In perhaps the most visible feature of participatory democracy—the electoral process—change seems afoot. The goalposts of elections—the nature of their discourse, build-up, and outcomes—appear to be shifting, no more so than in the United States and the United Kingdom. The recent popularity of outsider candidates Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn respectively in the two nations is challenging conventional electoral thought and relegating centrists to the margins.
Sanders, an Independent senator and former mayor from Vermont vying for the Democratic Party’s nomination for president, currently leads the field in early caucus and primary states Iowa and New Hampshire, outpolling presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. Once a long-shot candidate considered too radical and politically unpalatable for the mainstream electoral success, Sanders and his meteoric ascent to serious contention have left the candidate surprised: “Yes, I’m stunned,” he recently put it.
Across the Atlantic, meanwhile, left-wing veteran Member of Parliament and House of Commons backbencher Jeremy Corbyn clinched the leadership of the opposition Labour Party with a resounding 60 percent endorsement from party supporters. This beat bookmakers’ odds on his election of 100-1, which were in part motivated by brazen animosity from senior Labour figures—horrified by his popularity—warning of party “annihilation.” The candidate’s name would not have featured on the ballot paper three months ago were it not for charitable colleagues—lending their votes simply to ensure diversity of opinion—pushing Corbyn over the 35 member of parliament threshold of support required for leadership candidacy. Corbyn reached his tally with only two minutes to spare.
Sanders’ and Corbyn’s personal attributes and media strategy have collided well with the current political contexts of their respective nations. Both opportunity and ambition have combined to allow a pair of rambunctious silver-haired ‘lefties’ to defy predictions and conquer two of the Anglo-Saxon world’s largest political stages.
Principled Consistency
A defining characteristic of Corbyn and Sanders’ successes has arguably been their personal appeal as men of principle. Corbyn has made a name for himself by swimming against the stream of establishment policy. He has been vindicated in the public eye for his prescient positions on the “right” side of history: Campaigning against apartheid in the 1980’s while Britain’s Thatcherite government was still regularly conducting business with South Africa’s segregationist regime; voting against the invasion of Iraq in 2003 as only a small minority of members of parliament did; and shunning the careerist, ministerial ambitions that hold many members of parliament to the party line by voting in excess of 500 times against Labour’s voting directives over his parliamentary career. In July, Corbyn’s stance as the only leadership candidate opposed to a government bill passing more cuts to welfare won him further plaudits from an embattled British Left seeking to distinguish itself from the current Conservative government.
In many regards, Sanders mirrors Corbyn’s pattern of fringe, principle-based politics. Though he may be running for the Democratic nomination, Sanders sits in Congress as an Independent—the longest serving in American history. One analysis of his voting and sponsoring record deemed him the most progressive sitting member of the Senate. Moreover, in an American system in which being labeled socialist can be the death knell to a political career, Sanders has embraced his creed of “democratic socialism,” earning respect from Senate colleagues for his fidelity to pushing social security reform and action on economic inequality. Like Corbyn (and unlike Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton), Sanders voted against the invasion of Iraq.
Sanders and Corbyn’s consistency make them suited to picking up voters disenfranchised by a disingenuousness so frequently attributed to contemporary politics. In this heyday of social media, in which politicians’ stances can be scrutinized with a scan of Twitter, Sanders and Corbyn offer a rare steadfastness—a comforting grandfatherly quality that counteracts an otherwise cacophonous media conversation documenting candidates’ latest policy flip-flops.
Broad-Based Support
At a more immediate level, part of Sanders and Corbyn’s success seems to stem from the tones their campaigns have struck. In their respective public appearances, the pair espouse a very particular visual aesthetic. Eschewing the ostentation of pressed suits and slicked-back hair, Sanders and Corbyn distinguish themselves from typical television-ready leaders in waiting. Tufts of white hair, untrimmed beards, and pit-stains serve to reinforce a message of content over form; of sincerity over polished delivery.
Corbyn’s ever-present white vests and Sanders’ rumpled suits play to each candidate’s strengths, returning the conversation to substance and earnest discourse. Corbyn and Sanders appear to win support for deeming their topics of conversation so important as to shun the conventions of media presentation, humanizing themselves in their rallying cries against austerity, inequality, and the worsening predicament of the middle and working classes.
Sanders and Corbyn’s teams have also proven themselves well attuned to alternative media platforms, thereby effectively capturing the imaginations of a younger demographic. According to a poll conducted this summer, at age 74 Sanders enjoys 37 percent support among voters aged 29 and below (within touching distance of Hillary Clinton’s 40 percent support). Sanders also has a Facebook following greater than that of Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush combined. Similarly, much of Corbyn’s support is said to have come from “new, young Labour members,”—voters rallying around the dynamism of a 66-year-old man entitled to a freedom pass (a travel card giving British retirees subsidized use of public transport).
Symptomatic of the pair’s effectiveness in engaging the public through social media, Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership run spawned “Jez, We Can” (a play on Obama’s memorable 2008 mantra), while Bernie Sanders’ campaign has unleashed a wave of supporters touting freshly-printed t-shirts heralding, “Feeling the Bern”. All this has culminated in record turnouts at Sanders’ campaign events and the mass sign-up of more than 100,000 new ‘registered Labour supporters’ (members of the public paying £3 for the right to vote), of whom 83.7 percent ultimately supported Corbyn.
Words of Warning
For all the popular support Sanders and Corbyn have garnered up to this point, the two now find themselves at critical junctures in their respective party trajectories and political cycles.
The pair’s support, while growing, remains very much dependent on political and demographic subsets. Pundits will continue to peruse the polling data and question whether Sanders and Corbyn’s party-wide appeal can even possibly equate to nationwide electoral endorsement. With the constantly shifting grounds of the parties’ constituent electorates—shifts possible due to the Democratic Party’s open primaries and Labour’s permeable voting system—pundits have even greater grounds for consternation.
And few believe the two will continue to defy expectations: Sanders, according to Microsoft’s PredictWise, supposedly stands only a 10 percent chance of winning the Democratic nomination. Corbyn has continued to be dogged by predictions of future electoral catastrophe. Sanders and his Left must now continue to push on for the Democratic nomination as anticipation for the impending presidential election ramps up to fever pitch. By contrast, the United Kingdom’s next general election (scheduled for 2020) seems distant. Only time will tell if Anglo-American progressivism has found electoral heroes in its greying poster children.
Image source: Flickr // Garry Knight
© 2024 Harvard Political Review. All rights reserved.