Philip Klinkner, the James S. Sherman Associate Professor of Government, gave a lecture on March 10 titled "The Politics of Patriotism," in which he discussed his research on how the idea of "love of country" has affected voting patterns in recent years. The event was sponsored by the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity as part of their lecture series, which aims to improve the academic discourse at Hamilton.
Professor Klinkner discussed his research with Hamilton graduate Matt Glassman '00, using the data from the National Election Surveys of 1988, 1992 and 2002, into how "love of country" has affected elections in those three years. Survey participants were asked the question, "How strong is your love of country?" In all three surveys, most people put themselves in the "extremely strong" category, with the remainder split between the lesser categories. In all three years, survey participants who said they had less than "extremely strong" love of country were more likely to vote Democratic. Over the three surveys, the number of people who said that they had "extremely strong love of country" didn't vary much, but they way that these citizens voted has changed. When the data was controlled for other voting factors, Klinkner and Glassman found that the most patriotic citizens were more likely to vote for Republicans in 1988 and 2002, but for Democrats in Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential election.
Why would these numbers flip-flop these way between elections? Klinkner said that the issues that the parties stressed in these elections were a factor. In 1988, the last presidential election during the Cold War, foreign policy was still clearly an issue. In 1992, after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the decline of foreign policy as an issue, Democrats stressed the importance of domestic issues and national unity, while some Republicans such as Pat Buchanan tried to stress the emerging "culture war" over traditional moral values. This linking of patriotism with moral restorationism seems to have turned off a lot of strongly patriotic voters, particularly women, who tended to see this rhetoric as divisive. Many believe this gender gap was instrumental in the election of President Clinton. In 2002, this gender gap among strongly patriotic voters did not exist, perhaps because of the re-emergence of national security and foreign policy as prominent issues linked by the Republicans to patriotic values.
Klinkner also discussed the importance of party loyalty in voting patterns. For all the recent talk of independent swing voters, surveys indicate that the vast majority of Americans are partisans, said Klinkner. Which of these partisans remain loyal and which vote for the other party is a crucial factor in elections. In recent years, particularly in 2002, "love of country" created party loyalty in Republicans while creating party disloyalty in Democrats, probably also because of foreign policy issues.
Klinkner concluded by taking questions from the audience about his research and about how these issues of patriotism, the gender gap, and the "culture war" will affect the 2004 election.
