Voting against ourselves

Daily conversations about the weather have been replaced by political topics and, day in and day out, I encounter heated arguments between neighbors regarding how they intend to vote. In a park in a Barcelona neighborhood, an elderly lady asks a group of young mothers how it is that they plan to vote for a party that they know will rescind their rights. Some workers argue during breakfast at the cafeteria because the majority plans to vote with an anti-system stance, while others think that their only option for survival is, precisely, the system: people who vote for those who will cut public services when they are the ones who do not have enough money to access private services. On the subway, a person of immigrant origin explains to two locals that the best policy is not to allow any more immigration. The truth is that general elections are approaching and polls never stop providing data that we frequently consider contradictory. What is the reason for these positions that seem incomprehensible at first glance?

To begin with, we must keep in mind that our decisions are not as rational as we think. Logic would dictate fleeing from that which harms our material interests and impoverishes us. But in practice, it turns out that we often vote against these economic interests because we let ourselves be carried away by an emotional need. Therefore, we can speak of an “emotional interest” that is added to the economic one and can even surpass it. This interest responds to the personal experiences that each of us carries and that connect with a deep story, present in the party's proposals, which voters feel as true. When Swiss immigrants were asked why they supported an anti-immigration party, a decisive weight of their own migratory experience and a construction of symbolic borders regarding other immigrants was noted. With their attitude, they rejected the stigma they carried and showed detachment from their group of origin and identification with new political groups.

In addition to emotions, the sense of identity must be taken into account. Very often, what our group (whether friends, work colleagues, union members, or social class) thinks of voting is what predominates over ideology. In Democracy for realists (2016), political scientists Achen and Bartels consider that the main cause of electoral behavior is the identity of the group to which one belongs, and not public policies. In the case of some women, it has been proven that the mythologized idea of the mother, wife, queen of the household, and object of romantic love that conservative parties defend is more powerful than other motivations. They believe that this policy—arising from so-called “benevolent sexism”—protects them individually, despite the evidence that it actually disempowers them and disarms collective resistance to inequality.

The final decision before voting is ultimately inscribed on our map of moral convictions. It is what drives a high-income person to vote in favor of a tax reform, even knowing it will cost them money. For them, a fairer way of distributing resources in society prevails, regardless of their personal interests.

But if the redistributive vote of a rich person seems coherent to us because it responds to a moral conviction, we must admit that other voters also have their priorities. A woman may give more weight to her faith than to the right to abortion. A person of immigrant origin may believe that a migration expulsion policy will protect them and affect other families and not their own.

What we consider our political interest, therefore, is plural: material, emotional, identity-based, and moral. The question is which interest we defend when we sacrifice another with our vote. A ballot forces us to prioritize interests that may be in conflict. Voting for a party groups policies that, if voted on separately, could receive different responses from the same person. That is why someone who votes for a candidacy that will cut a right may either agree with this cut or accept it because there is something that matters more to them.

When a vote seems incomprehensible to us, we will have to figure out what need it expresses, what fear it seeks to calm, or what hope it sustains. Understanding what leads someone to assume a detriment brings us closer to their experience and forces us to listen. We will hardly convince someone to defend their rights if we do not first understand what leads them to put them at risk.