Élodie Mielczareck is a semiologist and Sébastien Laye is a Franco-American entrepreneur.
How do we vote?
What does psychology tell us about the origins of voting?
We would like to believe that our decisions are made in a rational and logical manner.
The work of recent years, particularly in the United States in neuroscience and political science, shows us that this is not the case.
On the contrary.
And this irrationality is all the more visible when it comes to voting intentions.
Our brains constantly filter reality, especially from a small area of the brain called the amygdala, responsible for regulating emotions.
300 milliseconds is the time it takes for your brain to get a “picture” of the situation.
The more rational and logical areas will take over, after a more costly effort, and always from this first impression.
Daniel Kahneman was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2002 for his work on cognitive biases and the instinctive mechanisms at work in our decision-making.
According to him,
“Nobody would dare say 'I vote for this guy because he has a bigger chin', but in real life, part of it is”
(
Thinking Fast and Slow
, 2011).
Something to leave us wondering ... It is emotion more than reason that governs us when we vote.
This conclusion is validated by the work of French researcher Vincent Pons, at Harvard Business School.
In the last US election, between Clinton and Trump, 72% of voters already had a clear opinion and established voting intention, more than two months before the election.
In other words: less than 3 in 10 people have changed their opinion, despite recurring exposure to debates.
And the study of Vincent Pons goes further.
She confirms that shifts in opinion owe nothing to television sets, nor to the media in general.
We are therefore much less easily influenced than we can hear here or there, and much more emotional than we would like to imagine.
This is mainly for two reasons.
The first is that our brain is on “autopilot” when it makes its final decisions.
The second reason is confirmation bias.
It is one of the most important in our perception of reality.
We are deeply attached to our ideas and our values.
It is thanks, in part, to this phylogenetic heritage that we owe our survival as a species.
Indeed, it is on this basis that our personality, our beliefs and our values can flourish.
It is the foundation of our individuality.
Why did Trump not collapse, contrary to what was 'planned'
Right now, the outcome between Trump and Biden is very close.
An absence of failure very badly anticipated by the media, especially French.
For the second time.
The blue wave, in favor of the Democrats, did not take place, nor did the sanction vote against Trump: one would have thought that the mismanagement of the pandemic and the subsequent economic crisis would provoke a popular revolt against the government in square.
This is not the case, the supporters of Trump consolidating themselves in a position of denial with regard to the epidemic - we will note the crowded meetings of Trump in recent days - and especially firmly placing their hope in their candidate to redress the situation. economy after the Covid.
Moreover, the racial tensions of recent months, the "Black Lives Matter", have not resulted in over-mobilization of minorities against Trump, and the incessant and indecent media hype against Trump has been counterproductive: the electorate easily rebels. against media predictors or so-called experts.
Thus, this election prolongs the great anger of 2016. Biden has almost filled up with Democratic votes (not dividing like Clinton), where Trump (who has never disappointed his supporters) keeps all the Republican strongholds.
The race is thus summed up in hybrid states or "swing states", such as Wisconsin, Arizona or Pennsylvania: where Trump quickly won in 2016 but without bending the matter this time.
Social injustices are not erased, they are revived.
Difficult, in the land of Descartes, to understand that we vote especially with our emotions and feelings.
And the success - or if not the lack of it - of a Trump can be explained in part by the almost systematic humiliation of some of his voters.
In an article in
The Conversation
, political expert Lauric Henneton explains the deleterious effects of certain public policies.
By handling symbolic and semantic issues in a counter-productive way, social injustices are not erased, they are revived!
This is called “backlashing”, or feeling of dispossession.
The decision of the
New York Times
editorial staff
to change its typographical conventions is illustrative: now the adjective “black” is written with a capital letter, but for “white” which remains in lowercase.
More than a linguistic incoherence, this symbolic humiliation splits more than it unites.
Many studies in social neuroscience are interested in the phenomena of empathy and counter-empathy, springs inherent in any social group.
A diverse population is no more tolerant: it still sees itself as a "united block" (in-group) vis-à-vis the "others" (out-group).
Lauric Henneton specifies: "In other words, a part of the Whites discover their whiteness as a group whose existence and status are threatened, develop a conscience and a group solidarity, and resist the specter of decline through the vote. and support for public policies. ”
Hell is definitely paved with good intentions ...
The "Lame Duck" or lame duck effect
So it can be said with certainty that the anti-racial riots in recent months have not helped Biden.
On the contrary, they have comforted the voters of Donald Trump.
Vulgarity becomes the weapon of authentic speaking that reassures.
For want of being healthy and without violence, the Trumpian phrasing is explicit, unambiguous and understandable by all - present tense of the indicative, short sentences, poor vocabulary: a certainty in the middle of a chaotic world in full Covid.
In politics, we vote with our emotions for an ethos built over Tweets, and not according to the number of meetings or handshake.
The elected President will have low legitimacy.
If there is no immediate winner, the first defeat is Democracy in these disunited States of America.
As in 2016, the elected President will have low legitimacy.
Challenged for four years, a reelected Trump would still have a House of Representatives against him (the Democrats won it again yesterday), with an acrimonious Pelosi, and an undemocratic coup attempt with the judicial war on the results that 'he prepares.
A President elected by court order is more than the "Lame Duck" described by American political scientists.
He is a target for all opponents from the outside: thus elected, Bush had to face the terrorist challenge.
A narrowly elected Biden, unable to recover the Senate (which to this day remains Republican), with a Supreme Court against him, aging, would hardly have any more transpartisan legitimacy ... The transition period which begins seems scary, with protests already starting this morning in the United States and Trump talking about sending the National Guard.
The new President could only be announced in several days or weeks, and anyway, in the American political system, he does not take office until January 20, 2021. It is nothing with regard to the year 2021. : how to face its challenges - pandemic, economic crisis, rivalry with China - with such a weak base of legitimacy, and no cross-party support (or even within his party in the case of Trump, many Republicans like the governor of New Jersey having already disassociated itself from its premature announcement of victory)?
How to interpret Trump's premature - and factually mistaken - victory announcement?
He had already announced several weeks ago that he wanted to seize the judicial authority, as if he had anticipated his defeat while foreseeing this door of judicial victory (like Bush in 2000).
What lessons can be learned from it?
First, the dangerousness of the polls "forecast" or "aspirational" which announce, as of today, a confrontation with the Games of Thrones and which make no sense.
Especially since the success of one or the other does not ultimately change much from an economic point of view.
Let us also remember that the global populist push is not giving way and it may very well continue in France in 2022. Finally, the cognitive and emotional mechanisms are always more complex, especially in terms of politics.
Van Bavel, a psychologist explains to us in the Trend in Cognitive Sciences Review:
“Without doubt, the best way to interact with people opposed to one's political ideas is not to try to convince them on the merits.
Rather, it is to try to understand where they come from and to destroy their stereotypes ”
.
It would undoubtedly be time, in France, to take an interest in this "political biology" to get out of the scenarios which have been repeated for more than thirty years already, in hardly different forms.