It's the Brain, Stupid

You have probably heard that if you’re born right-handed, then the left side of your brain is dominant, and vice versa. When you walk into kindergarten, the teacher doesn’t ask, “Okay, kids, who wants to be right-handed and who wants to be left-handed?” That would be preposterous.

According to a wealth of recent research on brain structure, it's equally preposterous that your political leanings can be changed. What you perceive as political choices are not choices at all. Your brain's biology influences your politics, telling you what to do, what to fear, and what to take in stride—and how to vote.

Neuroscientists, specifically neuropolitical scientists, have revealed that liberals tend to have increased gray matter volume in the anterior cingulate cortex. In contrast, conservatives tend to have increased gray matter volume in the amygdala.

In comprehensible terms, this means that conservative brains tend to freak out over situations involving threat, conflict and change. At the same time, liberals seek novel solutions and cope with uncertain outcomes. It’s protecting the status quo, or even regression, versus exploring progressive policies.

How you organize thoughts and opinions about politics isn’t nurture; it’s nature.

Political psychologists held that parental influences had much to do with their children’s political persuasion. To their credit, parental influence accurately predicts 69.5% of the time whether one will be right- or left-wing. However, brain scans have an astonishing 82.9% accuracy rate. And none of us can change our brain structure.

Yet, where is our free will if we cannot decide consciously who to vote for?

Free will

In his 1994 book "The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul," Francis Crick, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, proposed that human consciousness, including thoughts and emotions, is entirely the result of neural activity in the brain. He argued that the traditional concept of the "soul" or "mind" is not separate from the physical brain but rather arises from the interactions of neurons and biochemical processes.

In other words, we don’t have much free will.

When it comes to politics, we’re hardwired and must live with what’s happening in one’s larger anterior cingulate cortex or if there’s more gray matter volume in the amygdala. Those are the roots of biological, neurological, and political leanings. Since writing that book, Crick’s hypothesis has become a scientific fact concerning politics.

So, what do politicians do with this information? Continue preaching to the choir and hope those with similar biology come out and vote? If all eligible voters were forced to cast a ballot, we might find out what our country's biological makeup is, and love it or hate it, we’d have to roll with it.

What about swing voters?

Each side of the aisle targets swing voters, and their votes significantly determine the country's course (when they vote). Do swing voters swing, though? Maybe they just come out when persuaded and vote the way their brains are already predisposed for whom to vote for.

Or, maybe there’s an overlooked open door: what if swing voters haven’t changed; instead, the swing voter’s party and its political philosophy did?

Parties do change. Over a century, ideologies between Republicans and Democrats flipped. The Republicans were abolitionists during the Civil War and advocated change and human interests. The Democrats had its stronghold in the South and reflected its post-Civil War and Reconstructionist frustration. Fast forward a hundred years, and the policies of the Democrats (think the Civil Rights Act) became the party that Republicans like Lincoln would have identified with 100 years earlier.

Republicans shifted from civil rights to the rights of businesses and smaller government with fewer safety nets. It wasn’t biology that changed. It was party ideology. Our predetermined voting preference followed the shift.

Democrats have to incorporate powerful biological factors into their campaigns by persuading people who are on the fence that they are on that fence because their party left them. They aren’t leaving their party. They can keep those amygdala and insular cortexes just how they are, and Democrats will respect and reduce the fear factor that swings their votes.

That brings us, as does everything else, to Trump's cult. Convincing Tumpers that their party left them will not work during this election cycle. Trump is the party. But he won’t run again four years from now when, during this run, he can hardly get his nouns and verbs to agree.

That gives Democrats four years to plan an innovative strategy based on the biological fact that voters can't change their leanings —but that Democrats can accommodate the confused refugees from his cult and the mess it leaves behind.

In an era when climate change is framed as something one “believes in” or doesn’t, when precautions during a pandemic are politicized and divisive, and misdirected aggression is a political tactic, it’s time for Democrats to lean some neuroscience.

The solution does not mean appealing to logic directly; it involves logical ways of working with biological composition to remove the idea that the party does not threaten the right wing and that progress will create safety regardless of their biological construction. After all, fear and safety do—or should—strike a harmonious balance.

It’s a tall order. But it’s not insurmountable. It won’t take a rocket scientist or brain surgeon to figure it out.