US Election Campaigns Indicate Growing “Culture Wars”

The 2024 United States Presidential election appears to be predominantly about domestic socio-cultural issues. The most engaging subjects in the on-going campaigns of the Democrats and the Republicans for the November 2024 election are rising immigration from the Global South.

The list also includes the burgeoning impact of racial and ethnic diversity in the US population; perceived changes in American family values; women’s control over their bodies in terms of their reproductive rights; and rising crime.

Ethnicity and race have acquired a high salience because an Afro-Asian American, Kamala Harris, is the presumptive candidate of the Democratic party. As a result of Harris’ candidature, White and Caucasian Americans could flock to the Republican camp of Donald Trump, which is foreseen by various pre-election opinion surveys.

Religion is also in the forefront of the election campaigns. Trump is calling upon all Christians to vote for him. Harris, on the other hand, is campaigning for women’s reproductive rights and the right to abortion, which Trump and his hard core Christians supporters abhor.

When Vivek Ramaswamy was in the race for the Republican party nomination, TV anchors used to grill him on his religious identity. they asked him if he, being a Hindu, could truly represent a predominantly Christian America.

And a good number of White/Caucasian Americans, may not want Kamala Harris, a woman of Colour to be their President, though she is a Christian.

According to Kiara Afonseca of ‘ABC News’, the question of identity, including race, sexual orientation, gender, have been “lightning rod subjects” of hundreds of bills in US State legislatures. Americans have been seeking to define the nation's values, she says.

Alfonseca quotes Christopher Sebastian Parker, Professor of Political Science at the University of Washington, Seattle, to say that the “culture war” began in the post-Civil War period, when Americans grappled with the question on how to integrate formerly enslaved Blacks into society.

Bitterly resisting integration of any kind, White supremacists in the Southern States called for "Redemption" or the removal of rights for Black Americans.

Over time, segregation got well defined and implemented. The Blacks also acquiesced in it. But in the 1960s, as part of a world-wide liberation movement, there arose a Black Civil Rights movement in the US.

Feeling threatened, the American right wing began asserting White exclusivism through its own interpretation of Christian values. But by the 1980s, “culture wars" had taken a regular shape becoming part of the ideology of political parties.

Led by Ronald Reagan, the Republican party grew increasingly aligned with religious conservatives, seeing the traction the issue got among the Whites.

With sex education coming into vogue in schools, White parents felt that they were losing control over what their children were learning in school. This concern got deeper when the national conversation veered towards anti-racism and the need to address social inequalities, especially when they involved Non-Whites and Latinos, Alfonseca says.

The other factor that triggered right wing White activism was the acceptance that the LGBTQ were getting from American society and its polity. It seemed as if the institution of family was crumbling. This laid the foundation of the anti-Trans movement.

According to Alfonseca, more than 220 bills specifically targeting transgender and non-binary people, were presented in US State legislatures to prevent gender-affirming care for transgender youth and access to public restrooms etc.

At least 16 states passed or implemented policies that restrict lessons or programmes related to race, according to the African American Policy Forum. Several more legislatures are considering such restrictions.

As Governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis signed into law the Parental Rights in Education Act in March 2022, prohibiting public schools in Florida from discussing or having classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity from kindergarten through third grade. DeSantis also signed a six-week abortion ban .

According to Washington Examiner Abortion is the top subject for 1 in 8 voters in the 2024 election following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, according to a new poll from the healthcare policy think tank KFF.

In addition to the 12% of voters who say abortion is the “most important issue” in the election season, over half of all other voters, 52%, say it is a “very important issue but not the most important.”

Surveys indicate that a new bloc of abortion voters has arisen, largely composed of those who want to see abortion “legal in all cases.” This group disproportionately represents Black, Democratic, female, and young voters.

A total of 55% of voters would prefer to see some sort of federal government protection of abortion rights, including 77% of Democrats and 58% of independents. Only 36% of Republicans and 35% of Republican women would like to see a prohibition of abortion nationwide.

Contraception access is also on voters’ minds in the election season. Only 45% of respondents considered the use of contraception “a secure right likely to remain in place,” while 21% say they consider the freedom to use contraception “a threatened right likely to be overturned.”

Immigration mainly from Mexico and the Global South have come to the centre of the political stage both for economic and cultural reasons. Behind calls to “take back our country”, “make America great again” are cultural anxieties among majority Whites, apart from the prospect of losing jobs to non-citizens.

From the one million international students at US colleges and universities that country earned US$40 billion in the 2022-2023 academic year, up by US$6.3 billion, compared to the prior academic year. And yet US officials make it difficult for Indians to get student visas.

This is probably because Indian students take away hundreds of thousands of jobs from US citizens, an estimated 368,000 in 2022-23.

The Council on Global Affairs/ipsos survey conducted in April 2024 found that 54% of Americans felt that “controlling and reducing illegal immigration” should be a very important foreign policy goal for the US.

Republicans supported increased deportations (89%), an expanded border wall with Mexico (87%), and increased penalties on businesses for hiring people without legal work authorization (85%).

Democrats broadly favoured policies that make it easier for immigrants to legally come to, and stay in, the United States.

Gun violence or crime was second, with concern increasing after the shooting in Uvalde school in Texas in May 2022 that killed 19 children and two teachers. But even before the mass shooting in Uvalde, Americans had ranked crime or gun violence as the third-most important issue facing the country.

Democrats had ranked it either first or second in every wave of the poll, while Independents had placed it consistently in their top three issues and Republicans in their top six.

When asked whether they preferred gun laws that were more strict, less strict or upheld the status quo, 60% of Independents said they supported more restrictions, which was about halfway between where Democrats (87%) and Republicans (35%) stood on this question (61 percent overall preferred stricter regulations).

That said, a majority of Independents sided with Republicans on the question of how to best spend resources to address crime. 55% of independents said increasing police funding would reduce crime. Among Republicans, 83% supported increasing police spending. Only 36% of Democrats thought increasing police spending would reduce

Meanwhile, 60 % of all the respondents knew that the US had the highest number of gun deaths per capita among all developed countries. Yet Americans didn’t necessarily think implementing these policies would be a panacea, or that people shouldn’t be able to own guns.

Only a 41% plurality thought greater restrictions on gun ownership would reduce mass shootings, while 35 % disagreed.

Meanwhile, half of all respondents agreed that guns were necessary to defend themselves and their property, and 47 percent said all Americans should have the right to own a gun, compared with just 39 percent who disagreed.