For further evidence that low-RWA liberals, moderates, and conservatives should not let their guard down against the high-RWA religious right, here is a portion of an essay posted by Robert Altemeyer, the author of The Authoritarians, on his website. You can read The Authoritarians and the complete essay there, free of charge. I’m not sure what the solution to the problem posed by the religious right is, but if we wish to see the continuation of a secular Republic in this country, we need to pay very close attention to the plans that the religious right has for the future of this country. Obama’s victory has in no way obviated the need to find a way to satisfy, in some way, the hopes of this portion of the electorate. Ignoring or dismissing their concerns will only inflame the cultural wars of the last 30 years. I think that it would be in our best interests to become better informed about high-RWA people so that we can better understand what is driving political discourse in this country. Once we can better identify politicians with high-RWA personality traits, we can make better choices of whom to trust to lead us. George W. Bush is a classic high-RWA – if we make a mistake like that again, we may as well say goodbye to America as a Constitutional Republic.

For starters, I’d highly recommend reading The Authoritarians.

Note well Altemeyer’s words in the penultimate paragraph of his essay on the leaders of the high-RWAs: “social dominators pursuing their own agendas” – this phrase applies to Limbaugh, Hannity, O’Reilly, Dobson, Hagee, Warren, and hundreds of others. I will have something to say about Social Dominance Theory in a future post.

The Polls, the Undecideds, and the “Bradley Effect”

by Robert Altemeyer

The national polls all correctly predicted Obama would win, but they varied quite a bit in their accuracy. First prize goes jointly to Rasmussen and Pew Research, both of whom predicted a 52-46 split when the real numbers appear to have been 52.3-46.4. That’s pretty darn good, and not unusual for these outfits. As well, Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight.com predicted a 6.1% difference, which came very close to the 5.9% figure produced by the voters. The worst prediction came from the USAToday/Gallup poll, which gave Obama nearly twice his real margin of victory at 53-42, and Gallup’s own poll, which had it 55-44.

I’ve averaged the 16 national polls I could find that conducted surveys in the last days of the race, and together they showed Obama with 51.4% and McCain with 43.6%. Five percent of the vote was accordingly “undecided,” or (in a few cases) going to some other candidate. You can see that most of that 5% broke for McCain, boosting his poll average of 43.6% to 46.4% and making the race somewhat tighter. During the Democratic primaries, undecideds” also went against Obama once they got into the voting booth. This fits in with the observed tendency I mentioned earlier for people who say they haven’t made up their minds to end up voting for conservative candidates. Does it also show the “Bradley effect” that I was worried about? If so, it was quite weak.

Sarah Palin

Analysis of voting patterns, backed up by (the somewhat unrepresentative) exit polls, show that Sarah Palin did drag the Republican ticket down. She influenced significant numbers of moderates, Independents, and women to vote for Obama. (But the big reasons for Obama’s victory were George W. Bush, the economy, Obama’s huge financial advantage, his masterful organization, and ultimately his message and charisma.)

The exit polls found that 74% of white evangelicals/Born-again Christians voted for McCain, four percent less than voted for George Bush in 2004 but still a very solid turnout and by far the GOP’s strongest demographic. I haven’t seen a breakdown by age yet, but it seems clear Obama’s attempt to win over (young) fundamentalists proved the least successful of his various stratagems. He did, of course, earn the support of many other religious voters.

The Religious Right remains the base of the Republican Party. If its leaders get their act together, they can make Sarah Palin (or you or me) the GOP nominee in 2012–a fact that rightly troubles the “Eastern Establishment” of the party no end. Yes, Palin is getting a lot of bad press today, especially with the Newsweek behind-the-scenes revelations. But these will mean nothing to high RWAs who will vote-as-led in the 2012 primaries. But 2012 is a galaxy far, far away and a long time ahead. A lot will happen between now and then.

A Final Point

Despite all the factors handicapping the Republicans from the start, and the painfully inept, lurching, hypocritical, unfocused campaign they ran, some 60 million Americans voted for McCain/Palin. That’s a pretty sobering realization. I think it shows Barack Obama was working against a significantly stronger headwind than John McCain was, yet he prevailed.

Unfortunately, the wretchedly divisive 2008 GOP campaign will, I fear, poison the country for some time. High RWAs have been told over and over again by their trusted sources that Barack Obama is a Muslim socialist/Communist America-hating dictatorial terrorist intent on destroying the country. They have been led to intensely dislike, if not hate the president-elect, and it’s no accident, I submit, that the Secret Service noted a sharp increase in the number of threats to the Democratic standard-bearer as Palin’s crowds became more rabid. Furthermore the Republican National Committee, Fox News, and so on have sold authoritarian followers the myth that the Democrats won through massive voter fraud, because the media conspired to keep Americans from discovering “the truth” about Obama,and that the Democrats caused all the problems that have occurred over the past eight years. You could easily find postings on various blogs in the last weeks of the campaign saying people should be ready to “take up arms” against an “illegal Obama tyranny” to “preserve democracy and the Constitution.”

Thus while Barack Obama may genuinely seek a more inclusive, consensual approach to the country’s dire problems, many high RWAs may say “Count me out.” Their leaders–social dominators pursuing their own agendas–will instead stoke the often racist dislike for Obama that was so evident at Republican rallies in the closing days of the campaign.

Almost nothing would give me greater pleasure than seeing the research on authoritarian personalities become totally irrelevant, now that we have seemingly put the nightmare behind us and begun anew. I’d much rather people get interested in my next book instead, which is about a far more pleasant subject: my studies of the sexual behavior of university students. But I’m afraid www.theauthoritarians.com will remain worth people’s visiting for the next little while at least.