Feeling Their Pain: Why Voters Want Leaders Who Care
Jared McDonald
Feb 2024 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Christopher P. Brown
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5 hr 15 min
Unabridged
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About this audiobook
The 2020 presidential election in the United States marked, for many, a return to "compassionate politics." Joe Biden had run on a platform of empathy, emphasizing his personal history as a means of connecting with everyone, from American workers who had lost jobs to military families who had lost loved ones. Although perceptions of candidate compassion are broadly understood to influence vote choice, less understood is the question of how candidates convince voters they truly "care about people like them." In Feeling their Pain, Jared McDonald provides a framework for understanding why voters view some politicians as more compassionate than others. McDonald shows that perceptions of compassion in candidates for public office are based on the number and intensity of commonalities that bind citizens to political leaders. Commonalities can come in many forms, such as a shared experience, a shared emotion, or a shared identity. Compassion may be universal, such as when candidates convey empathy to all individuals who are struggling. Or compassion may be exclusionary, such as when candidates express a preference for some groups over others. Thus, the way campaigns choose to wield compassion in their messaging strategies has important implications not only for election outcomes, but for American political polarization as well.
About the author
Jared McDonald is an assistant professor at the University of Mary Washington. Jared's research examines how Americans process political information, update their preferences, and hold politicians accountable in the modern polarized era. He is coauthor of Citizens of the World.
Audiobook narrator Christopher P. Brown's passion is using his scripted theater and improvisation training and experience to bring stories and characters to life. He holds graduate degrees in literature, linguistics, and leadership studies. Chris is also bilingual, with professional proficiency in both Spanish and English.
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