Connections: The Bubble Quiz
Maybe it’s a good thing that interest in the presidential election has been revved up by one candidate who denigrates so many people — targeting them by place of origin, religion, and sex — while another foments revolution (albeit a peaceful one). Everyone I know keeps talking about the primaries.
I cannot believe disrespect and name-calling are good for democracy, but if more of the electorate turns out in November as a result, we might be able to say that this cloud of national humiliation has had a silver lining.
A report on voter turnout in national elections between 2000 and 2012, from an organization called the Bipartisan Policy Center, showed it “dipped from 62.3 percent of eligible citizens voting in 2008 to an estimated 57.5 in 2012. That figure was also below the 60.4 level of the 2004 election but higher than the 54.2 percent turnout in the 2000 election.” So it seems that somewhere between one-half and two-thirds of voters were the decision-makers in those years.
Of course, a simple majority hasn’t always assured national election. In 2000, Al Gore, the Democratic candidate for president, lost in the Electoral College after Florida’s 25 electoral votes were awarded to George W. Bush in a 5-to-4 Supreme Court decision. That then-Justice Sandra Day O’Connor voted with the majority was considered the deciding factor. Mr. Gore had won the popular vote, although by only a very small percentage; Ralph Nader had won almost 3 percent of the vote and was probably the spoiler rather than Justice O’Connor. In addition to talking about the primaries, friends and relatives who admit to being surprised by the size of Donald Trump’s and Bernie Sanders’s support have found it amusing to take something called the Bubble Quiz. According to their score on 25 questions, they were able to find out if they lived “cloistered together . . . with little to no exposure to American culture at large.”
The quiz was devised by Charles Murray, a well-known political scientist and author who describes himself as a libertarian. He was recently interviewed about it by Paul Solman on the PBS NewsHour.
The Bubble Quiz questions range from “Have you ever walked on a factory floor?” and “Have you ever had a job that caused something to hurt at the end of the day?” to whether you have seen certain popular movies or eaten in certain chain restaurants. If you are interested in finding out where you score, it’s easy to find on the NewsHour website.
I myself took the quiz earlier today, but didn’t find it particularly enlightening. I guess I’m already aware that I live in a bubble of privilege. Also, I am not entirely sure that Mr. Murray is an oracle on what constitutes “American culture at large.” Still, if those who took the quiz were a fair sample of the voting public, and if their answers were carefully analyzed, perhaps it might serve as a barometer of the next election.
What we all know for sure is that the electorate is deeply divided, and that the societal culture gap is real. Trump and Sanders are only making that division so obvious we cannot ignore it any longer.