What the midterms reveal about the health of American democracy

All right, our midterm elections are tomorrow, and our nation is bracing for what many consider to be a defining moment for the country. Indeed, and joining us now to help put tomorrow's vote into kind of a global perspective here and to explore what the midterms may tell us. About the health of our own political system, we have William Muck, Professor Muck, expert in international affairs and global democracies, North Central College. Professor Muck, always good to see you. On election eve, this is great to have you. What do you think? Okay, we were just talking, Brittany and I, during the break about turnout. All right, the midterms traditionally don't get as big of a turnout as the on-years in terms of a presidential election. Do you expect this turnout to be good? I think so, but I think it's going to be divided, right? So we look at, you can measure the enthusiasm gap here. And what we're seeing is that Democrats and independents, there's a lot of enthusiasm. They are very excited and they're showing up to the polls. One of the things we're seeing on the conservative side, the Republican side is much lower levels of enthusiasm. So even like conservative news ratings have gone down. So this, I think there's a lot of reasons why Republicans are a little worried as we go into this. But yes, I think there's. There is going to be higher numbers, but I think they may tend to be center-left numbers. Yeah, and why do elections sometimes, I mean, anytime you're watching any type of streaming, even on your phone, you're going to see an election ad. It's very divisive. Why does it feel like it's almost like a battle over a country's identity or even survival? This is a pretty extraordinary development over the last decade or so. Our elections, if you go back, remember what elections were like in the 90s, they were really about policy. What was the size of government? Do we want more healthcare, less healthcare? That was the nature of the conversation. Now our political conversations are about identity. Who's an American, who's not an American, who deserves protection, who doesn't, right? We've drifted into this identity-based politics which overlaps with our partisan views, and it makes everything existential. So if your team wins, it's wonderful. If you're- team loses, you feel like you're on the out, right? So the stakes feel much, much higher because we've seen this shift away from policy towards identity. Wow. You're totally, I, I, I see that every day on social media. Let me ask you this. Is this consistent with what other countries and other parts of the world are going through as well? We reported this past week about what transpired in Brazil and how Bolsonaro landed in Florida. We've been obviously covering everything happening between Israel and Palestine. And then these protests going on in Europe right now. So is this consistent with what we're seeing globally? I think it is, right? We tend to focus on our own politicians, what's happening locally, but this is all playing out in a broader global context where people are frustrated, right? It is not good to be an incumbent, right? We think about the economic frustrations around the world. People are really frustrated with their economic systems. It feels like their political systems are not responding to those needs. So anybody who's in office right now, whether you're left or right, is really worried because the public is angry. So you take sort of those global dynamics and then you add on the local dynamics. In the United States, where you've got an unpopular president, an unpopular war, economic malaise, like all of those things make it really, really difficult for incumbents, specifically Republicans this time around. Yeah. And I mean, you mentioned kind of all of that. And that's been playing a lot into tomorrow's election. Everyone wanting to go out, cast their vote, share their voice in what's going on. But beyond Election Day, beyond casting a ballot, what can an ordinary citizen do to keep democracy healthy, especially when they're frustrated or worried about the future and just frustrated about the current state of things? Yeah, I think this is the really important question because we tend to think our only civic duty is really showing up and voting, but that's really only one part of it, right? We need a populace that is more engaged, more following politics, more attentive to these details, more knowledgeable of what's going on, right? That is our civic responsibility to understand so that we can hold our politicians accountable to say like, hey, that's not actually accurate, right? And the more engaged, the more involved individuals are in all aspects of our civic life. The more responsive government will be, right? We tend to see now where a handful of heavy donors are putting in hundreds of millions of dollars and our individual vote doesn't matter. Well, the more we're engaged, the more responsive those politicians will be. Great message there. We have to ask you while we have you on the line about. I guess this would be a November surprise, what we saw in Michigan over the weekend with this Haley Stevens situation, basically ditching her own party, endorsing the GOP candidate Mike Rogers. What, in your mind, is behind this feud within the Democratic Party here? Well, there's this famous saying that politics ain't beanbag, right? That it gets rough and tumble. And I think that's what's happening here, right? People get emotional, people get hurt. These are, I mean, these are career paths. And I think it's hard to know. I think it's less about policy and I think it's more about personality. I think there's frustration, there's anger. And I think that may be what driving, drove her to make this decision to endorse a Republican. Because as you've seen, the Democrats in mass have disconnected from her. It feels like It's like she's making a really Poor political choice in terms of career choices. But I got to wonder if this isn't more of a human reaction than a strategic reaction. Because, again, yesterday, the drama was just extraordinary. It did feel almost like sour grapes. I know. I had the same reaction that Professor Mokta had. It felt like she got to disinvite it. But it's hard to get inside one's head. I know. And just for future, if she's going to continue running, will she stick on the Democrats? A lot of questions there. Now let's talk about prediction markets are expected to be very busy tomorrow for the election. How do these results compare to the polls? I think this might be the first time that actually we start looking at those markets in addition to the polls, right? So we're always watching the polls, returns and whatnot. But those prediction markets have gotten better, largely because the size of them has gotten so significant. We're talking a lot of people being involved in the granular data, right? So I mean, I think it used to be that people looked at those and said, oh, they're just a sideshow. But now you start to see that they're getting much, much better. So what I'm looking for tomorrow is to see how accurate they are, because this is the first time that we're... Really going to be leaning into them as a legitimate data point. Do they prove to be valuable or again, is it just noise on the side? But I'm I'm really excited because a lot of really smart people are starting to look at that. I agree. Professor Muck, I mean, true or false, the polls themselves are in a way, this is a referendum on the polls themselves tomorrow. It really is, right? And I will say, polling has gotten better. The pollsters who do this, they try to get better, but it is harder, right? And as an electorate, we are harder to poll. Not everybody is responding, so there are challenges there. So when you can't always trust the polls, you can follow the money, right? I think that's really what's going on here. Those markets are connected to our dollars, and maybe, maybe that's a more accurate measure of where the election is. We shall see. It's going to be fascinating to see this play out. Professor Muck, great to see you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thanks for having me.