Six-Chart Sunday (#20) – Incentives
6 Infographics from the week + 1 video (Rick Klein & Kristen Soltis Anderson discuss the 2024 Election)
“Show me the incentive, I'll show you the outcome.” – Charlie Munger
“Washington is working exactly how it is designed to work… There are few incentives to solve problems [and] little accountability for results.” – Katherine Gehl, The Politics Industry
Why do over 90% of Incumbents Get Reelected When Only 13% Approve of How Congress Handles Its Job? Our political system is currently structured to minimize electoral competition among politicians while maximizing media competition for attention. Both structures incentivize partisanship & discourage compromise, optimizing outrage & maximizing mistrust. (Approval; Reelection)
Partisan Districts Incentivize Partisan Politics. Competitive districts are more likely to reward moderation & compromise, but 90% of House districts aren’t very competitive. Thanks to a combination of voter self-sorting (people moving nearer people who think like them) & digitally-optimized gerrymandering (drawing districts to maximize partisan advantage), only 45 out of 435 of districts today have a partisan voter index less than D+3 or R+3 per the Cook Political Report’s Dave Wasserman.
First-Past-the-Post Partisan Primaries Effectively Exclude the Majority of Voters, Incentivizing Candidates to Aim Only at the Most Partisan. In partisan districts, if you win the primary you’ll probably win the general. Yet far more voters are independents (who often cannot vote in partisan primaries) than D’s or R’s, and only a fraction of eligible voters actually vote in primary elections. Thus in 2022, 8% of voters effectively chose 83% of the House.
There are Strong Incentives to Run Deficits & Weak ROI for Fiscal Prudence. Voters reward politicians who spend on things they like (e.g. greater pension & health benefits, stimulus checks, money for cops, teachers, bridges & roads) & punish politicians who tax them. Such a system incentivizes spend now, pay later politics, deferring tough fiscal choices to future generations & later leaders.
Our Campaign Finance System Incentivizes Full-Time Fundraising, Apocalyptic Spamming & Shameless Solicitation of Super-Donors. You can’t win reelection without the resources to run a robust campaign, but the cost of campaigns has skyrocketed 3x faster than inflation since 1998. This encourages elected officials to spend >30 hours per week dialing for dollars, deluge potential donors with apocalyptic emails & non-stop text messages, and court zillionaires who might fund Super PACs.
Overwhelming Competition for Public Attention Incentivizes Anger-tainment TV & Clickbait Media. While elections may suffer from insufficient competition, political news may face too much. In 1980, there were 3 main network news channels & often just 1 dominant local newspaper. Attempting to appeal broadly, these networks’ favored accurate, non-partisan news. Today there are hundreds of broadcasters competing with unlimited online *news* sources creating immense pressure to publish first (and correct later if needed) and maximize engagement (via clickbait headlines, incessant “breaking news” chyrons & content likely to outrage rather than inform).
VIDEO
ABC News Political Director Rick Klein & Echelon Insights Co-Founder Kristen Soltis Anderson discussed the 2024 Elections this week. Smart & timely analysis!
Recommended further reading on reform:
Nick Troiano, “The Primary Solution”
Katherine Gehl, “The Politics Industry”
Greg Orman, “A Declaration of Independents”
Dan Balz, “American democracy is cracking. These ideas could help repair it.”
Oh Bruce, I could not bring myself to hit the 💟 button as the charts make for heavy-hearted reading. Once again, a great 6-pack of Sunday charts. Thank you! There should be a button for noted, others should pay attention! I suggest the 👀 emoji!
Great charts as always. There is a paradox to the “safe” seats in Congress. You would think that not having and competition from the other party would make a Member of Congress more independent, but the opposite has happened. In a 70% Republican seat, a candidate does not need to talk to the other party. However, even though they do not have to worry about the general election, they have to worry about their own primary. As a result, the Republicans become more conservative and the Democrats become more progressive to avoid competitive primaries. So a Congress made up of 90% safe seats becomes even more ideologically divided. The only people with an interest in bipartisanship are those from highly competitive general election seats. They have to talk to the other party or they lose.