Voting Like The Liberals Want You To

            To the dismay of many liberal leaning thinkers when the 2010 Gallop Poll came out stating that African Americans were much more likely to be conservative to moderate than liberal there was a panicked hush and then an immediate denial. ⁹

 In a recent research study I compared Caucasians and African Americans in regards to their personal beliefs and the way that they vote.  I can’t say that I was surprised when the results came back.   As an African American myself I wanted to know why the great discrepancy.  I found three main culprits: 1) Media, 2) Emotion and 3) Social Fear Conditioning.

            According to my research “local television news is the public’s primary source of public affairs information” ³ this is a problem for those who are more conservative in political party platforms, especially since, “almost all major media outlets tilt to the left” ⁸  Guess who tends to get the more favorable air time; liberal politicians.  Surprised?  No.  However, I ran my own statistical tests and found that on average African Americans watch TV twice as much as Caucasians. So on a normal day an African American is digesting twice as much of the liberal spin as a Caucasian.  Now consider the final two culprits: emotion and social fear conditioning.

There are potentially two ways to affect a person’s voting decisions in relation to peer pressure:  emotion and social fear conditioning.  “Voters embark on an emotional journey with candidates.  Emotion isn’t the opposite of reason.  We use emotion to assign value to things, thus making decision-making possible.” ²    Second is social fear conditioning which occurs when the social environment provides a suitable medium to transfer emotionally significant information between individuals. Verbally communicating with a fellow human or observing…expressions of fear…can produce learning.” ⁷

The perfect example is the recent hate fest towards Stacey Dash, who publically stated her support for Mitt Romney (R) who is running for President against incumbent Barack Obama (D).  Some have said “you aren’t black enough” and “you should kill yourself,” ⁷ the pressure to vote democrat is a reality. ⁵ This is only the beginning, once you’ve confessed to be conservative suddenly you are a sell out and an uncle tom – just for starters.

This is key to understanding the great discrepancy between a personal belief and the way one casts their vote.  Since emotion and memories are so powerful it is easy to see why the media creates such emotional chaos.  “Emotional and declarative memories are stored and retrieved in parallel, and their activities are joined seamlessly in our conscious experience. ⁵ Most African Americans have faced racism several times in their life. So it’s really just a matter of the media drawing the lines from personal experience to manipulating emotional connections and applying fear.  Test my theory; look over the recent and past headlines made by the liberal political folks.

Perhaps it’s time for conservatives to make a more concerted effort to support the more balanced news outlets and become more educated on successfully using emerging media to take back the areas that the left is currently controlling through emotion and fear.

***Tammy Fenner*** is a director of development for a Christian non-profit organization, an aspiring Doctorate Of Management student and Life and Liberty Media contributor.

1 Behrens, T. E. J., Woolrich, M. W., Walton, M. E., & Rushworth, M. F. S. (2007). Learning the value of information in an uncertain world. [Article]. Nature Neuroscience, 10(9), 1214-1221. doi: 10.1038/nn1954

2 Brooks, D. (2008). How voters think.  Opinion. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/18/opinion/18brooks.html

3 Gilliam Jr, F. D., & Iyengar, S. (2000). Prime suspects: The influence of local television news on the viewing public. [Article]. American Journal of Political Science, 44(3), 560.

4 Houston, B. (2012). Being an African American and the pressure from family and peers to support President Barack Obama.  Yahoo! Voices. Retrieved from http://voices.yahoo.com/being-african-american-pressure-family-11249538.html

5 LeDoux, J. E. (2002). Emotion, memory and the brain. [Article]. Scientific American Special Edition, 12(1), 62-71.

6 Olsson, A., & Phelps, E. A. (2007). Social learning of fear. [Article]. Nature Neuroscience, 10(9), 1095-1102. doi: 10.1038/nn1968

7 Ritz, E.(2012).  Twitter explodes after black actress endorses Romney as the ‘Only choice for your future.’ Political, The Blaze. Retrieved from http://www.theblaze.com/stories/twitter-explodes-after-black-actress-endorses-romney-as-the-only-choice-for-your-future/

8 Sullivan, M. (2005). Media bias is real, finds UCLA political scientist, News Release, UCLA Newsroom. Retrieved from http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/Media-Bias-Is-Real-Finds-UCLA-6664.aspx

9 Yglesias, M. (2010) Are African Americans conservative, or is ideological self-identification meaningless? Think Progress. Retrieved from http://thinkprogress.org/yglesias/2010/02/04/196046/are-african-americans-conservative-or-is-ideological-self-identification-meaningless/?mobile=nc