GOP firebrand and Beetlejuice fan Lauren Boebert recently delivered another of her signature rants on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives. “The American people are done messing around with a woke, weak-kneed system that lets our elections get hijacked,” she Karened.
Boebert’s comment, subtly referencing the repeatedly debunked conspiracy theory that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump, is emblematic of a concerning trend. Political discourse is increasingly based on intuition rather than evidence.
Fittingly, the same day that Boebert loosed her reality-challenged tirade, the journal Nature Human Behavior published a scientific analysis revealing just how much fact-based political discourse has decayed over the years. Never before have members of Congress based their rhetoric more on beliefs and less on evidence.
The international research team behind the study ran a computational text analysis on 8.5 million speeches spoken between 1879 and 2022, harvested from congressional records. Their algorithm probed the texts for fact-based language (words like “analyze”, “data”, and “findings”) and intuition-based language (such as “point of view”, “common sense”, “guess” and “believe”). The team then tallied up the counts for both categories, transforming the corresponding ratio into a measurement called EMI or “Evidence-Minus-Intuition.” A positive EMI indicates a higher proportion of facts, while a negative value indicates a higher proportion of personal opinions. Calculating EMI by year, the researchers could see how fact-based discourse in Congress shifted over time.
As displayed in the graph, the roughly quarter-century after World War II may have been the golden age for rationality in politics, with the EMI rising to record highs. But since the mid-1970s, that relative utopia has steadily disintegrated. We now find ourselves at a historic low of evidence-based political rhetoric. Per the chart above, both Democrats and Republicans have brought us to this moment essentially in lockstep. But since 2020, Republicans on the Hill have firmly departed from fact-based communication in comparison to Democrats.
The present, sorry state of political discourse doesn’t merely make our ears bleed and brains cringe, it’s sharply correlated with legislative incompetence and stagnation. As the EMI has decreased, so, too has the number of public laws passed, the researchers noted. Perhaps because they’re eschewing facts for feelings, lawmakers aren’t passing timely bills to respond to the real-life needs of the American people.
“Exclusive reliance on intuition may prevent productive political debate because evidence and data can no longer adjudicate between competing political positions and eventually lead to an agreement,” the researchers wrote.
Also coinciding with falling EMI are rising economic inequality, greater political polarization, and an explosion in political media coverage. The latter could explain the trend, the researchers speculate. C-SPAN launched feeds of House proceedings in 1979 and Senate proceedings in 1986. With cameras on them all the time, lawmakers may now see every moment as a chance to boost their profile.
In 2016, former speaker of the House and presidential candidate Newt Gingrich argued on CNN that while evidence might show that crime is down, it didn’t matter because people never feel that it is. “As a political candidate, I’ll go with how people feel,” he said.
Politicians have historically leaned on intuition, personal experience, and charisma to win public votes. But when in office, they have legislated based on evidence and reality behind closed doors. As the halls of Congress have opened up to public viewing, it may be harder for them to do the unpopular, mundane, nitty-gritty of governing.
“Politicians might find themselves driven to embrace a perpetual campaign style of representation, transforming congressional speeches into orchestrated performances aimed at capturing media attention,” the authors speculated. “Consequently, this shift may result in a reduced focus on meaningful intellectual discourse and nuanced policy discussions within the legislative body.”
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