What matters in a presidential election? Ask a thousand political scientists and you’ll get a thousand different answers. National pundits highlight the importance of the economy, foreign policy and health care. Academics have shown that shark attacks and droughts can turn voters away from the incumbent. Nate Silver’s infamous “keys to the election” include long-term economic metrics, the presence of a third party and recent military successes or failures. Sometimes it seems like political science happens on a national level, removed from our campuses and our communities.
But Bates itself has plenty of experts who are observing the election with a local perspective — political scientists and scholars of rhetoric who live every day surrounded by Maine voters, engaged voters and plenty of young voters, and who likely have a lot to say about what matters as we approach Election Day.
So we asked them.
Dr. John Baughman, Professor of Politics
There’s a lot going on in the world right now — “Hurricane Helene, the widening conflict in the Middle East, unexpectedly strong jobs numbers, to name just three” — but Dr. Baughman says he is “most interested in how much electoral power the backlash against the Dobbs decision continues to have.” Voters have consistently supported access to reproductive rights, even in conservative states, and more will have abortion rights on their ballots in November.
But voters have also been inconsistent, in many cases supporting abortion rights but also voting for candidates who campaign on restricting abortion access. “For how many voters is the issue of abortion a primary motivator, whether in support or opposition, and for how many is it just one issue among many and outweighed by other issues, such as immigration or the state of the economy?” asks Dr. Baughman.
Dr. Stephanie Kelley-Romano, Professor of Rhetoric, Film, and Screen Studies
“Basically,” says Dr. Kelley-Romano, “I’m looking at everything.” She is interested in how candidates’ framing of the issues “redistributes power or redefines what we think power is — and fundamentally, who ‘we’ are.”
This year, she’s studying how candidates discuss themselves and their place in the world: “Harris, at the narrative she tries to tell about herself to demonstrate her values (and hence presidentiality) to the people, and Trump, in terms of the narrative he is trying to tell about the United States and the danger ‘we’ face.”
For example, take Trump’s false statement that Haitian immigrants are eating their neighbors’ pets. “I have been interested to see how each base has used that and re-tooled it to make it make sense,” Dr. Kelley-Romano says. For instance, even after Republican Vice Presidential candidate J.D. Vance admitted that he made it up, “the MAGA base seems to be willing to grab on to the larger point that ‘immigrants are overwhelming our cities’ (despite the fact that immigrants culturally and economically usually benefit their communities).” While voters on the left “used social media to poke fun at the statement” via lighthearted dances and memes, Harris also “explicitly [called] out Trump’s claims as racist when speaking to the National Association of Black Journalists. So I’m interested in the ways Harris is negotiating both race and gender in the quest for a position that has historically been held by white men,” Dr. Kelley-Romano says.
Dr. Pavel Bačovský, Visiting Assistant Professor of Politics
First, says Dr. Bačovský, the serious part: “I am watching how both campaigns reach out to young voters (18-29), especially those for whom this will be the first election in which they will be allowed to vote. We know from work on political socialization that voting is a habit, and those who start participating tend to continue participating, while those who don’t generally tend to stay disengaged.” Younger voters tend to lean towards the Democrats, but Dr. Bačovský says the real question is “whether these voters will be energized enough to show up” at the polls.
Then there’s what Dr. Bačovský calls the more “playful” side of his research — “the nexus of leisure and politics.” How will candidates use their hobbies and the pop culture climate in their campaigning? “In 2008,” he says, “Barack Obama bought ads in several high-profile videogames. In 2016, Hillary Clinton had her (in)famous ‘Pokemon GO to the polls’ moment. In 2020, [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] and Ilhan Omar played Among Us on Twitch, and the Biden-Harris campaign had an Animal Crossing presence.” And this year? “I have not seen that many” — although Lucas Kunce, a Democratic Senate candidate from Missouri, has discussed Magic: The Gathering in several interviews.
Dr. Lucy Britt, Assistant Professor of Politics
“Since I teach on and research race and politics, including race and voting rights, unequal voting rights are always top-of-mind for me,” Dr. Britt says. She points out that 2% of the American adult citizen population, including 5.3% of the Black American adult citizen population, cannot vote due to a criminal record.
Dr. Britt is also keeping an eye on limits on voters’ ability to cast a ballot. States with tighter restrictions on voting early or absentee are mostly in the South, “where economic inequality is also higher than national averages and where Jim Crow disenfranchisement of Black people was only a couple generations ago,” Dr. Britt said. “And since the Supreme Court’s 2013 Shelby County v. Holder decision, it has become increasingly difficult to find a convenient and accessible place to vote because many states have closed down hundreds of polling locations.” Who is able to access the ballot box — and will that affect who wins?
Lisa Gilson, Assistant Professor of Politics
“One of the factors I’ll be looking at during the 2024 federal election cycle is Harris’ performance in states with larger Arab-American populations – particularly in Michigan,” which would be key to Harris’s Electoral College victory, says Dr. Gilson. “According to recent nation-wide polling, 81% of Arab-Americans across all political affiliations identify Gaza as an important factor in determining their vote. Harris’s positions on Gaza — including her refusal to consider adding conditions on aid to Israel and her decision not to include a Palestinian-American speaker at the Democratic National Convention — may make or break her campaign in swing states like Michigan, and possibly in the presidential election as a whole. Amid a wider conversation about the depolarization of black and brown Americans, it is worth keeping an eye on the Arab-American vote.”
