FROM THE EDITOR: Election Day Dawns on Democracy's Rusting Hinges
It's time to pay attention to the hinge upon which our society rests.
By Martin Davis
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
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Election Day dawns with 1.35 million votes already cast in today’s referendum on redrawing Virginia’s congressional lines. Should it pass — and as of now, the odds look favorable — Virginia will shift from being a model of balanced Congressional districts to rivaling North Carolina, Texas, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida for being some of the most-egregiously distorted Congressional Districts in the country.
The referendum has been contentious, but as more than one Republican has quietly conceded to me, “But Trump” is a pretty compelling argument.
Seems Dems are learning the lessons of 2016, when Hillary Clinton fell under the weight of the “Build that wall” argument.
High-minded and intelligent doesn’t win elections; reducing politics to a singularity does — despite the damage it does to our civic institutions.
As we await the returns this evening, it pays to ponder a deeper question. Why has the simplistic replaced the thoughtful in politics?
The Rise of Whiplash
The American democratic system was designed to withstand swings in public opinion, and with relatively few exceptions it has done so throughout our history.
To understand why, imagine democracy as a door held by hinges. Hinges are designed to manage movement — but there are limits to what those hinges can manage. Indeed, they function best when those movements are predictable.
With some notable exceptions, political swings in American history have tended to be predictable. Over the past 70 years, for example, the congressional midterm elections have tended to go against the party holding the White House.
Steven Farnsworth, a professor or political science at the University of Mary Washington, told the Advance that congressional midterms typically realize “an 18-seat swing in the House and a three- or four-seat swing in the Senate.”
In recent years, however, the swings in voter sentiments have become more pronounced.
The Economist has been tracking Donald Trump’s poll numbers and comparing them to both his first administration and Biden’s administration. All three follow a similar trajectory.
Early approval — modest in Trump’s early days, relatively robust in Biden’s first days — quickly gives way to underwater numbers that stay underwater.
As notable is that voters after soundly rejecting Trump in 2020 to embrace the progressive Joe Biden swung back hard right just four years later to embrace Trump yet again — a known hard-right polarizing figure.
Now, just over a year into his second term, Trump not only is more unpopular than ever, but he is dragging the balance of the Republican Party down with him. Winsome Earle Sears, who ran as the Republican candidate for governor against Democrat Abigail Spanberger, saw her campaign derailed in part by Trump’s unpopularity.
Today, Spanberger finds herself on the other end of the stick. The recent Washington Post/Schar Poll showed the governor’s approval ratings below 50% just four months after winning her race by the largest margin in decades — 15 percentage points.
These more-recent shifts in public sentiment are whiplash-inducing. And the more aggressive nature of these swings are weaking the hinges our government rests upon.
Losing the Middle
Governing is messy, because the problems that government confronts are not easily boxed and managed. From immigration to gun violence and abortion rights to data centers, big issues present challenges that are not easily resolved.
For much of the second half of the 20th century, a willingness to accept that complex problems require complex answers drove the success of moderate politicians, who held power by being responsive to those outside their own party.
Turning out the base, which is the dominate strategy in today’s races, was not enough from the ‘50s through the ‘90s to carry elections. Politicians required broader support.
Knowing this meant that moderates held considerable power.
As an example, Farnsworth points to former local Virginia politicians John Chichester (Republican) and Edd Houck (Democrat), who until leaving the General Assembly — Chichester in 2008, Houck in 2021 — were reliably moderate in how they governed, keeping the extremes in both their parties at bay.
These moderates kept democracies hinges from being stressed beyond their limits.
In today’s environment, neither man would likely survive a party primary, where “But Trump” or “Build that wall” is what drives voters to the polls — not Lincoln-Douglas type debates.
Voters have much less patience with moderate politicians. Thus, we see the hard swings of the past 10 to 20 years.
We are, for better and worse, a nation polarized by allegiance to political party.
“In a 50-50 country,” Farnsworth said, “you’re not going to see approval ratings that governors 30 years ago received in Virginia. Two-thirds of the people approved of Mark Warner when he was governor.”
That entrenchment seems to be only deepening.
Spanberger won in 2025 as much because of strong Democrat turnout as she did because Republican voters simply didn’t vote.
When one can’t pull voters from across the aisle, there’s no motivation to moderate one’s positions and work across the proverbial aisle.
Trust
Regaining an appreciation for moderation means recapturing our understanding and appreciation for the virtues of democracy and compromise. That will be no easy task.
According to one study, 70% of people can’t pass a basic civics literacy test. It’s far from an anomaly.
Americans’ understanding of civics has been in steady decline for more than two decades. An increased focus on reading and math basics at the K-12 level over more-rigorous work in history and civics is certainly part of the reason.
Social media is also adding to the partisan fuel. We live in virtual echo chambers that reenforce, not challenge, what we believe.
None of this is new, of course. These arguments have been articulated across a wide range of researchers and disciplines.
Collectively, however, they are taking a toll by stressing the hinges our democracy hangs on beyond what they were designed to manage.
Whatever today’s vote, the pressure on our hinges will not be lessened. Nor will it push them to their breaking point.
But when we listen, we can hear the hinges straining.
That should concern us all enough to step outside our parties for a bit, and examine a bit closer then hinge upon which our democracy has hung for a quarter millennium.
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