Events | What Moves an Electorate? Political Narratives in a Polarized World
UCLA School of Law | October 22, 2024
UCLA School of Law, Room 1314 | 12:15 p.m.
2024 Thomas Mann Fellow, political scientist Andrea Römmele and Lynn Vavreck, Professor of American Politics and Public Policy at UCLA, discuss what moves the electoral needle in the current polarized political climate. The conversation is moderated by Alexandra Lieben, Deputy Director of the Ronald W. Burkle Center for International Relations.
Elections have shown that voters can move, between candidates but also to vote at all. Do we know what type of political messaging moves an electorate, what resonates, what persuades? It is an age-old question that has occupied campaign and communication strategists, politicians, political advisors, and media experts, among others, since political campaigning began. Celebrity endorsements are often courted and always gratefully received. But to what extent can endorsements by celebrities such as Taylor Swift, Dick Cheney or Liz Cheney actually move the needle?
In an environment where politics appear calcified, where communication is hampered by disinformation and by extreme polarization, where issues are wrapped up in questions of identity and personal values, both notoriously hard to change - what can make the difference? Is there something we can learn from recent elections elsewhere, such as in Europe? What are we not seeing, what are we not understanding?
Participants
Andrea Römmele is Professor of Political Communication and Dean and Vice President at the Hertie School in Berlin. She holds a master’s degree from San Francisco State University, a doctorate from the University of Heidelberg, and a habilitation from Freie Universität Berlin. Römmele’s research interests include digital democracy, elections, and electoral campaigns and parties. For Römmele, a central issue is mediating between science and practice. One of her current projects is the “Democracy Report,” developed jointly with ARD, which she moderates herself. During her Thomas Mann Fellowship in Los Angeles, she worked on megatrends and democracy. Her most recent book Demokratie Neu Denken (Rethinking Democracy) was published in September 2024.
Lynn Vavreck, UCLA’s Marvin Hoffenberg Professor of American Politics and Public Policy, is an expert on campaigns, elections and public opinion, with an emphasis on how candidate behavior affects voters. She has researched campaign advertising, survey methods, politics and the media, and how the state of the economy affects elections. Vavreck is co-author of The Bitter End: The 2020 Presidential Campaign and the Challenge to American Democracy, which assessed why the campaign’s aftershocks will reverberate for decades to come. She is also the co-author of “Identity Crisis: The 2016 Presidential Campagin and the Battle for the Meaning of America. Both books drew observations and insights from Nationscape, a wide-ranging weekly public opinion survey of the American electorate for which Vavreck is a principal researcher.
Alexandra Lieben is the Deputy Director of the Ronald W. Burkle Center for International Relations and an affiliated faculty member of the Promise Institute for Human Rights at the UCLA School of Law. A certified mediator, she teaches constructive communication, alternative dispute resolution, public dialogue, cultural competency, international conflict resolution, and community and economic development to undergraduate and graduate students at UCLA.
The talk is organized by the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations and the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs Department of Public Policy.
