Carah Ong-Whaley, a lecturer in the Politics Department, is currently teaching a course about the polarizing 2016 presidential election.
The 30-person class engages in discussions about the coming elections that attempt to contextualize the election and better understand the reasons for the candidates’ record high unfavorability ratings.
The class consists of three 50-minute sessions a week and involves a mix of discussion and lectures centered around mostly contemporary readings that contextualize the 2016 election in terms of broader political science literature.
Allison Mota, a fourth-year College student in the class, said the class often serves as an open forum.
“As of right now it’s been incredibly interesting, it’s been an open forum for us to discuss our evaluations of the elections thus far,” Mota said. “We’re looking at it through a political lens, looking at political partisanship, relationship between age, demographic and gender.
Although this election season is unique in terms of the candidates’ unfavorability ratings, both Mota and Ong-Whaley pointed out polarization has been at similar, if not higher levels in the past.
“There’s a lot of similarities between this election and 1896. Structurally there’s a high level of partisan competition, great deal of partisan polarization. Issues [that are] important are economy and race, high income inequality, populist candidates in this election,” Ong-Whaley said. “There is a historical precedence for this election.”
Ong-Whaley said the idea of teaching the class came to her while conducting research last October and recognized a perfect opportunity to use political science to address the 2016 election with seeing the development of two polarizing candidates.
Mota said the class’s objectivity allows her to better consider different perspectives, whereas before she had a tendency to dismiss the opinions of her rival party.
“I do feel like I’m more open to taking others’ opinions more seriously than I previously was with the high level of unlikeability,” Mota said. “It hasn’t changed my opinion, but it keeps me informed of other people who may be voting for someone I’m not voting for.”
In the first project assigned to students, which involved interviewing voters, Mota said she was surprised to find a high incidence of voters identifying as independents with views corresponding to certain parties.
This represents the high unfavorability of the candidates chosen by both the Democratic and Republican parties and is linked to the presence of twice as many independents as there were the previous election.
Approximately 9-11 percent of voters are undecided, with 40-42 percent firmly in either the Democratic or Republican camp, Ong-Whaley said. She said the high number of independent voters is one reason why candidate performance in the presidential debates is important.
Despite growing cynicism surrounding the elections, Ong-Whaley said political efficacy and voting are crucial.
“Encourage people that their voice does matter, don’t get cynical about it, get out and vote,” Ong-Whaley said. “Get out and vote and hold your politicians accountable.”
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