Support Democrats in all presidential and congressional elections. Support Democrats in the majority of state and local elections, but keep an open mind for cases where it is appropriate to make an exception. See the scoring model here.
The Democrats are better in basically two broad ways. First, with their relatively cosmopolitan values and relatively realistic understanding of policy impacts, they implement policies which are more broadly beneficial for humanity and animals. Second, they are more serious about protecting and improving American democracy and keeping our government free of corruption. Overall, the average Democrat scores about a 0.8 and the average Republican scores about a -0.8, taking a weighted average of their merits on all topics on a -3 to +3 scale.
The biggest question for political participation in a multiparty democracy is deciding which party to support, if any. In this analysis I look at the two major United States political parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, to decide which is more deserving of votes, donations and activism across federal, state and local elections. I judge them against the criteria in my Policy Platform, which sets the best policies for maximizing long-run global welfare. If you accept the imperative to maximize long-run total welfare then this is, in theory, a straightforward facts-based evaluation. If you have some other moral opinions then your views may be different, but at the end I will do a sensitivity analysis to loosely reconsider the matter from some different perspectives. You may not trust me to make these judgments, but you can look at the indirect methodologies discussed near the end for a more outside view.
One parameter for this analysis is how far back we should look when judging a party. As the most basic bound, I'd say we should restrict our judgments to the aftermath of the 1960s Civil Rights movement, including the Southern Strategy, which caused a fundamental shift in party composition. This gives us half a century of track record going back to around 1970, if needed. For instance, if we were to perform a simple statistical comparison of presidents from the two parties, we would need to look this far back in order to have a meaningful sample size.
However, if there has been enough recent data that we don't need to look so far back, then we can do much better by starting at the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan's presidency energized the modern conservative movement which has defined the Republican Party. Still, from the 1980s to the 2000s there was still some continuous evolution in the political parties, so information from the beginning of this period still has less relevance.
Then in the 2010s both parties underwent major changes. First, the Democratic Party heaved strongly to the leftSee this analysis from 538 showing big changes in sentiment among ordinary Democrats, this analysis from New York Times showing that the Democratic Party manifesto moved rapidly to the left, and this commentary comparing left-wing American politics from 2000 to 2018., a trend which may still be ongoing. Second, the Republican Party nominated Donald Trump and has largely embraced him and his brand of politics, with numerous lesser Republican politicians following in his image. So it's really best to focus on the most up-to-date indicators of political party actions and sentiment, if enough data since 2016 is available.
In some cases I reference opinion polls showing how many ordinary Democrats or Republicans agree with a particular policy idea. These are relatively unreliable because they may not correspond well with politicians' behavior and they are vulnerable to partisan messagingDavid Shor writes, "these polls give us a very limited informational environment. You just throw people a sentence-length idea, which they’ve often never heard of before, and then people react to it. So it tells you how people will respond to a policy at first brush without any partisan context. But ultimately, when people hear from both sides, they’re gonna revert to some kind of partisan baseline. But there’s not a nihilism there; it’s not just that Democratic-leaning voters will adopt the Democratic position or Republican-leaning ones will automatically adopt the Republican one. Persuadable voters trust the parties on different issues.", they just give a partial indication of the political incentives in the party.
Since there are two major parties in perpetual opposition, I give them mirrored scores. I estimate a score for the Democrats, and the Republicans always get the opposite of that.
Republican politicians tend to deny the fact of anthropogenic climate change, greatly exaggerate the scientific uncertainty over the phenomenon, or excessively downplay its consequences, though there are a few moderate Republican politicians who appropriately recognize it. Meanwhile, Democratic politicians universally accept that it is a real and significant problem. Some Democratic politicians exaggerate the problem, for instance by calling it an "existential threat" and implying that our children won't have a safe place to live if we don't do anything about it. However, it definitely seems better for our government to err on the side of overestimating the problem rather than minimizing it. This is partly due to political forces such as the fossil fuel lobby presenting undue constraints against climate action.The idea of an international coordination problem also comes to mind, but that framework actually seems false. Moreover, even though some Democratic politicians claim that climate change is an existential threat, they never demand the kinds of ruthless programs that would be commensurate for such a claimThe most ambitious Democratic proposals are the ideas for a Green New Deal, but it's clear from reading them that they are not panicked about climate change. They have variously tepid or negative attitudes towards things like nuclear power, carbon capture and geoengineering, and seek to constrain and weigh down climate policy with all kinds of handouts to other social justice causes. If you seriously believed that climate change was an existential threat to humanity, you would demand a ruthless Manhattan Project for implementing every possible technology including geoengineering, and would not want to tie it down with things like preferential contracting for women-owned businesses or extensive consultation processes with indigenous communities. ; instead they continue to legislate and govern as if climate change is just another ordinary political priority.
There have been eleven carbon pricing bills in the 116th Congress (2019-2020). Of these, seven were sponsored only by Democrats, and four were bipartisan. Meanwhile, Democrats are far more in favor of ending fossil fuel subsidies.
Democratic politicians are generally much more supportive of clean energy R&D and construction, especially for solar and wind power. 92% of House Democrats voted for the Clean Economy Jobs and Innovation Act, compared to only 4% of House Republicans.
The 2019 Senate Nuclear Energy Leadership Act was sponsored by a Republican and cosponsored by thirteen Republicans, but also cosponsored by nine Democrats. The US Development Finance Corporation's 2019 lifting of a rule against financing nuclear power plant construction in the developing worldSee this article for details on the rule change and why it was a good idea. Here is confirmation that the rule change was implemented. may have been done at the behest of the Republican presidential administration. Democrats in New Mexico and Republicans in Texas have both opposed dry cask storage sites. Neither Democratic nor Republican presidential administrations seem to have made progress towards permanent nuclear waste storage (although this is not a big deal as dry cask storage is basically good enough). Democratic presidential candidates in the 2020 primaries offered mixed views on nuclear power. 59% of Republican citizens support expanding nuclear power, compared to 41% of Democrats. Overall, the Republican Party seems a little more open to nuclear power. That being said, the Democrats are generally more committed to things like carbon pricing and clean energy R&D, so they might ultimately do more to positively promote it.
Democrats tend to be more supportive of regulations against air pollution.
Democrats are more likely to support excessive subsidies for battery and fuel-cell vehicles.
Democrats seem slightly more likely to support environmentalist and localist interests interfering with clean technology projects. Democrats did agree in 2022 to advance commonsense permitting reforms for energy infrastructure, but this may have been due to the insistence of Manchin (a moderate Democrat with the tiebreaking vote), and if Democrats had possessed a larger number of senators then such reforms may not have passed.
Democrats are more likely to oppose oil and gas drilling and pipelines, but also more likely to oppose coal mining.
Overall, I give the Democrats 1.2 points.
Democrats get systematically higher scores on the HSLF scorecard for animal protection. As of late 2020, all twelve members of their 100+ Club are Democrats, and 96% of their Total Zeroes are Republicans. The HSLF scorecard contains judgments on many bills which could be legitimately described as having ambiguous impacts on animal welfare, but if we only look at clear-cut bills against horse soring and dog abuse, the great majority of the cosponsors are still Democrats.
The 2020 Farm System Reform Act (phasing out factory farming) in both House and Senate has been introduced and cosponsored by a minority of the Democrats, but not by a single Republican. Some Democrats in the 2020 presidential primaries endorsed it. Five out of 20-plus candidates in the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries endorsed a moratorium on new factory farm construction; most of the others simply didn't fill out the survey. Republican politicians do not seem to speak against factory farming that much, if at all.
The Trump administration replaced federal inspection of slaughterhouses with self-assessments. Under Trump, the USDA has allowed factory farms to make specious claims of being ‘humane’. In 2018, the Trump administration eliminated a welfare rule for organic farming. In 2017, animal welfare information on laboratories, zoos, dog breeders and other facilities (not farms) was removed from the USDA website; the Trump administration seems to have played a minor role in the change. A 2016 HSLF blog argued that Trump’s agricultural advisory committee was filled with anti-animal-welfare lobbyists and politicians. Trump’s USDA transition team leader was an anti-animal-rights activist. In 2015 Trump tweeted disappointment with the Ringling Brothers for phasing out elephants, disparaging “animal rights stuff”. However he did sign a law against “crush” videos.
There are at least two Democratic national politicians who are ethical vegans (Senator Cory Booker and former Representative Tulsi Gabbard), but no such Republicans as far as I know.
Republicans are more supportive of restrictions against labeling meat replacements with meat terms. For Texas House Bill 316, 95% of Republicans voted yes compared to 76% of Democrats.
Overall, I give the Democrats 1.7 points.
Generally speaking, the GOP is the party of "tough on crime" policies, but there are major exceptions to this. Democrats played a major role in implementing such policies in the past, but they have recently updated to be more reasonable. Democratic governors who barely win their elections actually sponsor more incarceration than their Republican counterparts do (so increasing a Democratic governor's margin of victory should reduce incarceration, but casting the deciding vote for a Democratic governor should increase incarceration).
Every single Senate Democrat voted for the First Step Act, compared to only 3/4 of the Republicans. 89% of House Democrats voted for it, compared to only 77% of Republicans, and all the "No" votes were Republicans.
Politicians from both parties seem to ignore the idea of weakening or abolishing police unions, with the exception of a very few minor Democrats. But 62% of ordinary Democrats want to eliminate police unions, compared to only 45% of Republicans, so there is a little more hope for Democratic politicians to come around.
A few Democratic politicians support scaling back or abolishing police forces. 27% of ordinary Democrats want to abolish the police, compared to just 1% of Republicans. However, Republican president Trump actually tried to defund the police with proposed cuts to federal support for local governments, including a big cut to a federal program to hire cops.
95% of House Democrats voted for the MORE Act to decriminalize marijuana, compared to only 3% of House Republicans. 1/6 of Senate Democrats have sponsored/cosponsored it whereas not a single Republican senator has done so. The Democratic Obama administration partially relaxed federal marijuana policy while the Republican Trump administration tightened it.
A modest minority of Democratic politicians support decriminalizing sex work, whereas Republicans seem to universally oppose the idea.
Republican president Trump used unmarked federal troops to suppress protests in Washington D.C. and Portland. In Portland, they were deployed against the wishes of the local government. They arrested a man into an unmarked vehicle without probable cause, and the deputy director of the force falsely claimed that they were acting legally. They beat a peaceful protester and broke his hand. Trump also pardoned Joe Arpaio.
Many Democrats have exaggerated the degree to which anti-black racism dominates policing and African-American outcomes in the criminal justice system, but many Republicans deny it entirely.
Many Democratic politicians have promoted the BLM movement, while many Republican politicians have demonized it. This is a tough issue to judge. BLM has pushed for a variety of police reforms which are mostly beneficial (excepting departmental budget cuts). However, the protests led to a substantial uptick in homicide, probably because of cultural backlash among cops and/or community reticence to make use of police. BLM protests also created opportunities for looting and vandalism, even though that wasn't Democrats' or BLM's intention. Most BLM protests also help Democratic politicians win elections, although violent protests have the reverse effect. BLM protests also may have discouraged commercial and recreational activities (by filling up public spaces and creating a tense environment) and may have slightly worsened the COVID-19 pandemic. Overall, Democratic politicians' comments promoting BLM were clearly harmful in the short run, but are somewhat likely to be beneficial in the long run. Meanwhile, Republican politicians' demonization probably didn't do anything to discourage people from attending BLM protests, they simply inflamed cops and others to exercise more dangerous backlash.
During the BLM protests and riots of 2020, several Democratic politicians made statements which could be considered rationalizations of riots or vandalism. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi deflected a question about mobs tearing down statues, saying "people will do what they do". Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted that "the whole point of protesting is to make ppl uncomfortable", which if taken out of context might be interpreted as a defense of rioting, but in context she was clearly describing the use of impolite language and slogans like "defund the police". Kamala Harris solicited donations for an organization that was providing bail for people arrested in connection with the BLM protests in Minnesota, and some people bailed out by this fund were accused of violent crimes; there are legitimate reasons to oppose bail requirements even for most suspects of violent crimes, so this was narrowly justified, but was probably net harmful by sending a message of political endorsement to the perpetrators of these particular crimes. There were numerous cases where Democratic politicians spoke in defense of "peaceful protesters" while eliding the reality that a nontrivial minority of protesters were rioting, a kind of subtle misinformation suggesting that there was no violence. Many Democratic officials did condemn the violence, but these condemnations may have been too few and far between. Overall, Democratic politicians did not defend riots and looting, but they did mildly mishandle the situation.
Democratic officials have generally been more willing to support the removal of hateful monuments, with the exception of removing the Georgia Guidestones, something which was only supported by a Republican gubernatorial primary candidate.
Democratic officials mishandled the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone insurrection.
A minority of both parties condemned the placement of January 6 rioters in solitary confinement. Republican officials were more likely to call for greater scrutiny of the killing of Ashli Babbitt.
The Democratic progressive Los Angeles district attorney George Gascón has so far done a good jobHis guidance against cash bail except for exceptional circumstances was good. Ending the trying of juveniles as adults was good; the guidance was too lenient for the Hannah Tubbs case but that was an unusual edge case (Tubbs committed a crime when almost 18 and was tried eight years later, most juvenile cases are not like this), Gascón admitted his mistake (though admittedly that may have been a mere political sop), and upon listening to the audio recording I don't feel that Tubbs was really 'gloating' - they just stated, as any person might, that the sentence would not be bad. Avoiding death penalty prosecutions was good. His reduction of misdemeanor prosecutions was mostly good; while a few tenets seem debatable there certainly appears to be more good than bad. The directive against sentencing enhancements seems good at first glance but I am low confidence and uninformed about this topic.. The Democratic progressive Cook County (which includes Chicago) district attorney Kim Foxx committed "substantial abuses of discretion and operational failures" and made "false and/or misleading public statements" on the Jussie Smollett case, plausibly for political reasons as the phenomenon of an African-American falsely claiming to be the victim of a hate crime was considered embarrassing to the Democrats.
The highest-crime cities are run by Democrats, but that is correlation rather than causationSee this fact check going over the issue and this comparative analysis..
Overall, I give the Democrats 0.7 points.
Democrats are more likely to favor free college tuition. Democratic presidential candidates in 2020 generally supported either two or four years of free tuition for all students or at least those in households making less than $125,000 per year. Republicans broadly oppose the idea.
Democrats tend to support affirmative action but some of them look at it from a perspective of fixing demographic quotas and neglecting social class. Republicans sometimes oppose affirmative action and sometimes tolerate it.
Democrats seem more likely to end legacy admissions. Democratic presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg supported the idea.
Democrats usually oppose vouchers and are sometimes hostile towards charter schools. Republicans generally support them.
Democrats offer strong support for teachers' unions.
The Obama administration undermined school discipline in pursuit of phantom racism and their school discipline guidelines put students at risk of school shootings and other dangers.
Democrats in Oregon badly undermined standards for high school graduation.
Overall, I give the Democrats -2.2 points.
Both parties seem typically similar in their treatment of government technology organizations like the OSTP and IARPA. However, the Trump administration undermined the capacities of some of these groups. It is unclear whether this is an aberration or something that will be a recurring feature of the Republican Party.
The Bush administration reneged on an effort to reduce bio-weapon risks.
Democrats seem slightly more likely to support strong privacy rights.
After adjusting for socioeconomic and demographic factors, states with Democratic governments suffered only 80% as much death from COVID-19 as did Republican state governments, but this could be confounded by Democratic and Republican citizens engaging in different levels of masking and social distancing.
Obama had to handle Ebola and swine flu, while Trump had to handle COVID-19. While a direct comparison of outcomes is not possible due to the very different characteristics of these diseases, the Obama administration seems to have been reasonably competent. Obama picked a good person to coordinate the Ebola response.See this article and these comments. Meanwhile the Trump administration was totally incompetent.
Metaculus suggested that a Republican federal government would lead to a bit less COVID-19 death than a Democratic federal government, but this may be affected by the likelihood that a bad pandemic would make people more likely to vote for Democrats, and there were only 14-15 forecasters involved so the difference is not statistically very strong. It is also at odds with champion forecasters' projections for the Biden and Trump administrations, which are cited in my writeup linked above.
Both parties include a few politicians - like Joe Biden (D) and Tom Cotton (R) - who issued early warnings about COVID-19.
Speaker of the House Pelosi (D) opposed approving a vaccine based on UK trials. Generally speaking both parties have ignored the idea of expediting vaccine approval, with the exception of Donald Trump who (for corrupt reasons) tried to get a COVID-19 vaccine approved hastily before the election.
Overall, I give the Democrats 0.6 points.
Bush started PEPFAR. Obama allowed it to stagnate.
Trump's foreign aid score was -2.
The Global Fragility Act was roadblocked by two Republican senators.
The Mexico City Policy is generally supported by Republicans and opposed by Democrats.
Overall, I give the Democrats 1.2 points.
Most foreign policy operates by bipartisan consensus.
Trump's great power relations score was -2.8, though this was largely due to his personal character and corruption rather than party ideology. Biden's great power relations score is 1.1, though this was a tentative judgment made without the benefit of a presidential track record. Pence botched his diplomatic visit to the 2018 APEC summit in Papua New Guinea by initially refusing to stay overnight (citing security concerns) and remaining surrounded by a bubble of aides and bodyguards, granting no time for personal contact except for photo opportunities. Xi Jinping in comparison was much more personal and generous with his time at the same event.
As of November 2020, the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act was cosponsored by 21% of Democratic senators and 30% of Republican senators. In the House of Representatives, two Republicans and zero Democrats voted against it.
Numerous Congressional Republicans tolerated or supported Trump's repeal of the JCPOA, while Democrats consistently wanted to uphold the deal.
In my early Candidate Scoring System ratings of 2020 presidential candidates, I gave 18 Democrats an average of 0.2 points for great power relations, and gave 7 Republicans an average of -0.5 points.
America's pro-Israel orthodoxy (historically a bipartisan consensus) dominates the Republican Party while having only moderate strength in the Democratic Party. Some Democrats now take a tougher line against Israel and care more about Palestinian rights.
Representative Ilhan Omar (D) made snarky social media comments saying that other American politicians were bought by AIPAC. Her comments weren't antisemiticThere are false tropes about Jews secretly controlling global finance and politics, which are almost inherently antisemitic. But that doesn't mean that it's always antisemitic to criticize the influence of a Jewish group. It's not sensible to have a double standard where it's okay to criticize the influence of Chinese lobbying or Christian lobbying (for instance) but not okay to criticize the influence of Jewish lobbying. And AIPAC is not exactly a Jewish group either; it is a pro-Israel organization with plenty of involvement from American Christians., and may have been grounded in truth about AIPAC's influence, but her accusation of an explicit quid pro quo for cash was baseless, and her comments were just stupid and counterproductive anyway. Other Democrats rebuked her, and she subsequently apologized.
In my early Candidate Scoring System ratings of 2020 presidential candidates, I gave 18 Democrats an average of 0 points for Israel and Palestine, and gave 7 Republicans an average of -1.6 points.
Overall, I give the Democrats 0.5 points.
A few Democrats such as Bernie Sanders and Andrew Yang support replacing first-past-the-post with better voting systems. I haven't heard of any notable Republicans agreeing.
Many Democratic politicians support statehood for Puerto Rico and Washington D.C. Republican politicians are consistently opposed to that.
Some Democratic politicians support replacing the Electoral College with a nationwide popular vote. Republican politicians are consistently opposed to that.
Both Republicans and Democrats have contributed to the growing power of our executive branch, but the Trump administration stretched it to the extreme.
Some Democratic senators support ending the filibuster for legislation, but there is enough internal dissent that they would need a substantial majority to pull it off. Republican politicians are consistently opposed to it. In 2013, Democrats removed the filibuster for most judicial appointments, but in 2017, Republicans removed the filibuster for Supreme Court appointments.
Democrats seem more supportive of raising salaries for congressional staffers.
Both parties have gerrymandered districts, but Republicans have done so the most (especially for state legislatures). Democrats seem more supportive of anti-gerrymandering reform.
Republican control of state government dramatically reduces democratic performance. The Republican-passed SB 202 law in Georgia undermines democracy. That said, many Republican measures on voting rules seem benign.
I think Democratic politicians would be more supportive of term limits for the Supreme Court, but there isn't clear evidence showing this.
In late 2020, many Democrats seriously considered court packing. However, some Republicans in 2016 considered analogously shrinking the size of the court in the event of a Democratic presidential victory. Senate Republicans also refused to give a hearing to Obama's moderate appointee Merrick Garland, leaving the Supreme Court with a vacant seat for a year, which might be considered negative court packing (though Democrats would have probably done the same). Meanwhile, there have been 20 attempts to pack or shrink state courts, which were mostly done by Republicans. Overall, there isn't a big disparity between the parties in willingness to court pack. Court packing is arguably fair game anyway.
When Merrick Garland was nominated, Senate Republicans claimed to have a principle against appointing Supreme Court justices in an election year. The appointment of Amy Coney Barrett proves that this was false and they were just playing partisan hardball. Probably there is no difference between the parties here and Democrats would do the same. There isn't anything wrong with appointing Supreme Court justices in an election year anyway.
I have investigated a few high-profile partisan court cases to see whether Republican- or Democrat-appointed justices produce better rulings. Based on fourteen cases, it seems that neither party's justices have clear superiority in legal reasoning nor in likelihood of exercising the power of judicial review, but Democrat-appointed justices make judgments which produce better policy outcomes. While promoting worse legal reasoning for the sake of improving policy would probably be a bad idea, it is reasonable to say that it's better to have judges which interpret policy in better ways, holding quality of legal reasoning constant. Of course, an overly Democratic court would be unhealthy, and in general I would say that the ideal balance of the court is to have five Democratic appointees and four Republican appointees.
Nevada's innovation zones proposal was promoted by a Democratic governor.
Overall, I give the Democrats 2 points.
Democrats consistently favor stronger actions against ground and water pollution. The partisan divide is not as strong here as it is with air pollution, but Democrats do not hold zealous counterproductive beliefs on ground and water pollution as some of them do with air pollution (like their anti-nuclear views and NIMBYism). I give the Democrats 1.5 points.
Democrats are generally tougher on guns, although some of them are still very weak on the issue and some of them support ineffective measures. Also, Republicans support a few minor gun liberalization ideas that might be worthwhile. The congressional letter against an especially dubious ATF crackdown on suppressors was signed by about half of Republicans but, according to my initial glance, apparently not a single Democrat.
Republicans very deliberately promote gun ownership, but at the same time, Democratic threats to gun control push Americans to preemptively buy more guns.
I give the Democrats 1 point.
Democrats consistently oppose work requirements for Medicaid; some Republicans support them.
The Affordable Care Act passed along a strict party line in the Senate: every single Democrat supported it and every Republican opposed it (except one who didn't vote). Republicans have repeatedly attempted to curb or repeal its provisions, though a minority of Republicans have always prevented it from being repealed.
Democrats frequently support universal healthcare plans. While these plans are not all great, they are mostly better than the status quo. Meanwhile, Republican plans are rare and limited. Despite control of Congress and the presidency in the late 2010s, they did not make serious progress on health coverage.
There doesn't seem to be much partisan difference in policy towards the pharmaceutical industry. Both parties have minorities which press for populist drug policy.
Some Republican politiciansThis includes Republican state legislators in Ohio and governors in Texas and Florida. have outlawed or tried to outlaw vaccination requirements. Republicans in Tennessee successfully pressured the state department of health to curtail outreach efforts encouraging teenage vaccinations. In 2020, numerous prominent Democrats said that a vaccine hastily approved by the Trump administration would be untrustworthy and should not be taken, but Republican voters were ultimately much more vaccine-hesitant than Democratic voters, suggesting that Republican officials did more to promote anti-vaccine sentiment.
Trump's healthcare score was -0.8.
In my early Candidate Scoring System ratings of 2020 presidential candidates, I gave 18 Democrats an average of 0.6 points for healthcare, and gave 7 Republicans an average of -0.9 points.
Overall, I give the Democrats 0.9 points.
Electing a Democrat as mayor leads to increased multi-family housing production, but Democrats and Republicans on city councils perform equally poorly.
The YIMBY Act passed the House by voice vote without opposition but the Republican Senate majority leader has not let it move forward.
California's SB50 bill received yes votes from 52% of Democrats and only 30% of Republicans. California's governor Newsom (D) has promoted housing liberalization but has not led strongly on the issue.
Trump's housing score was -1.6.
In my early Candidate Scoring System ratings of 2020 presidential candidates, I gave 18 Democrats an average of 0.7 points for housing, and gave 7 Republicans an average of -0.1 points.
Overall, I give the Democrats 0.5 points.
Members of both parties often voice openness towards expanding legal immigration and refugee admissions. The Case Backlog and Transparency Act is cosponsored by both Democrats and Republicans.
In 2021, an amendment against considering visa expansion was supported by 80% of Republican senators and opposed by 100% of Democratic senators. In 2020 a Republican senator blocked a bill giving special refugee status to Hongkongers.
Democrats are consistently supportive of the DREAM Act and pathways to legal status for undocumented immigrants, while Republicans are usually opposed to them. Many Republicans support varying degrees of deportation of undocumented immigrants, while Democrats generally oppose this.
Evacuation of Afghans who aided American troops as America withdrew from the country was unforgivably terrible under the Biden administration; had Trump been in charge, things probably would have been basically the same, but possibly with a little more effort in response to political pressure. A House bill to expand and expedite Special Immigrant Visas for Afghan interpreters was supported by 100% of Democrats and 92% of Republicans.
Trump's immigration score was -3.1.
In my early Candidate Scoring System ratings of 2020 presidential candidates, I gave 18 Democrats an average of 1.6 points for immigration, and gave 7 Republicans an average of 0.4 points.
Overall, I give the Democrats 1.6 points.
This typically isn't a partisan issue.
As described in the macroeconomics section, national Democrats tend to support larger, but not more frequent or timely, stimulus packages. These stimulus measures can include infrastructure spending.
Progressives (who tend to be Democrats) have made it extremely difficult to build new infrastructure in America, especially in our cities, although this is mainly a problem of low-level process reform and Democratic executives like Breed, Newsom and Cuomo have good goals and are simply hamstrung. Republicans are more willing to reduce environmental review requirements, but the Clinton and Obama administrations did try to fix problems with the NEPA.
Overall, I give the Democrats -0.4 points.
Neither Democrats nor Republicans seem to be doing anything substantial to promote alternatives to adversarial unions, altho the idea is more popular in conservative circles.
Democrats tend to be more supportive of unemployment insurance.
I give the Democrats 0.5 points.
Some Republicans categorically oppose gender transition for minors and some Republicans oppose bans on LGBT workplace discrimination.
I give the Democrats 1.2 points.
Republican and Democratic presidents seem about equally effective at promoting short-term economic growth.
Generally speaking, Republicans reject Democratic stimulus packages because they're too big, and Democrats reject Republican stimulus packages because they're too small. In 2020, House Democrats under Pelosi blocked Republican stimulus legislation, saying it wasn't big enough, but in this case it was presumably done to harm Trump's reelection chances. There is a roughly symmetric tug-of-war as both sides push for their preferred bills and follow reelection incentives, so neither party leads to more frequent or more timely stimulus legislation. That said, Democrats do push for larger stimulus measures, which is probably a mildly good thing.
Jay Powell was nominated by Trump and supported by "nearly all Republicans and a vast majority of Democrats" in the Senate.
Judy Shelton was nominated by Trump and supported by nearly all Republicans and not a single Democrat in the Senate.
Trump pushed ineffectively for a more pro-worker Federal Reserve. Numerous Democratic 2020 presidential candidates had more refined plans to create a pro-worker Federal Reserve.
I give the Democrats 0.3 points.
Democrats almost always support higher minimum wages, while Republicans generally oppose them. I give the Democrats 1.5 points.
Republicans are more likely to support higher military spending.
The two parties have different views on nuclear modernization, with Republicans seeming to support it unconditionally and Democrats sometimes opposing it unconditionally; neither side seems better than the other here. A few Democrats have called for a unilateral declaration of nuclear no-first-use.
Overall, I give Democrats -1 point.
Trump's occupational licensing score was 2.
This generally isn't a partisan issue.
I give the Democrats -0.1 point.
Both sides generally support expanding the Child Tax Credit. Both sides support the EITC.
A few Democrats call for a child allowance or basic income. Republicans usually don't, but Mitt Romney's child allowance proposal is better than Biden's.
I give the Democrats 0.8 points.
Bush invaded Afghanistan, which was a bad move in hindsight, but pretty understandable at the time and a Democratic president definitely would have done it too. Bush invaded Iraq in 2003, which appeared to be a worse idea at the time, and a Democratic president might not have done it. The invasion of Iraq was supported by 97% of Republican representatives, 98% of Republican senators, 39% of Democratic representatives, and 59% of Democratic senators.
Republicans have been more supportive of continued deployments to stabilize Iraq. Bush seems to have handled counterinsurgency in Iraq better than Obama did. Obama's withdrawal from 2011 seems like the wrong choice to me, but international relations scholars tend to say it was the right decision.
Bush failed to send more troops and support reconstruction in Afghanistan when it was most critical, but if a Democrat were president he likely wouldn't have been more dedicated to winning in Afghanistan. The Bush administration also refused to negotiate early on with the defeated Taliban in Afghanistan (thus changing the dynamics of Afghan warfare), and a Democrat may have made a better choice. Moreover, a Democrat might have withdrawn from Afghanistan in 2002-2008, a dubious idea at the time, but certainly correct in hindsight. Obama conducted a serious troop surge, but it accomplished little because Obama committed to a timeline rather than conditions. The Trump administration was more realistic with a focus on conditions rather than timelines, but it undermined the Afghan government with the Doha AgreementThe Doha Agreement completely bypassed the Islamic Republic and put no serious conditions on the Taliban to reduce the civil war in Afghanistan. It also was worded ambiguously, with there being uncertainty about whether it mandated the Taliban to cut ties with Al-Qaeda entirely (which would be a totally unrealistic expectation, anyway) or if the Taliban were allowed to maintain ties with Al-Qaeda as long as they didn't let Afghanistan be used as a base for terrorism against the United States, thus leading many people on both sides to allege that they and not the other side had followed the deal. and an unfavorable prisoner release deal. The Trump administration also promised to withdraw from Afghanistan as part of the Doha Agreement; some Democratic administrations might have done the same, but Hillary Clinton would not, at least not without better terms. The Trump administration allegedly would have tried to get a better deal out of the Taliban rather than withdrawing but it's extremely dubious that this would have succeeded. Biden withdrew from Afghanistan, which was a debatable decision in his case given the stipulations of the Doha deal; 74% of international relations scholars approved of the withdrawal. The Biden administration mismanaged the withdrawalThe big apparent failure is that Biden refused the Taliban's alleged offer to let American troops secure Kabul for an orderly evacuation, leading to the chaos and insecurity at the airport, which involved over a hundred deaths by terrorism and many people stuck outside the airport perimeter unable to get a flight. Securing all of Kabul would have been difficult, but worth the effort to get people out in a more orderly manner, and if we had chosen this route then presumably there would be many more Afghan soldiers still around to help us.
A minor failure is that Biden probably should have started the withdrawal process earlier; what he did was delay the withdrawal a few months, violating the deadline set in the Doha deal for no apparent substantive gain while his administration deliberated on what to do.
Maybe the Biden administration could have set up Afghan forces to be more self-sufficient with logistics and maintenance as we withdrew our contractors. To some extent, Afghan dependence on American contractors was an endemic issue predating Biden, it couldn't be fixed on any reasonable period of time, and it is even arguable that it was a good thing for strengthening the American arms industry. But the Biden administration could have stopped contractors taking away software and systems that the Afghans needed. In hindsight, allowing (or requiring?) contractors to withdraw all that software and systems may be defended with the idea that the Afghan National Army was going to collapse anyway so it was better to prevent the Taliban from capturing that stuff, but we did not strongly expect such a rapid takeover at the time.
Biden's evacuation process probably could have been done better. Assets for evacuation were underutilized; for months the Department of Defense was not tasked with assisting and there seems to have been a lack of interagency coordination. David Kilcullen says that it was a big blunder to give up all our airstrips besides the Kabul airport, and that more civilians should have been evacuated sooner. But the State Department did encourage evacuations and the military withdrawal was known well in advance, some people just chose not to evacuate; it's unclear how many more people could have been evacuated under a better plan. Only some official civilians could have been evacuated earlier. And military officials apparently all told Biden that they only needed Kabul airport, which seems vindicated by the fact that we did seem to have all the flight capacity that we needed.
There is a dilemma here in that evacuating more people sooner would send a signal that the Afghan government was doomed and thus expedite Taliban advances, but it was morally dubious at best to force people to wait in country as a ploy to get Afghans to fight longer and harder, and considering that the government collapsed anyway it was clearly a harmful decision in hindsight. Political scientist Grant Gordon has suggested that the slow evacuation and continued troop presence could have moderated the Taliban to act less viciously at the end of conflict, but this is a poor argument.
Things improved with very rapid evacuations at the eleventh hour once the American presence was cornered into Kabul Airport, although whether the Biden administration did anything special to make this happen is unclear., although it's not clear that a Republican administration would have done better here. Overall, it is not apparent whether Democrats or Republicans did better at managing the war in Afghanistan.
The Obama administration was arguably too weak in Syria, in that they did not try to topple the Assad regime, but I haven't studied this enough to make a firm judgment. Obama was especially criticized for not taking punitive action after the Ghouta chemical attack, but considering the controversy of attribution at the time, and the more recent strong evidence that the attack was actually committed by Liwa al-Islam, Obama's restrained response was justified. The Trump administration moderately worsened our position in SyriaFirst, Trump announced a hasty withdrawal from all of Syria, which would have been a terrible move, but he soon backtracked and abandoned the plan. Later, the Trump administration withdrew from part of Northeast Syria, allowing a destructive Turkish invasion. but a more hawkish Republican might have done better here, and some Democrats might have done similarly poorly.
The CIA support for the Khost Protection Force in Afghanistan was presumably started by George W. Bush, was limited by Obama, then reintroduced and expanded by Trump; the attitude of the Biden administration was unclear but the KPF became nonexistent after Biden withdrew anyway. Worst of all, Trump pardoned war criminals.
Immigration of Afghans who aided American troops as America withdrew from Afghanistan was unforgivably terrible under the Biden administration; had Trump been in charge, things probably would have been basically the same, but possibly with a little more effort in response to political pressure. But in general, Republicans seem a bit more opposed to immigration opportunities for foreigners who aided American troops and face danger in their home countries.
Overall, things are mostly pretty close but given the Republicans' strong support for the Iraq War and tolerance of American war crimes, I give the Democrats 0.8 points.
This typically isn't a partisan issue. I give the Democrats 0 points.
Democrats are generally more willing to raise taxes on the very rich. They also support high corporate taxes and SALT deductions.
Both Biden and Trump supported the idea of a minimum book tax, but Democrats overall seem more supportive of the idea, with Senate Democrats proposing a reconciliation bill in 2022 with a 15% minimum book tax.
Democrats are more willing to increase IRS funding and crack down on tax evasion.
I give the Democrats 0.15 points.
Historically, both parties have been reasonably pro-trade. The Republican Party turned more protectionist around 2016 with the rise of Trump, but when Biden was elected, Republican senators signed a letter asking Biden to end Trump's tariffs, which was not signed by a single Democratic senator. Still, some Democratic politicians have called on Biden to rescind Trump's tariffs.
Overall, I give the Democrats 0.2 points.
Representative Marge Green (R) posted a picture of herself holding a gun opposed to Democratic congresswomen suggesting a threat of violence against them
Some political scientists assess the Republican Party in objectively negative terms. Mann and Ornstein (2016) argue that the GOP is an insurgent outlier party that uniquely disregards the interests of the country in order to hurt the Democrats. Gretchen Helmke says that “There is a marked asymmetry between the two parties,” with Republicans more engaged in “playing constitutional hardball and taking actions that are still within the letter of the law but [that] may violate the spirit of the law or common-sense ideas about fairness and political equality.” According to the V-Dem Institute in Sweden the Democratic Party's commitment to democracy (measured in terms of commitment to the democratic process, tendency to demonize political opponents, disrespect for the fundamental rights of minority groups, and the encouragement of political violence) is much higher than the GOP's. Many comparative political scholars say that state-level Republican politicians are contributing to a major threat of right-wing insurgency. I don't know if the majority of the field agrees, but I haven't seen a single one criticize the Democrats in a comparable manner.
I give the Democrats 1.1 points for fitness for office.
| Issue | Policy position | Weight | Democratic Party score |
| Air pollution | Carbon tax, clean technology | 9 | 1.4 |
| Animal farming | Ban factory farming, pass other regulations, promote plant-based foods | 29 | 1.7 |
| Criminal justice | Deep, comprehensive criminal justice reform | 5 | 1.1 |
| Education policy | School choice, disciplinary overhaul, and alternatives to college | 4 | -2 |
| Emerging threats | Improve relevant government agencies | 40 | 0.5 |
| Foreign aid | Increase foreign aid, especially for global health | 28 | 1.2 |
| Foreign policy | Renew diplomacy, push nuclear arms control, stop repression and genocide | 80 | 0.5 |
| Government | Replace FPTP voting, add new states, strengthen Congress, respect elections | 15 | 2.4 |
| Ground/water pollution | Clean it up | 6 | 1.5 |
| Guns | Pass gun control | 1 | 1 |
| Healthcare | Stop abusive billing, provide public guaranteed health insurance |
5 | 0.8 |
| Housing | Relax zoning rules |
5 | 0.4 |
| Immigration | Allow more immigrants, legal status for the undocumented |
7 | 1.4 |
| Infrastructure | Build more, especially mass transit and for urban areas | 4 | -0.4 |
| Labor | Support unemployment insurance and alternatives to unions | 4 | 0.5 |
| LGBT issues | Accept LGBT people |
2 | 1.2 |
| Macroeconomics | Stimulus is good, the Fed should be pro-worker | 6 | 0.3 |
| Military | Improve conventional forces, exercise careful nuclear deterrence | 10 | -1 |
| Occupational licensing | Relax occupational licensing rules |
2 | -0.1 |
| Poverty relief | Give people money | 5 | 1 |
| R&D | Spend more on R&D grants and incentives | 2 | 0 |
| Small wars | Engage carefully for the global good | 5 | 0.8 |
| Taxation | Improve enforcement, close loopholes, tax the rich |
4 | 0 |
| Trade | Free trade with most countries except China |
6 | 0.7 |
| Fitness for office | Decency and competence | 45% of all of the above | 1.1 |
Of course this does not mean that every single Democrat is better than every single Republican.
In my early Candidate Scoring System reports, I rated 18 Democrats and 7 Republicans as declared or hypothetical 2020 presidential candidates. I have kept their issue scores but adjusted them with the current weightings, in a separate sheet of the Excel model. The results imply that a random Democrat is superior to a random Republican as presidential candidate 91% of the time. This leaves potential for a Republican candidate to be better than a Democrat. However, the good Republicans here were principled ones who stood out as anti-Trump figures (Romney, Kasich, Weld) and have no future as leaders in the Republican Party. Future Republican presidential nominees for the foreseeable future will be more similar to Trump, if not Trump himself. Additionally, my scoring in these early evaluations may have a bothsidesist bias: I gave individual Republicans an average score of -0.44 and individual Democrats anaverage score of 0.51, which is a smaller disparity than that shown by this party-wide evaluation.
Meanwhile, the most important thing in Congress is to just get more seats for the Democrats; intraparty differences in individual representatives' views are not so important. Overall, it's safe to recommend consistently voting for Democrats at the federal level.
In state and local politics, things are more likely to change. Very liberal areas can have extreme Democrats and more moderate Republicans. State- and local-level Democrats seem to be comparably corrupt to state- and local-level Republicans, a difference from the federal level where Republicans are systematically more corrupt. And housing is the most important issue for some city elections, so if a particular Republican happens to be more YIMBY than the Democratic opponent then that could be enough to warrant our votes.
So far I've looked narrowly and specifically at the recent policy actions of Republicans and Democrats. However it may be better to check the overall arc of left-wing and right-wing politics across history, including in different countries.
This is difficult in US history because the parties have not aligned in the same ways. When it comes to social issues, there is a consensus that left-wing politics have been superior. This includes the righteousness of landless suffrage, slavery abolition, women's suffrage, open immigration policy, laws to protect women from domestic violence, legalization of homosexuality, and the end of racial segregation.
When it comes to economic issues, the story is a bit more complicated. I don't see a straightforward consensus on whether the federal government should have been more active with monetary policy and economic development in most of American history. It does seem to be a weak consensus that America was too slow to develop a basic welfare state in the 1800s and early-to-mid 1900s, although there are still some who disagree. I have some opinions on these things, but they are only corollaries of what I have determined from research about current affairs, they are not founded on direct historical hindsight.
In foreign policy, there seems to be a consensus that America was too hawkish. This is mainly because of the invasion and genocide of Native Americans, the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, the Spanish-American War and subsequent subjugation of the Philippines, and the Banana Wars. Some still argue that some of these wars were justified, but taken in totality the pattern is evidently too hawkish. And there are not converse cases where historical judgment has reached a consensus that America should have participated in a war which we only considered.
Moving on from America, partisans often like to highlight the murderous track records of regimes like Nazi Germany and the Khmer Rouge as evidence for the evils of the right or left. But these are countries with very different social and political structures compared to the US. In particular, they have different family structures, which explain why they briefly adopted these lunatic practices when America has not. It's better to only look at countries which, like America, share a background in the absolute nuclear family: Britain, the Netherlands, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Naturally, these countries have much else in common with America besides family structure. Overall, social liberalism has been vindicated by the historical experience of these countries as well, and welfare statism and dovishness have been somewhat vindicated.
Overall, it looks like social liberalism has been amply vindicated by history, and welfare statism and dovishness have been somewhat vindicated. These factors point in favor of the Democratic Party, the inheritor of all these political movements.
The only topic where Republicans are significantly better than Democrats is education policy. It's totally implausible that education is more important than all the other issues where Democrats are superior, so this conclusion is robust to all plausible differences of opinion about weights.
I have relied pretty heavily on mainstream media sources, academia, and nominally nonpartisan think tanks. All of these are accused of systematic political bias by people with different political views. If these sources are all biased to the right, then clearly my conclusion will still be true.
If these sources are all biased to the left, then one can worry about the accuracy of my conclusions. However, on straightforward issues like foreign aid, air pollution, and animal welfare, it is indisputable that Republicans take more harmful actions. My rationales here are too strong to be explained by any plausible amount of source bias. And these issues carry a lot of weight.
I haven't paid attention to whether the policy proposals are actually constitutional. We can say that global happiness is the only moral priority and constitutionality doesn't matter, or we could say that the courts can be trusted to ensure constitutionality (after all, we do have a potent regime of judicial review). However, some people understandably think that every politician and voter has a responsibility to respect the Constitution when engaging in voting, activism and policymaking.
Gun control is a major instance of constitutional violation. At least as far as I can tell, based on a common-sense reading of the Second Amendment, a wide variety of gun control measures (including assault weapons bans and the National Firearms Act) violate the Second Amendment. How courts have rationalized their away around the clear and obvious meaning of the Second Amendment is beyond my comprehension. If I were a constitutionalist, I would say that Republicans have a more lawful approach to gun policy.
But abortion should be considered constitutionally protected under the Thirteenth AmendmentSee this paper.
Part I.A of the paper (about "liberty") is a bit flawed, as his use of the precedent of Bailey v. Alabama is somewhat dubious (I suspect that indentured servitude in the right conditions actually could be permitted under the 13th Amendment, though the court has tended to disagree). Moreover, and contra the author's claim, pregnancy is probably less impactful than Bailey's labor. However, women clearly don't consent to a risk of unwanted pregnancy and childbirth in the same way that a contracted laborer consents to his labor contract, so these points of contention are immaterial.
Part I.B of the paper (about "equality") is also flawed. First, it imputes dubious motives to pro-life policy. Second, because it only supports the idea that Congress has the authority to protect abortion, not the idea that abortions are constitutionally guaranteed. That being said, the basic argument about liberty still works.
Let me take this opportunity to distance myself from the tradition of abortion advocates relying on dubious legal theories to advance their interests ("Judge Richard Posner, describing Roe as 'the Wandering Jew of constitutional law,' noted that commentators have tried to 'squeeze' the decision into many different constitutional provisions, including the Thirteenth Amendment. He was dismissive of all such efforts: 'I await the day when someone shovels it into the Takings Clause, or the Republican Form of Government Clause (out of which an adventurous judge could excogitate the entire Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment), or the Privileges and Immunities Clause. It is . . . a desperate search for an adequate textual home, and it has failed.'"). I don't consider myself pro-choice (I'm undecided) and I always believed that Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided. But the logic of this argument from the Thirteenth Amendment is straightforwardly convincing., so on this issue Democrats better respect the Constitution.
It's worth noting that my analysis of Democratic- and Republican-appointed judges suggests that neither side makes systematically more correct legal judgments.
Overall, neither party appears superior in terms of respecting the Constitution.
One of the contentious parts of maximizing total welfare is the idea that everyone deserves to be well off. The idea of retribution or 'desert' is that some people deserve different things. Most innocuously, perhaps people with very bad moral character or a history of evil behavior should not receive benefits at the expense of good people. More harshly, maybe large swathes of the population are less deserving because they have selfish or hateful tendencies, and maybe people of very bad character actively deserve to be punished. I am actually very sympathetic to such a view, even though my reports are all written on an assumption of maximizing total welfare. However it doesn't change much in practice.
The most obvious implication is that criminal justice reform is less important. If violent criminals don't really deserve happiness like the rest of us, then it's not such a big deal if they face unnecessary jail time or poor prison conditions. And if they deserve to suffer then some of the "problems" with our criminal justice system can actually be justified. But much of our carceral state is about punishing people for victimless crimes, and our punitive measures can counterproductively lead to greater recidivism among violent offenders, to say nothing of the countless indignities that police officers, courts and the penal system perpetrate upon innocent people when the criminal justice system is built upon the notion of punishment. Moreover, while a retributivist view diminishes the moral status of violent criminals, it also diminishes the moral status of bad cops. If a police officer harasses or brutalizes the citizens that he is supposed to protect, why should we care about his welfare? Maybe he really deserves to be penalized. So while Democrats' stances on criminal justice would be weakened by a retributivist view, I think they would still look significantly better than the Republican alternative.
Some people use desert as a way to dismiss the concerns of the poor, saying that if someone doesn't work for something then they don't deserve it, which would help make the Republicans look better on economic policy. But this view is not justified because poor people are generally poor for more legitimate reasons. On average, poor people and rich people work roughly similar numbers of hours. And even if someone actually is lazy, that's a pretty mild transgression, if it is even a transgression at all. It doesn't mean they are undeserving. The morally damning kind of laziness is not the refusal to work for oneself, it is the refusal to work on behalf of others, and in that respect the rich and poor still seem roughly alike on average; someone who works very hard out of purely selfish reasons is no more virtuous than someone who is just too lazy to work.
But a retributive view could have big implications for foreign policy. It's not hard to find places in the world where the large majority of the population seemingly approves of ethnic cleansing, excuses war crimes, or is broadly willing to harm neighbors for their own gain. Of course, you can usually find ample evidence of viciousness on both sides of every conflict, but in some cases we might be able to identify one group as being kinder and therefore more deserving on average.
So the retributive view suggests that we should place less priority on criminal justice reform (while still supporting it), and suggests that we should have less altruism towards societies which are plagued by viciousness. However, both these ideas are limited to short-term scope. When we focus on long run policy outcomes, desert is less relevant, because it's hard to predict who will be deserving in future decades.
Overall, Democrats are still better under a retributive view.
It's hard to generalize over all deontological views. But in general, deontological ethics believes in doing what's fair and just without looking so much at the consequences. In fact, deontologists usually say it is wrong to commit one injustice even if it would prevent two future cases of injustice. Therefore, we shouldn't start by judging our political parties in terms of whether they can deliver good consequences for the world. The most important criterion is to ensure that our personal action within the political system (as voters, etc) is itself fair and just. And if equal political power in democracy counts as a part of justice under deontology, then deontologists should morally object to the fact that the American political system is currently unfairly biased in favor of RepublicansSee this article. Firstly, the Electoral College is currently biased by about four points in favor of Republicans, although this may change in the future. Meanwhile, the Senate, House of Representatives, and state legislatures have large, structural biases in favor of Republicans. These problems in turn create right-wing bias in the judicial system. Moreover, one could easily argue that Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico deserve statehood, which would tilt the political system further to the left. In lieu of actual reforms to rectify this problem, we can still make our political system more fair by acting on behalf of those who are disenfranchised. This gives a strong deontological argument for automatically voting for Democrats.
If you are a deontologist who does not believe that people have a moral right to live in a fair democracy, or a deontologist who believes that we can commit injustices for the sake of preventing future injustice, then you will have to think about which party's policies will produce the most fairness and justice. But note that deontological views usually place utmost priority on avoiding the most severe cases of injustice, no matter the diffuse social and economic costs. Factory farming probably meets this criterion, so deontologists should vote Democrat to protect animal rights. Otherwise, police brutality, criminal punishment for victimless crimes like drug possession and prostitution, oppression of the children of undocumented migrants, and restrictions against refugee admissions are the clearest and most egregious cases of injustice perpetrated by the American government against humans, and all point towards an obligation to vote Democrat.
One countervailing point is abortion. There is active debate in philosophy, including among deontologists, over whether abortion is ethical. But I think opposition to abortion is a minority view in the field. Many of the pro-life philosophers would likely believe that the government should not pay for women to have abortions or force insurers to do so, but I think that much fewer of them would endorse government restrictions against abortions, so their opinions on Republican policy may still be negative. To be fair, philosophers' opinions may be slanted by the left-wing bias in academia. But Democrats are more likely to take actions which reduce the demand for abortions anyway (like family planning services, child poverty relief, and maternal leave).
Another countervailing point is education; you might argue that we have a right to raise children according to our own values in private schools or homeschooling rather than public education. However, few Democratic politicians aim to ban private schooling and homeschooling. Many want to make them more difficult or restrict government funding of them, but it's harder to show that that counts as a severe injustice.
Some Christians claim that we should vote Republican in order to stop abortion, but this narrative is unfounded, as the Bible suggests that abortion is morally permissibleThe Bible seems to generally place more priority on the sanctity of life than on bodily autonomy, so if a fetus counts as a human life then abortion cannot be justified simply by appealing to the interests of the mother. However, the Bible does not substantiate the idea that a fetus is a human life. It does make references to our identity existing and being known to God while we are in the womb (Galatians 1:15 among others), but similarly does so for our identities prior even to conception (Jeremiah 1:4-5, Psalm 139:13-16). Thus, this idea does not imply that fetuses have any moral status which is lacking among to-be-conceived potential persons. Psalm 51:5 does indicate that original sin is bestowed at conception; this can be taken to suggest that the fetus has human life and rights. One could argue philosophically that fetuses count as the sort of human life for which the Bible generally demands respect and sanctity, but philosophers are heavily divided on this general topic. The main pro-life argument – that late-term fetuses are no morally different from newborn infants – applies equally well to the difference between gametes and zygotes (or for any other particular stage of fetal development), and is not a good reductio ad absurdum as some philosophers (Peter Singer, Francesca Minerva) have made good arguments that a newborn infant may not possess a right to life.
The first clear evidence of God’s views is Exodus 21:22-24, which shows that forcing a woman to miscarry is not murder. Additionally, Numbers 5:11-31 features God instructing priests to carry out a ritual to abort fetuses that were conceived thru adultery. Meanwhile, if abortion is wrong, we should expect to see it explicitly condemned by the Bible, but such condemnation is nowhere to be found. Ultimately, Biblical scripture implies that the Christian God permits abortion.. Also, Democrats expand social services that reduce the demand for abortions, and the Catholic Church believes this is important enough that one may permissibly vote for pro-choice Democrats rather than pro-life Republicans.
One way of deciding whether Republican or Democratic politicians are better is to simply poll Americans and see what they think. In a simple electoral system, this would be meaningless, as public opinion and election results would be essentially the same thing. But the nature of America's electoral college and congressional systems, gerrymandering, and obstacles against voting mean that there can be a gap between our collective judgment and our actual political outcomes.
On average since 1991, according to Gallup, Americans have been five percentage points more likely to identify with the Democratic Party. Pew polls since 1994 show a similar pattern. The last few years have been consistent with this trend. This suggests that Democrats are a bit better than Republicans and deserve more political power on the margin.
Of course this methodology has severe deficiencies stemming from the flaws in the basic values and knowledge of most Americans.
Adding opinions from foreigners corrects for the nationalist value bias of American popular opinion and the quirks of American political culture.
Western Europeans decisively preferred Biden over Trump, by larger margins than Americans do, while Eastern Europeans were more split. Residents of Western Europe, the Indo-Pacific and the Middle East vastly preferred Hillary Clinton over Trump in 2016. Residents of most countries strongly preferred Obama over Romney in 2012. Mexicans trusted Obama much more than Trump. People in pro-Western countries in the Black Sea region tend to be more pro-Republican. Overall, it appears that the majority of people around the world prefer Democratic presidents for the United States.
Citizens of foreign countries are usually impacted relatively little by American elections, and usually don't understand our country as well as we do. So to represent global collective wisdom properly, we should give less weight to each foreigner than to each American. However, since there are more than 20x as many foreigners as Americans, and they are still likely to hear a lot about America and can be greatly impacted by our foreign policy, their views should arguably still dominate. Regardless, given how strongly people in most countries have preferred Obama, Clinton and Biden, the conclusion will presumably stay the same under any plausible method of doing that math.
Of course this methodology still has major deficiencies stemming from the flaws in the basic values and knowledge of most people.
Effective Altruists are significantly more likely to support Democrats. A small survey of 17 EAs found that 14 believed the Democrats would maximize total welfare whereas 3 were unsure or moderate. Robert Wiblin (a core community professional), Scott Alexander (a highly regarded blogger), Peter Singer (a famous philosopher) and Eliezer Yudkowksy (a decision theorist) backed both Clinton and Biden over Trump. Psychologist Diana Fleischman and poker champion Liv Boeree supported Biden over Trump (I don't know if they said anything in 2016). EA rank and file seem to largely agree, based on my observations in person, on the EA forum, on Twitter, on Facebook, and on Reddit. EAs have commented less about other elections, but still seem to typically prefer Democrats in other offices.
It is not a unanimous consensus, and few EAs (besides me) produce rigorous analysis backing up these views. However, the minority who dissent are not rigorous either.
Psychologist Geoffrey Miller is a relatively notable and accomplished academic who casually identifies with EA, and he refused to endorse a 2020 candidate and calls himself "centrist and libertarian." However, he is not a very good political thinker.Miller generally doesn't make substantial arguments for his points of view. His only recent articles on political policy are defenses of free speech (including free speech in social media and the workplace) and drug liberalization. The first is somewhat consistent with the behaviors of both Republican and Democratic politicians, and the second is more consistent with the behavior of Democratic politicians. Miller's reasons for disliking the Democratic Party seem to be that many Democrats are unkind to some of their political opponents and believe in woke ideology, but he doesn't address the way that Democratic politicians actually exercise political power. Rather, his Twitter feed (the primary outlet for his political opinions) is constituted by endless simplistic complaints about SJWs, mainstream media and social media corporations. Basically, while Miller has deeply invested in culture warring, he does not have any significant track record of tackling substantive questions of policymaking and governance. Moreover, he seems so fixated on the anti-SJW crusade that it's dubious that he can approach politics with a rational mindset befitting of EA principles. Finally, he actually isn't highly involved with the EA community, at least in comparison to the other public EA figures that I mentioned above.
There is a 'heterodox Effective Altruism' Facebook group with a significant number of centrist and right-wing EAs who are fixated against SJWs. From my brief time watching this group, I did not see high-quality discussion of political policy and leadership, and got the impression that they were not very intellectually sound.
Robin Hanson, who seems vaguely right wing, is sometimes regarded as a member of the EA community. However, this view is inaccurate - while many in the EA community have read his writings, he does not publicly support EA ideas or the communityI've never seen him publicly praise EA or make public donation decisions, but he has claimed that do-gooding is controlling and dangerous, that altruism is all signaling with selfish motivations, that we should just save our money and wait for some unspecified future date to give it away, and that poor faraway people are less likely to exist according to simulation theory so we should be less inclined to help them. On top of that he made some pretty uncharitable statements about EA Munich and CEA after being personally slighted. And some of his pursuits suggest that he doesn't care if he turns himself into a very controversial figure who brings negative attention towards EA by association. Each of these things can be individually rationalized as something that is consistent with a commitment to Effective Altruism, but when you put it all together it paints a picture of someone who basically doesn't care about EA at all. Other EAs seem to agree with me on this: a comment saying this was highly upvoted on the EA forum..
Overall, the aggregate wisdom of the EA community favors the Democrats.
Champion forecasters expected that a Trump second term would cause an additional 72,000 American COVID-19 deaths, slightly less American happiness, and no difference in economic strength compared to a Biden administration.
Academics are much more likely to identify as liberals or Democrats.See this analysis of voter registration data for faculty from 51 American liberal arts colleges, this California State University survey, and this survey of anthropologists. 69% of international relations scholars are Democrats, 23% are independents, 3% are Republicans and 5% are other; experience with population surveys suggests that the Republican proportion might be a bit higher due to nonresponse bias but it's presumably still very small.
Famous super-geniuses seem to collectively lean left-wing.Albert Einstein supported socialism, animal rights, moderate Zionism, nuclear disarmament, and realistic pacifism, and was somewhat supportive of the Soviet Union, although he was also somewhat xenophobic and racist. Stephen Hawking supported Al Gore and the UK Labour Party. William James Sidis was initially a socialist but later a left-libertarian (he did not believe in property rights). These views generally point left-wing.
John von Neumann was apparently a militaristic anti-Communist but also believed humanity should "take a new, global approach to its political problems." Further information is lacking and it's really not clear where he would fit in. J. Robert Oppenheimer was progressive by the standards of his day, but that doesn't have clear implications for today's political issues.
Chris Langan is a far-right conspiracy theorist (!). Note however that his claim to super-genius status seems unsupported by real-world accomplishments beyond standard academic grades and IQ tests.
This is a pretty dubious methodology. All else being equal, I would definitely trust geniuses to make better political judgments than the general population, and would trust them more than generic academics, but I would still trust them less than dedicated political scientists or other relevant experts. Also, I do not have an objective survey of the smartest people's political views, this is just a smattering of famous and notable ones who have publicly available political opinions, and there could be all kinds of selection bias. Moreover, the sample size is very small.
My impression of people working at the Niskanen Center (one of the best domestic policy think tanks) is that all or nearly all of them generally prefer the Democrats right now, although some believe that an improved, moderate Republican Party could one day be superior.
Overall, expert opinion clearly favors Democrats.
The result of my direct policy analysis, that Democratic politicians are generally preferable to Republican ones, is similar to judgments from American popular opinion, global popular opinion, and several different groupings of experts.
When voting, we must vote strictly for whichever party is better. But in activism and persuasion efforts, we may also consider secondary impacts of having Americans subscribe to different parties. Turning people into Democrats may make them better voters, but how does it affect their emotions, their relationships, their economic behavior, and other things? These issues are almost certainly of secondary importance compared to the question of political power, but just to be comprehensive it's worth going over the evidence.
First, citizens readily adopt the political opinions of party leadership. Popularizing the Democratic Party in any method entails popularizing the specific policy views of the Democratic Party. In addition to driving voter behavior, these opinions may affect people's judgment of personal issues like whether a particular career is ethical or unethical. Of course it is mostly a good thing for people to adopt the Democratic Party's views here, as these views are mostly correct (per my direct policy analysis).
Republicans give more to charity than Democrats, although Democrats anecdotally seem a bit more interested in effective altruism, at least for global poverty and animal welfare. Republicans have more children than Democrats. But these are mere correlations, and I don't think there is good evidence that party loyalty is causing these differences.
Republicans generally exhibit more homophobic, racist and other bigoted attitudes and behaviors. Democrats exhibit more pernicious 'woke' attitudes and behaviors. Democrats exercise political-correctness norms; Republicans exercise patriotic-correctness norms.
Republicans and Democrats are about equally (un)likely to support political violence.
Republicans and Democrats are equally prone to conspiracy theorizing.
Overall, it's not clear which kind of party loyalty has a better impact on people's nonpolitical behavior. Actions to convert more people to the Democratic Party are justified since that still has a straightforwardly positive political impact.
In some cases, it can be worthwhile to judge candidates individually - when the election is extremely important (like the Presidential election), when one of the competitive candidates is an independent or member of a third party, or when the local politicians of a major party differ greatly from national norms. And of course when there is a party primary, you will have to judge candidates individually. But it is a bit easier to make these individual judgments if you are starting from a clear understanding of the typical strengths and weaknesses of our major parties.
Having a partisan stance can also be helpful in other ways. It lets you quickly judge a variety of electoral races. It lets you evaluate donation and activism opportunities which broadly help a particular party. It helps you judge whether certain reforms which affect the partisan balance of power would be helpful or harmful. It helps you discern whether institutions with partisan leanings (like certain academic or media groups) are unfairly biased or simply accurate. Finally, belonging to a major political party gives you opportunities for activism and persuasion to change the party from within, and it networks you with a large group of politically active citizens who might help you with something or teach you something new.
While I haven't done a proper rating of them, third parties typically look bad at first glance. The Libertarian Party has nice ideas for most Americans but is basically negligent towards poor people, foreigners and animals. The Green Party doesn't even have the right ideas for solving climate change, let alone anything else. The Constitution Party is a fringe extremity of the pathological conservative movement, and the Socialism and Liberation Party is of course socialist. The full platform of the nascent Forward Party remains to be seen, but early indicators suggest they will have both good and bad positions.
In the absence of a proper analysis, one could understandably disagree here. But the vast majority of important elections in America feature Democrats and Republicans as the only plausible winners. This is not just an empirical trend, but a robust and predictable outcome of our political structure. First-past-the-post voting generally rules out multiparty democracy because it means that a candidate with a larger voting bloc will dominate a split set of contenders. So in most cases, voting for a third party cannot have any direct consequence.
Third-party voting could have an indirect consequence. If you vote for a third party, you can give them a slightly higher vote total, which makes them look slightly less irrelevant! More seriously, if a third party gets over 5% of the votes, then it qualifies for federal funding in the next election cycle. Then one day, it could grow and grow until it becomes competitive! It would presumably do this by replacing one of the existing major parties, because our system is structurally determined as a two-party system. But whatever a third party is like now, its platform and composition would likely change a lot in this process of huge growth and realignment, as would its opposition. For instance, if the Libertarian Party rose to replace the Republican Party, it would probably end up looking more like the current Republican Party does rather than continuing the platform of the current Libertarian Party. So the impact on our political system from a new party becoming mainstream would actually be quite small in all probability.
But that dream is not realistic anyway. Growing the notability of a third party does not lead to national political power. It's a dead end. You can make it look slightly better this season or the next, but how is it going to surmount all the intermediate steps between getting noticed and actually competing with a major party? To the mind of any American voter who just wants to see the right people win (or the wrong people lose), voting for a third party which gets 10% of the vote is no less wasteful than voting for a third party which gets 1% of the vote. And many other voters stubbornly trust one of the existing major parties more than they would trust any third party. There have already been cases where third party or independent candidates broke out to do unusually well, and they promptly regress to the mean afterwards. Ross Perot got 19% of the popular vote in 1992, then only 8% in 1996. Ralph Nader got 2.7% of the popular vote in 2000, then just 0.4% in 2004. There is no breakout pattern for third parties - they just have a moment in the limelight, get lambasted for creating a spoiler effect, and fade back out. Because that is the natural consequence of the way our political system is designed. (That being said, the system can and should be redesigned, and if you feel you must do something to promote multiparty democracy then you should focus your energy on voting reform instead of worrying about the existing third parties.) No wonder then that every president since 1852 has been a Democrat or a Republican.
Advocates of third-party voting suggest that it may pressure the major parties to behave differently. For example, if the Green Party gets more votes, the Democrats may decide that they can win more elections by being more environmentalist! If the Constitution Party gets more votes, the Republicans may decide to become more traditionalist. But this is a weak argument. There's probably some effect here, but it's a subtle one. Remember that Democratic and Republican nominees are selected by primary elections, not directly by party leadership, and primary voters may not pay attention to the idea of reclaiming votes from third parties. Primary voters seem to either assume that whichever candidate they personally like is also the most electable, or assume that whichever candidate seems most moderate is most electable. And even insofar as well-informed party elites can influence the primary process, they may be guided by their own values and biases rather than electability concerns.
Regardless, to whatever extent third-party voting can change a similar major party, the same can be said about how voting for one major party incentivizes changes in the other major party. For instance, yes you could vote for the Libertarian Party to encourage both parties to move closer to the Libertarian platform, but you could also vote for the Democratic Party and strongly signal to the Republicans that they need to move closer to the Democratic platform. So this is not a unique benefit of third-party voting, it applies similarly to major-party voting.
And in some cases, failing to vote for a party out of protest could backfire. If the major party finds that your kind of vote is too difficult to get, they may forget about your values entirely in order to focus on appealing to other kinds of voters.
Leaving aside the narrower question of voting, belonging to a major political party gives you more opportunities for activism and persuasion to change the party from within. This is astronomically more important than trying to reform third parties from the inside, because the major parties wield actual national power. Also, identifying with a major party networks you with a much larger and more diverse group of politically active citizens who might help you with something or teach you something new.
So all in all, for most elections, the direct consequences of voting for a major party are basically infinitely greater than the direct consequences of voting for a third party, while the indirect consequences of voting for a major party are also probably much greater.
This changes in rare cases where third party candidates are competitive. A few state- and local-level elections and a very few congressional elections feature viable third-party candidates. However, since these are disproportionately state- and local-level, the political calculus changes with different political priorities and differences in the platforms of the major parties. Moreover, these cases are just relatively rare. So it makes more sense to judge them on an individual basis rather than doing a full partisan analysis. As a rule of thumb though, I'd bet that viable third-party candidates are usually better than Republicans but worse than Democrats.
These points similarly apply to independents - they are usually not viable candidates, the indirect impacts of voting for them are not impressive. They may rarely be worth voting for when they are competitive but obviously they need to be judged on a case-by-case basis. In some cases, independents generally caucus with members of one major party (such as Bernie Sanders allying with the Democrats) and can be considered a member of the party for most purposes.
Political experts such as Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein tend to agree that independent and third-party campaigns are generally not a solution to America's political problems.
