A trend in American politics appears to be emerging in the recent election cycles. That trend, at least among republican voters, is a greater emphasis placed on what presidential candidate, Ben Carson calls, "real-life experience" over political experience. Recent polls done by the Washington Post have real estate mogul Donald Trump polling at 32%, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson polling at 22%. These candidates have little to know political experience yet they are far ahead of Florida senator Marco Rubio, who is polling at 11%, and Texas senator Ted Cruz, who is polling at 8%. These statistics seem to suggest that political experience is no longer a dominating factor in the electability of candidates for political office, at least in the Republican party. If Donald Trump or Ben Carson were elected president in the 2016 election cycle they would become the first to hold the office of the president with no prior political experience in 227 years. This raises a sociological question, what social factors have lead to a change in the makeup of our field of candidates?
There are many potential reasons behind the change to a long-standing norm in American politics. I looked to the creation of the Tea Party as a shift in the makeup of American politics. The Tea Party emerged in 2009 after President Barack Obama was elected and in response to his more liberal policies and the belief that Obama was not born in the United States. Tea Party candidates began to lose favor and many were voted out of office because of their lack of understanding of many issues. Ben Carson and Donald Trump share similar beliefs to many Tea Party candidates and Ben Carson is supported on the Tea Party's website, teaparty.org. Although the Tea Party showed a shift in conservative politics it seems the Republican party turned away from Tea Party candidates because of their lack of experience. So this further the question, why are republican voters overwhelming supporting candidates with no political experience?
Perhaps it is the potential likability of political candidates lacking political experience, maybe voters find the candidates to be more relatable. But both Ben Carson and Donald Trump are firmly entrenched in America's "one percent", Ben Carson is worth 26 million dollars and Donald Trump is worth 4.5 billion, according to Forbes magazine. So are American voters really getting the a relatable candidate in office by electing more millionaires and billionaires? Based on the net worth of Ben Carson and Donald Trump, their highly-esteemed "real-life experience" seems lacking. It seems unlikely they would bring a fresh perspective to the White House, it seems more likely their lack of political experience would lead to weak leadership. Republican voters move away from politicians as their favored candidates seems to to suggest that voters are frustrated with the state of affairs in America, but based on the complicated political landscape of Congress it seems unlikely a candidate with no political experience would be able to facilitate the change they are looking for.
Sources and Interesting Links:
http://www.britannica.com/topic/Tea-Party-movement
http://www.teaparty.org/about-us/
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/may/10/ben-carson-real-life-trumps-political-experience/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/afontevecchia/2015/09/29/forbes-2016-presidential-candidate-net-worth-list/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-president-political-experience_55f33fafe4b063ecbfa467f1
http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/22/politics/donald-trump-leads-ben-carson-two-polls-election-2016/
This is an interesting trend. Although Americans have not elected a candidate with no experience in the past 200 years, they have often leaned towards charismatic candidates. For example Reagan was a former actor and was only governor of California before his presidency,and look at Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor for California. These are people who are predominantly likeable rather than experienced in government These people were also very well known, with name recognition possibly carrying a lot of weight. Further, there have been studies done that suggest that people might even choose a candidate solely based on how they look. A paper in Science was published that showed people when asked to pick which person of a pair was more competent solely based on their of portraits, their answers correlated overwhelmingly to the winner of election races between these people. Though Trump and Carson may not exactly be well established politicians perhaps there is more to the impression they give off than relatability or government experience.
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