Taking It to the Polls

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In just a few weeks, American voters will head to the polls. For many Barnard students, this will be the first time they cast their vote. We spoke with our resident election expert, Michael G. Miller, associate professor of political science, as he gears up to teach in the fall. Miller — whose research focuses on political behavior and election science — is the author of several books, including Small Power: How Local Parties Shape Elections (Oxford University Press, 2022). He is also a data scientist and, since 2017, has served as an analyst on the Fox News decision desk, where he designs election night call models and helps to project the winners and losers.

Ahead of the semester, Miller offers insight on the presidential news cycle, the impact of social media on voters, and how he plans to teach in the days leading up to — and following — the election. 

Can you tell me about the courses you are going to be teaching in the fall?

I have Intro to American Politics, on the Columbia side, with 400 seats. I also have an existing seminar on elections. I teach it every fall of every even numbered year, because even on a midterm, there’s things going on. I was just spending the past couple days writing biographies for 12 fictional candidates who are running in real districts. The students are going to be working on a campaign plan. I am most looking forward to working with the Media Center. [The students are] going to produce a TV ad and a logo and then a get-out-the-vote plan. For one of the assignments, I’m going to shock them with a scandal. It will be different for every candidate. And then they’ll have 24 hours to develop a press release. They will be enmeshed in the politics of an actual, targeted race that the DNC or RNC has said is a priority congressional race. 

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How will you be addressing the election in your larger survey course? 

It’s important for students to be able to ask questions. We live at a time when we are filthy with information, but not a whole lot of it is very good — that’s the irony of social media. One of the really challenging things is you’ve got 18- and 19-year-olds here, and they’re voting in their first election, and they’re really feeling it. I’ve noticed when a candidate loses out at the primary, students take that really hard. So one of the things that we have to do as professors is be really cognizant of the forces that are acting not just on us but on our students and on society as well and know that we have to harness our expertise to be the stone in the stream. We have to be the people who say, “Well, I know that it looks this way right now, or it feels this way right now, but these are the numbers to actually look at.”

When I look back at 2016, that is what I learned most of all. The next day, I realized as soon as I arrived on campus, there’s no learning that’s going to happen. People are processing this information. I just dragged a chair up on the stage, and I said, “I will take your questions, whatever questions you have.” Later, I thought back to a professor of mine in undergrad, when 9/11 happened, and as we were still processing this information, she was at the blackboard. Why did this happen? What does our field say about this? We need to be ready to do that sort of thing. So whichever way the election goes, I’ll be ready this time to offer a better explanation the day after. 

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By this fall, you will have been through three presidential elections and numerous congressional and state races while teaching at Barnard. How has this informed the way you teach the election or your syllabus?

You have to get to know your students. These are students who care a lot about politics, but we also have to balance the fact that our campus itself can be a bit of an echo chamber, which exacerbates a lot of the partisan thought. What I have learned is you’ve got to be ready to teach through whatever happens, and that can be really unpredictable. A friend of mine said last week, “I really wish politics was precedented again.” We are in uncharted waters here with changing out the Democratic nominee. And it just seems like there’s something like that happening every day. An assassination attempt — most of us haven’t seen that in our lifetime. I think there’s a responsibility of expertise to try to remove yourself from the hotter, more passionate kinds of narratives so that you can be the person who more coolly tries to process this information, and that’s what I have tried to do. 

As the news cycle has gotten faster and faster, how does that factor into your teaching, especially as students get their news from platforms like TikTok or Instagram?

One of the messages that it’s important to tell students, and the public too, is that not everything matters. I’m a big critic of horse race journalism — where we start talking about the election two years before it actually happens. I think there’s a great social cost there, because we’re not covering policy. There’s a reason why Joe Biden had a hard time selling his accomplishments as president. It’s because the media aren’t really reporting them. They’re instead coming out with a horse race poll about him and Trump 18 months before the election. And I spend a lot of my time letting the students know these polls are made because they generate interest, but there’s not even really any smoke, much less fire. If you can believe it, speaking in August, there’s probably 10% of the electorate still up for grabs, that hasn’t made up its mind. I tell students, you really can’t process any of this information until after Labor Day, which coincides with when classes start.

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What is your advice to your students who are first-time voters? 

I know that college students are famous procrastinators, but when it comes to voting, particularly as a college student, you have got to move early. Because different states have different absentee voting requirements, some will mandate that you have an excuse. Well, if you’re a student from Texas and you’ve moved to New York, you’ve got an excuse, you can get a mail ballot, but there are layers of bureaucracy that you have to go through in order to do that. And the other thing is, if your permanent address is in a battleground state, should you vote there? Or should you vote in New York? Because you’re often entitled to vote in either. You can’t vote in both is probably the most important piece of advice — don’t commit a felony.

The other thing I want to address is people in New York often say, “My vote doesn’t matter here, because the presidential election is all but decided.” The president doesn’t unilaterally set policy in most cases. And a lot of the things that people care about, like criminal law, social policy, taxation, that’s all still at the state level, right? And so deciding your state legislature, deciding your local council people, that alone is a reason to vote, no matter what the state of the presidential election is. The gaze is now kind of all at the national level. And the great irony is that the state legislature is still the creature of regulation. And the second thing that is more common at the university is people really have an overly complex notion of what their vote means and how to go about processing it. One of the things that I hear a lot is, “I’m not going to vote for Biden because I want to send a message.” You’re not sending a message. No one is listening to that message. Voting in the United States takes you five seconds because we have a two-party system. It’s this person or that person. But not choosing one can lead to the election of the other too.

Voter turnout is always lowest among 18- to 29-year-olds, and candidates spend different levels of effort courting the youth vote. How successful do you think Kamala Harris’s campaign has been in leveraging the power of social media with memes and Charli XCX to connect with young people? Do you think it’ll boost voter turnout?

The electorate, but especially younger voters, are looking for a more positive vibe, and I think they’re getting that so far with the Harris campaign. One of the things that is very interesting to me is they have been willing to laugh at themselves a little. The coconut tree, right? That was a detriment four years ago, and now it’s suddenly kind of refashioned as a strength. I think young voters, but just voters, look at a candidate who’s willing to have a sense of humor, to bring a positive message and a little bit of a smile into politics. I say to students a lot, “We’re living in a post-policy democracy, and it’s just vibes all the way down.” So if you’ve got the good vibes on your side, that’s a good position to be in.