration, 88, 108, 126, 140, 166, 179, 189 Black Lives Matter, 21, 120 Blinken, Anthony, 180 Build a wall to Mexico, 105 Bush, George H. W., 41, 63, 64, 84, 97, 134, 140, 142, 187 Buttigieg, Pete, 7, 11, 15, 113

C C40 Cities, 181 California, 15, 16, 18, 34, 36, 56, 105, 138, 156, 171, 173, 181 Campaign strategy, 6, 151, 157 Canada, 97, 101, 104, 105, 133, 181 Capitol, 1, 3, 24, 66, 151, 160, 163, 165, 166, 169, 170, 180 Carter, Jimmy, 52, 57, 159, 187 Caucus, 10–12, 27 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 27, 155 China, 5, 95, 101, 104–107, 133, 142, 143, 182, 184 Civil Rights Act, 54, 85

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2022 C. Lemke and J. Wiedekind, The Battle for the White House, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-38934-5

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192 Civil rights movement, 18, 51, 52, 55, 63, 122, 144 Climate change, 103, 166, 171, 177, 184 Climate policy, 180 Clinton, Bill, 57, 62, 97, 105, 159, 176, 187 Clinton, Hillary, 10, 41, 53, 142, 158, 162, 170, 172 Clyburn, James, 14 CNN, 65 Coates, Ta-Nehisi, 122 Colorado, 15, 32, 34, 36 Coney Barrett, Amy, 85, 124 Connecticut, 33, 34, 51 Conspiracy theories, 161 Court packing, 126 COVID-19, 92, 106, 107, 113, 118, 119, 122, 126, 139, 159, 166 Cuba, 139, 140

D De Bois, W. E., 144 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, 125, 130, 134 Demings, Val, 156 Democratic Party Platform, 19 Deportation, 135, 140 Deregulation, 54, 95, 96, 102, 103, 108, 113 Divided government, 77 Duckworth, Tammy, 156 Duties, 105

E Echo chambers, 59, 66, 67, 72, 119, 152, 153 Economic and financial crisis, 97, 99, 100, 158 Election campaign strategy, 155, 160, 161 Election fraud, 1, 32, 33, 39, 65, 152, 169, 170, 173 Electoral College, 9, 18, 46, 51, 53, 54, 56, 57, 79, 143, 152, 158, 162, 163, 169, 172, 173, 175–177 Electors, 18, 162

Index Eligible voters, 42 Environmental and consumer protection, 103 Environmental policy, 104, 177 Environmental Protection Agency, 50 Executive order, 28, 131

F Facebook, 59, 66 Fauci, Anthony, 156 Filibuster, 85–87, 183 Florida, 7, 9, 16, 21, 27, 32, 36, 138, 139 Floyd, George, 21, 122 Foreign trade, 97, 101, 104, 105 Fox News, 59, 65, 153 Franklin, John Hope, 122 Freedom Caucus, 113, 118 Free trade agreements, 92, 105

G Gates, Henry Louis Jr., 122 Georgia, 10, 31, 32, 36, 42–44, 52, 53, 57, 133, 143, 162, 169, 170, 172–174, 189 Gingrich, Newt, 55, 59, 60, 62, 64, 65 Ginsburg, Ruth Bader, 85, 145, 163 Goldwater, Barry, 51, 52 Google, 100 Gorman, Amanda, 189 Gorsuch, Neil, 124 Great Depression, 99

H Hacker, Jacob, 58, 95 Hall, Peter A., 99 Harris, Kamala, 23, 108, 123, 129, 130, 133, 140, 143, 156, 157, 159, 163, 169, 183 Hawaii, 12 Health care, 114 Health care system, 114–116, 120 Health policy, 23, 50, 88, 115, 125, 157 Heartland, 107, 189

Index Hispanics, 18, 114, 119, 137–140, 142 Hong Kong, 108, 182 House of Representatives, 56, 57, 59, 60, 62, 64, 68, 75, 77, 79, 80, 82–84, 86, 110, 126, 163, 183

I Illinois, 27, 80, 118 Immigration policy, 6, 50, 63, 64, 129, 131, 132, 140, 146 Impeachment proceedings, 1, 19, 62, 67, 97, 157, 170, 187 Impeachment process, 4 Inauguration, 166, 189 Independents, 142 India, 95, 133, 142 Inequality, social, 93, 94, 101 Iran Nuclear Agreement, 182 Iversen, Torben, 96

J Johnson, Lyndon B., 51, 52, 55, 143

K Kalifornien, 56 Kansas, 12 Kavanaugh, Brett, 124 Kennedy, John F., 51, 55 Kerry, John, 41, 64, 109, 142, 180 Kim, Jong-un, 154 King, Martin Luther, 144, 145 Klimawandel, 108 Klobuchar, Amy, 7, 11, 15, 113 Kushner, Jared, 155

L Levitsky, Steven, 4, 165 LGBTQ, 19 Lincoln, Abraham, 80, 143, 187 Lockdown, 155 Los Angeles, 56

193 Louisiana, 29, 34, 36, 52–54, 119 Lowa, 7, 11–13, 15, 34, 107

M Mail, 29, 33 Mail-in vote, 27, 125 Mail-in voting, 27, 42, 45, 172 Maine, 15, 51 Mayorkas, Alejandro, 140 McConnell, Mitch, 79, 85, 124, 162 Medicaid, 51, 116, 119 Medicare, 51, 116 Mexico, 37, 97, 105, 130–134, 140, 147, 158 Michigan, 7, 74, 118, 143, 160, 162, 169, 170, 172 Midterm elections, 61, 103, 132, 143, 147, 156, 164, 188 Milwaukee, 44 Minnesota, 15, 31, 173 Mississippi, 34, 52, 54, 56, 121 Missouri, 52 Mudde, Cas, 153

N National convention, 8 National Defense Authorization Act, 183 NATO, 178, 182 Negative partisanship, 63 Nevada, 12, 15, 32, 34, 36, 139 NeverTrump conservatives, 164 New Deal Coalition, 18, 51, 52 New Hampshire, 7, 11–13, 15, 51 New Jersey, 36 New Mexico, 138 New York, 27, 33, 34, 56, 115, 143, 154, 181 Nixon, Richard, 50, 52, 55, 176 Nomination convention, 7–10, 19, 152, 157, 160 North Carolina, 15, 32, 36, 42, 43, 52, 57, 61, 159, 174 North Dakota, 12

194 O Obama, Barack, 7, 14, 23, 41, 43, 57, 84, 99–102, 105, 109, 115, 118, 119, 124, 130, 134, 140, 142, 158, 159, 169, 179, 182, 184 Obama, Michelle, 159 Obamacare, 23, 116, 117, 120 Ohio, 10, 27, 107 Oklahoma, 15, 56, 103, 155, 173 Ossoff, Jon, 145, 175

P Paris Climate Agreement, 108, 166, 171, 181 Party affiliation, 73–75, 77 Party-Unity-Votes, 82, 83 Pelosi, Nancy, 86 Penalty tariffs, 104 Pence, Mike, 159 Pennsylvania, 27, 125, 143, 161, 162, 169–173 Performance, populist, 153 Phillips, Kevin, 52, 53, 56 Pierson, Paul, 58, 95 Polarization, 4, 22, 46, 49, 50, 55, 57–59, 63, 66, 67, 71, 72, 75, 79, 80, 82–85, 87, 124, 125, 131, 146, 151, 152, 164, 165, 174, 176, 177, 183, 185, 188, 189 Police and judicial reform, 114 Police and justice reform, 120, 126 Polling places, 43 Polling stations, 10–12, 22, 32, 44 Popular Vote, 158, 175–177 Populism, 153 Postal voting, 22, 24, 31, 32, 161 Primaries, 7, 8, 10–13, 20, 21, 27, 120, 143 Primary campaign, 15, 16, 100 Pruitt, Scott, 103

Q QAnon, 154

Index R Racial segregation, 51 Racism, 6, 21, 23, 51, 53, 120, 122, 123, 126, 144, 158, 166 Raffensperger, Brad, 162 Reagan, Ronald, 54, 61, 96, 97, 113, 176 Reaganomics, 54, 96 Realignment, 51, 73 Recession, 5, 92, 108, 119 Rechte, religiöse, 54 Republican National Convention, 11 Rice, Susan, 156 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 17, 50, 51, 99, 109, 187 Ryan, Paul, 102

S Sanders, Bernie, 7, 10–13, 15–17, 21, 113, 120 Schneiker, Andrea, 153 Segregation, 53, 54 Senate, 4, 18, 43, 56, 59, 62–64, 77, 80, 82–86, 110, 124, 126, 145, 162, 163, 175, 183 Senate elections, 6, 44 Sessions, Jeff, 63, 65 Silicon Valley, 100 Social distancing, 115 Socialism, 61, 115, 139 Social media, 59, 66, 157 Solow, Robert M., 99 Soskice, David, 96 South Carolina, 7, 13–16, 21, 34, 52, 119, 156 Southern Strategy, 18, 50, 53–59, 61, 63, 66, 67, 71, 73, 75, 174 Strafzölle, 108 Super delegates, 9–11, 16 Supermajority, 86 Super Tuesday, 7, 15, 16, 21 Supreme Court, 3, 39, 85, 114, 124, 126, 131, 144, 163, 164, 170 Swing States, 36, 159, 160, 173, 175

Index T Tai, Katherine, 143 Taiwan, 108, 182 Tariffs, 106 Tax reform, 96, 102, 103, 117 Tea Party movement, 117, 188 Tennessee, 15, 34 Texas, 15, 34, 138, 139, 162, 163, 170, 173, 189 The Tea Party movement, 132 Ticket Splitting, 77, 78 Trade, 101, 102, 106 Trump administration, 125 Trumpism, 91, 164, 165, 188 TV debate, 58 Tweets, 66, 155, 166 Twitter, 1, 3, 59, 153, 165, 187

U Umweltpolitik, 108 Under2 Coalition, 181 Undocumented, 134 Unemployment rate, 93, 116 Unified government, 77, 86 Utah, 15, 31, 34

V Virginia, 15 Voter fraud, 171 Voters, 11–13, 17–19, 21–23, 28, 29, 33, 34, 36–38, 40, 41, 43, 44, 46, 49, 50, 52–55, 57–59, 65–67, 72–77, 79, 80, 91, 101, 108, 114, 123, 124, 126,

195 132, 138, 139, 145, 160, 162, 169, 172, 175, 177, 187 Voter suppression, 145, 189 Voter turnout, 39–41, 43, 45, 46, 54, 57, 133, 145, 164, 169, 172, 173, 176, 184 Voting by mail, 171 Voting Rights Act, 39, 54, 144

W Wallace, George, 53, 54, 176 Wall to Mexico, 3, 131, 132, 166 Warnock, Raphael, 145, 175 Warren, Elizabeth, 8, 11, 12, 15, 17, 100, 113, 156 Washington, George, 71, 187 Watergate scandal, 52 Weber, Max, 153 Winner-takes-all, 71, 177 Wisconsin, 16, 28, 31, 43, 44, 107, 160–162, 169–173 World Health Organization, 166, 182 World Trade Organization, 101 Wyoming, 12, 56

Y Yang, Andrew, 12, 140, 143

Z Ziblatt, Daniel, 4, 165