Here & Now

Mike Wagner on the Erosion of Civic Discourse

Frederica Freyberg:

Democratic Wisconsin U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin this week announced she is running for a third term. A challenger has not yet officially announced. One thing is likely, another scorched earth campaign, political vitriol on steroids. That seems to be the Wisconsin way. In fact, a new report from the Center for Communication and Civic Renewal at UW-Madison shows Wisconsin’s political divides are breaking citizens apart. Center director and journalism professor, Michael Wagner, joins us with details, and thanks very much for being here again.

Michael Wagner:

It’s great to see you.

Frederica Freyberg:

So what are the most prominent symptoms of Wisconsin’s political divide? Your survey calls them civic fractures.

Michael Wagner:

Yes. Some of the examples we see of that are in how politics and our deep commitment to our political identities is now shaping how we engage in everyday conversation with people. Nearly 2/3rds of us now have said we’ve stopped talking policies with somebody. We might talk about the Badgers or the Packers or the weather, but we won’t talk politics anymore. Then for almost one in five of us, we’ve cut a friend or family member out of our lives because of political disagreements. Now that might be because we don’t want to hear what the other side has to say and don’t want to have to engage their ideas or it might be because the other side is telling us who we are is invalid or maybe we feel dangerous in some conversations or we might be in danger, and so it’s hard to know exactly what’s driving these things, but people are retreating from the kind of deliberation that is fundamental to democracy.

Frederica Freyberg:

How and why did this happen?

Michael Wagner:

It’s gotten worse since Act 10. Over the last decade plus, we’ve seen a growing fracture in these kinds of measures of our civic health, and so 11 years ago, about 30%, 33% of Wisconsinites said they’d stop talking politics with a friend. Now it’s 60% and so it’s really increased. The way that our legislature and governor deal with each other has gotten more acrimonious. Our political ads have gotten more acrimonious. National politics is more coarse and fraught with all kinds of things that are both uncivil on the one hand but sometimes outright dangerous and disturbing on the other, and so all of these things are happening at once.

Frederica Freyberg:

Why is the messaging that makes people angry, distrustful and even fearful so resonant?

Michael Wagner:

Well, people are often driven partially by emotions and their decision-making and it’s easier I think to tap into people’s fear and it’s easier to say to people, you’re not the reason for your problems and it’s not broad structural things that are really hard to fix; it’s those people, that group that we don’t like is why your life is harder, and so it becomes easier to dislike that group and support the people that were telling you that that’s the problem.

Frederica Freyberg:

How surprising is your finding that 60% of strong Trump supporters say they could have to use force to save the traditional American way of life. 60%.

Michael Wagner:

Yeah. We are interested in how these civic fractures might lead to anti-democratic outcomes like using violence to achieve your political means. And for most Republicans, they say, no, we don’t like this idea, but among the one-third of Republicans who are really strong supporters of President Trump, 60% of those folks say they might endorse that idea. Saying you endorse the use of force is different than actually doing it but this is an alarming and disturbing result. So we need to keep our eyes on that as a society about there are other ways to solve our problems other than using violence.

Frederica Freyberg:

So your report says that this diagnosis is grim but there is reason for hope. Like what?

Michael Wagner:

Lots of things. First, overwhelming bipartisan majorities of Wisconsinites favor political compromise as compared to sticking to your principles even if nothing gets done. Overwhelming majorities across parties believe that their vote was counted, whether it was in person, absentee, by mail. There’s strong confidence in that. There’s strong support for non-partisan redistricting, which is a fairer way to engage in representation. And there’s strong support for the separation of church and state across political parties. And so there are foundations we can build on to improve democracy in our state.

Frederica Freyberg:

It seems hard to understand how there is 80% of survey respondents believe that their vote was counted, will be counted. How does that square with election denial and all of this misinformation that we’ve been listening to for 2-1/2 years?

Michael Wagner:

Well, we’ve heard it coming really from one corner of political discourse and we’ve seen most of the people who are open to that idea are these tend to be strong supporters of former president Trump. He’s not relented on that. Many Republicans in government will either agree with him or won’t directly disagree and so there’s this ambiguity there that lets people feel like well maybe seems like the election was reasonably conducted but maybe it wasn’t or maybe there were some problems even though all of the audits, all of the lawsuits, all point to the same story, which is that we do this really well in Wisconsin.

Frederica Freyberg:

Why did your center embark on this study?

Michael Wagner:

We really care about ways we can reknit together the civic fabric. This is a state that has elected people in statewide elections from both parties. It’s a state that has had very liberal and very conservative lawmakers represent us and we’ve been able to do that in ways where we could talk together, work together, try to solve problems together, and as those things fracture, becomes harder to do that. We want to understand the problem so we can help articulate a solution.

Frederica Freyberg:

Mike Wagner, thanks very much.

Michael Wagner:

My pleasure.

Frederica Freyberg:

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