How I Know It’s Not Too Late
Republican voters can still change their minds
When I first started talking with my uncle in 2016 about why he voted for Trump, I had no hope he could change his mind.
By that point he’d spent decades listening to right-wing talk radio, watching Fox News, and reading GOP talking points on social media. He was certain he was right and that Democrats like me were, if not downright evil, at least duped by the mainstream media.
So, instead of trying to persuade him, I just listened and tried to understand him. And honestly, I was as surprised as anyone when, after all that listening, he started to shift his perspective.
In retrospect, though, I should have seen it coming. As a psychiatrist, I know a thing or two about what it takes for people to change. Psychotherapy is based around the idea that the best way to facilitate transformation is by creating a supportive, nonjudgmental space where people are invited to talk through their feelings and beliefs. Unwittingly, that’s what I did for my uncle—except instead of talking about his problems, we talked about the nation’s problems.
Since then I’ve learned there was nothing unique about my experience with my uncle. There are numerous well-known examples of people changing their minds about politics after being listened to without judgment:
Megan Phelps-Roper, a woman raised in the notoriously homophobic and anti-Semitic Westboro Baptist Church, left the church after she began talking with outsiders who reached out in response to her hateful posts on Twitter.
Derek Black, the godson of David Duke and the son of the founder of the neo-Nazi online community Stormfront, turned away from his family’s hateful beliefs after a group of Jewish students befriended him at college.
David Weissman, a former Trump supporter who used to send Twitter mobs after anyone who opposed the President, changed his behavior and his mind after Sarah Silverman and others began chatting with him on the social media platform.
And, of course…
More than 200 people left the KKK after talking with Daryl Davis, a black musician who spends his free time persuading white supremacists to turn in their robes.
Among progressives, there’s a tendency to see these stories as exceptions rather than the rule. Folks assume such dramatic change can’t happen at scale or quickly enough to affect our national political situation.
But the data tell a different story. The history of American politics is full of examples of public opinion shifting radically over a remarkably short period of time. And the most extraordinary example happened during our lifetime.
Marriage Equality
As we struggle with the far right’s capture of the GOP, it’s easy to forget our nation’s overall progress on social issues in recent years, especially when it comes to LGBTQ rights.
For example, as recently as 25 years ago, support for marriage equality was rare. According to Gallup, in 1996 just a quarter of the American public supported same-sex marriage. As the chart below shows, however, those attitudes shifted radically and steadily over the next two and a half decades. These days, more than two-thirds of Americans believe same-sex unions should be legal, with the same rights as traditional marriages.
While it’s tempting to dismiss these changes as the result of generational change, as older Americans are replaced by a younger generation with less traditional views, the data tell a different story. In fact, the graph below from Pew Research Center shows that older generations changed their attitudes on marriage equality at roughly the same rate as younger generations.
It’s important to note these changing attitudes about marriage equality were not limited to people on the left side of the political spectrum. As the following chart from Gallup shows, while there were baseline differences in support between Democrats and Republicans, over time, support rose steadily among members of both parties and independent voters.
All this data tells a compelling story. Attitude change can happen relatively quickly, even on highly charged issues closely tied to core values and fixed beliefs. While the full time frame shown here was a quarter of a century, support for marriage equality essentially doubled in those first ten years. Additionally, these changes can happen regardless of age and party identification. While people may not end up in the same place, the absolute size of the shift can be just as large.
Underestimating Republicans
I’ve found progressives often greatly underestimate Republicans’ capacity for change. A big reason for that is likely “change blindness” or a bias toward viewing the world as consistent. It’s hard for our monkey brains to keep track of our dynamic environment when people and objects around us are constantly changing. But it’s less cognitively taxing for us to just assume things are static unless the change is explicitly brought to our attention. This is how magicians fool us so easily—while our attention is diverted elsewhere, they alter something in our surroundings so that later, when they guide our attention back, we’re thrilled and amazed to discover the change.
We fall prey to the same bias with regard to ourselves. It’s easy to forget how much we each have personally changed our minds over the course of our adult lives. But think about it. Have you always had the exact same views about race? Gender? Foreign policy? Individual politicians? Political parties? Almost certainly not, but you’ve likely lost track of those past changes because they’re simply no longer relevant.
Reminding ourselves of this bias and our own capacity for change is useful because it helps us be more patient and compassionate with Republicans who are still in the process of becoming who they will eventually be. Remember what Malcolm X taught:
“Don’t be in a hurry to condemn because he doesn’t do what you do or think as you think or as fast. There was a time when you didn’t know what you know today.”
Changing our approach
I used to think the first step in getting progressives to persuade their Republican loved ones was teaching progressives how to do it. More recently I’ve realized that the first step is convincing progressives it can actually be done.
Have I succeeded? Or do you still have doubts? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.