[[link removed]]

PROTESTS MATTER IN ELECTION YEARS—AND THIS YEAR’S HAD PLENTY  
[[link removed]]


 

Ben Manski and Michael T. Heaney
June 21, 2024
The Progressive
[[link removed]]


*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ The protests of the excluded and alienated will count on and beyond
Election Day. The relative momentum of movements is likely to matter
not only in voter turnout but also in the potentially tumultuous
events that may follow November 5. _

Thousands gather in New York City at at a May Day rally in solidarity
with Palestine, May 2024, Credit: Pamela Drew (CC BY-NC 2.0)

 

Recent protests at U.S. universities have seized global attention. And
now, with summer in full swing, a new protest wave is becoming visible
on the horizon at the Republican and Democratic conventions in
Milwaukee and Chicago. If those and other expected protests are as
large as they’re anticipated to be, how will they affect the
elections in November?

Among the many reasons activists organize protests is their desire to
focus attention on a cause. Election seasons present opportunities for
doing just that. Many people who otherwise do not tune in to policy
debates begin to pay particular attention when the Oval Office is at
stake. 

At the same time, mainstream politicians and campaigns can be wary of
election year street protests. Politicians, of course, generally want
to avoid becoming the target of protests. More importantly, political
operatives dislike volatility. They worry that protests will backfire
and their candidate will be blamed for any disturbances of the
peace. 

Political operatives also employ a “dollars or votes” calculus
that tells them not to let energy be wasted on things presumed not to
deliver campaign donations or Election Day votes. For these reasons
and others, the major parties sometimes pressure the officers of
nonprofit organizations, unions, and activists to demobilize protest
movements in election years. 

Yet while it turns out that street protests do tend to influence
elections, they more often do so in unexpected ways. 

A 2021 study by John Holbein, Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg, and Tova Wang
examined Black Lives Matter, climate, and gun control protests, as
well as protests for and against Trump from 2017 to 2020. Their
national study found
[[link removed]] that
counties with more frequent and larger protests tended to see
significantly increased registration and turnout among young voters,
voters of color, and Democrats. 

Taking a longer view, Daniel Gillion and Sarah Soule studied
[[link removed]] congressional
elections over four decades from the 1960s to the 1990s. They
concluded that liberal protests tended to benefit left-of-center
candidates and that conservative protests tended to benefit
right-of-center candidates. A protest on their respective side
sometimes led to as much as 6 percent more votes for a candidate, or 6
percent less for an opponent, depending on the race.

Why might this be? One answer seems to be that protests impact those
motivated to vote and those turned off from politics around election
time. Street protests spill over into the polling place. Voting is a
relatively low cost activity compared to joining protests. 

Another, perhaps more powerful, effect of street protests has to do
with how they change the way people think about what’s at stake.
Social scientists have long understood that human beings navigate our
world by excluding excess information and by focusing on what really
matters. By drawing attention to particular issues, protests can
prompt large numbers of people to reconsider what the elections mean
to them. 

A study of Black Civil Rights Movement protests of the 1960s shows how
this kind of election year reframing can work. Omar Wasow found
[[link removed]] that nonviolent civil
rights protests produced marked gains at the polls for liberal
candidates, who benefited because people began to pay more attention
than they would have otherwise to the question of equality. This was
in part because nonviolent protesters were more likely to be portrayed
sympathetically in the media. On the other hand, violent protests,
which were likely to be described as “riots,” prompted people to
think more in terms of a social order frame, benefiting conservative
candidates.

This brings us to what might be the most unexpected insight about
protests and elections. The protest waves of recent generations are
often described as the acts of the alienated. Our own research shows
that this is true, but only to a certain extent: Those who organize
mass street protests are usually critical of the establishment and
wary of being taken advantage of. This means people generally do not
instigate protests in order to produce particular election results. 

Nonetheless, protests impact elections. The mobilized tend to stay
mobilized, they tend to mobilize others, and their actions may reframe
what the elections are about. Indeed, longstanding research
[[link removed]] shows us
that the kind of alienation expressed in protest more often leads not
to disengagement, but to greater immediate and long-term political
involvement.

This is an election year in which protests will continue to occur. At
best, the major political parties may be able to influence what
protestors do. Empirical research suggests that those relying on
support from aggrieved groups may find it helpful to emphasize
nonviolence, but that discouraging protest, in general, may be
counterproductive. The protests of the excluded and alienated will
count on and beyond Election Day. 

After all, in this contentious moment, the relative momentum of
movements is likely to matter not only in voter turnout but also in
the potentially tumultuous events that may follow November 5.

_This column was produced for __Progressive Perspectives_
[[link removed]]_, a project of _The
Progressive_ magazine, and distributed by Tribune News Service. _

_Ben Manski is a professor of sociology and director of Next System
Studies at George Mason University in Virginia. Prior his academic
career, he ran local, state, and presidential campaigns over thirty
years._

_Michael T. Heaney teaches politics at the University of Glasgow in
Scotland, author of Party in the Street: The Antiwar Movement and the
Democratic Party after 9/11 (along with Fabio Rojas) and a producer of
a documentary film The Activists._

_A voice for peace, social justice, and the common good! Since
1909, The Progressive magazine has aimed to amplify __to __voices
of dissent and voices under-represented in the mainstream, with a
goal of championing grassroots progressive politics._

* elections
[[link removed]]
* protests
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]
Manage subscription
[[link removed]]
Visit xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]