In an op-ed in the Washington Post, Landon Schnabel, assistant professor of sociology, writes that we can expect many predictions about the outcomes of upcoming U.S. midterm elections, but not much about voters switching political parties.
“What we won’t hear much about is Republicans becoming Democrats or Democrats becoming Republicans,” Schnabel and co-author Sean Bock write in the piece. “In fact, political tactics like gerrymandering largely assume that people don’t switch parties. But that’s wrong. As we show, party identities are more fluid than most people assume — especially during periods of high political turbulence, like ours.”
