Authenticity: The Power of Real
In polarized times, authenticity has proven pivotal, helping candidates win over voters in key races across the U.S.
The Rising Power of Authenticity in a Polarized America
If you’ve tuned into CNN, Fox News, or checked Twitter recently, you’ll have heard it loud and clear: political polarization is reaching new highs.
This has led some commentators to claim that partisanship is now everything in American politics – that each voter’s party loyalty trumps all other factors, and nothing else really matters.
There’s some truth to this: politics are more divided than they were 10, 20, or even 50 years ago. This shift is evident in trends like the steady decline of ticket-splitting (voters picking candidates from different parties for different offices on the same ballot) and the razor-thin margins in modern elections. For example, since 2000, only Barack Obama has won a presidential election by more than 8%, and that was in 2008.
But to conclude, as many forecasters do, that factors like candidate quality, campaign spending, and messaging are now irrelevant compared to pure party loyalty is a little shortsighted.
The Argument for Authenticity: An Overlooked Factor in Partisan Times
I get why people believe partisanship is king.
In the last 20 years, countless candidates have had little to no effect on election outcomes, regardless of their personal appeal, experience, or even campaign ingenuity. Even all-out scandals that once could have cratered a campaign barely make a ripple today (Exhibit A: the current election cycle, where Donald Trump’s felony conviction all but evaporated from public consciousness days after it broke).
But there is one aspect of candidate quality that has shown itself to be influential, even decisive, in recent elections: authenticity.
Authenticity, by nature, is hard to measure and even harder to recognize in an objective way. Charisma can be evaluated to some degree – you could compare John Kerry in 2004 with Barack Obama in 2008, and most people would agree hands-down that Obama had more natural charm. But authenticity is less clear-cut, and often subtle.
Take a simple example: imagine trying to gauge a colleague or classmate’s “authenticity.” Even if you’ve known them for years, it can be hard to tell when they’re being their genuine self. Now take a political candidate, someone you’ve likely never met, whose only public appearances are carefully crafted speeches. How can you possibly know if they’re being real?
This lack of objectivity makes authenticity elusive. But that doesn’t mean it’s irrelevant. In fact, authenticity is so powerful precisely because it isn’t easily defined or spun by campaign handlers. If a voter senses a candidate is genuine, that feeling is largely unshakable, regardless of any other attributes or controversies.
Why Authenticity Matters More than Charisma
Charisma can make a candidate appealing; authenticity can make a candidate trusted. The goal of democracy is to give voters the power to choose representatives who will truly represent their views. So logically, voters know to use this power to elect someone who aligns with their views on major issues like abortion, gun control, or immigration.
This is part of why politics is so polarized today: with Republicans becoming the party of pro-life, pro-gun, and anti-immigration, and Democrats the opposite, the average voter has a more straightforward choice. They can largely pick a party and stay there.
But for a small, critical group of voters, personal qualities still make a difference.
Authenticity – not charisma or even likeability – is often the key quality that can sway this group. It’s the only personal quality that may actually affect votes. Candidates can rise or fall based on how convincingly they can present themselves as true representatives of their constituency’s values, history, and shared struggles. If a candidate seems out of touch, self-centered, or just fake, it’s believable that they might prioritize their own career over voters’ interests in Washington, D.C., or their state capital. Even if only 5% of voters sense this lack of authenticity and it changes their minds, that can be enough to flip an election.
Case Studies in Authenticity's Influence
Iowa: Bruce Braley’s Stumbles in 2014
The 2014 Senate race in Iowa offers a textbook example of authenticity in action. Democrat Bruce Braley was expected to have a solid chance of succeeding longtime Democratic Senator Tom Harkin in a state that had been trending rightward but had traditionally leaned left. Iowa had even voted for Michael Dukakis in his 1988 landslide defeat. Bruce Braley, a representative from Iowa’s First District, cleared the Democratic field early on and began the race as the favorite over little-known Republican state senator Joni Ernst.
But Braley’s campaign began to slip after several notable gaffes that severely undermined his authenticity. During the 2013 government shutdown, Braley publicly complained about the lack of gym access in Congress. This comment painted him as a classic D.C. insider, more concerned with his own comfort than with the issues that mattered to voters back home. A few months later, Braley disparaged Iowa’s senior Republican Senator Chuck Grassley as “a farmer who never went to law school.”
Let’s unpack that statement: in Iowa, a state defined by its farming culture, looking down on farming doesn’t exactly make you seem like an authentic Iowan. This message was only aggravated by Braley’s comment about law school, a privilege out of reach for most Americans, as though it were a necessary credential for public service.
In positioning himself this way, Braley dug his own grave-essentially portraying himself as an outsider, someone above the local fray.
Joni Ernst wasted no time taking full advantage of these missteps.
In what may have been the defining moment of her political career, Ernst starred in a political ad comparing “cutting pork” in Congress—getting real work done—to her experience castrating pigs on a farm. The humorous ad not only grabbed voters’ attention but also reminded voters that she was a true born and raised Iowan, who embraced the state’s culture, while her opponent seemed uncomfortable with it.
Sure enough, the tide turned slowly but steadily, with polling increasingly favoring Ernst until she clinched an 8-point victory.
Authenticity played a key role in this election, likely changing as many as 10% of voters’ minds—though that may be an overstatement given Iowa’s overall rightward shift in 2014.
Nonetheless, authenticity undoubtedly played a significant role in Iowa's decision and this race remains a striking example of how authenticity can influence electoral outcomes, even in a polarized political climate.
Indiana: Evan Bayh’s Misstep in 2016
The 2016 Senate race in Indiana provides a similar story.
Evan Bayh, the Democratic nominee had served as Indiana's senator from 1999 to 2011 and served as its governor for 8 years before that time. As a senator and governor he was overwhelmingly popular, winning both senate elections with upwards of 60% of the vote. Bayh’s comeback in 2016 was viewed as a golden opportunity for Democrats who are hoping to win back the Senate after losing it two years earlier.
He entered the race with early polls showing him ahead of his opponent, Republican Todd Young, by margins of 5 to 21 points. The previous Democratic nominee, Representative Baron Hill, withdrew from the race not even when he formally entered, but the moment CNN reported that Evan Bayh was preparing to run—a testament to Bayh’s dominance in Indiana politics.
And then the attacks began.
During his six-year semi-retirement between 2010 and 2016, Bayh had built a lucrative career on corporate boards and with lobbying firms, growing his net worth to between $14 million and $48 million.
Then came serious questions about his connection to Indiana. Records showed he’d been listed twice as an inactive voter in Indiana, and he claimed two D.C. houses as his primary residences. The result was an image of Bayh as an out-of-touch opportunist, detached from Indiana’s working-class values, who had traded his Indiana roots for wealth and influence in Washington.
Voters took notice, shifting steadily toward his opponent, Todd Young, culminating in Young’s 10-point victory on November 8. Given that Indiana had been a Republican stronghold for decades—and that in 2016, Trump carried the state by nearly 20 points—Bayh’s performance was still an impressive overachievement. Yet, it’s hard not to wonder if he could have narrowed that gap to five points, or even won, had he cultivated a more grounded, authentic image.
Georgia: The 2020 Senate Runoffs and the Insider Image Problem
Unlike Indiana and Iowa, Georgia sits at the forefront of America’s political battlefield.
In 2018, Governor Brian Kemp won his seat by a narrow 2-point margin, and in 2020, Joe Biden won the state outright for the first time in 28 years, but only by a razor-thin margin of 11,000 votes, or roughly 0.2%.
Alongside the presidential election, Georgia also held two Senate elections, with Republican incumbents David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler defending their seats. At the start of the Senate cycle, both elections were presumed to be Republican holds, albeit with low levels of certainty given Georgia’s recent competitive shifts.
However, over the following months, Democratic challengers Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock steadily closed the gap, largely by drawing attention to the contrast in authenticity between them and their opponents.
Perdue and Loeffler were both wealthy businesspeople, each with fortunes in the hundreds of millions. Likewise both were investigated in 2020 for insider trading ahead of the COVID-19 crash. The Democrats skillfully capitalized on this, framing Perdue and Loeffler as modern-day “robber barons” who had prioritized personal profit over Georgia’s welfare - and forsaken them when the state needed them most.
Although the Senate investigations did not result in formal charges, the damage was done; many voters had already come to view Perdue and Loeffler as emblematic of Washington’s self-serving elite.
In contrast, Ossoff and Warnock were able to present themselves as authentically Georgian. Ossoff, born and raised in Atlanta, had even run for a House seat three years prior, while Warnock, the senior pastor at Atlanta’s historic Ebenezer Baptist Church—where Martin Luther King Jr. had once preached—had served the community for 15 years and advocated for Medicare expansion in Georgia.
Both Democrats went on to win in the January 5th runoffs, with Warnock winning by 2% and Ossoff by around 1.5%.
Although these margins were narrow, they were gargantuan compared to Biden’s 0.2% margin and marked Georgia’s first Democratic Senate victories since 2000—a symbolic milestone in the state’s political landscape.
Other factors, like the pandemic and economic downturn, undoubtedly contributed to the outcome and were widely blamed on Trump and Republicans. But voters ultimately faced another choice beyond party lines: between representatives who were genuinely “of Georgia” and those who seemed more aligned with D.C., between authentic and inauthentic.
Pennsylvania: John Fetterman’s Rural Appeal in 2022
An even more telling example of this "invisible force" of authenticity and its impact on voters is John Fetterman’s performance across rural Pennsylvania.
In 2022, John Fetterman’s campaign in Pennsylvania exemplified how authenticity can resonate even with voters in traditionally conservative rural areas. Fetterman, with his casual attire, tattoos, and straight-talking style, managed to outperform President Biden’s 2020 margins in each of the 21 counties with fewer than 20,000 votes, sometimes by as much as 10 percentage points, showing his appeal as an authentic, relatable candidate.
In contrast, his opponent, Mehmet Oz, struggled to shed the label of an “outsider” after having recently moved from New Jersey. Fetterman’s authenticity struck a chord with rural Pennsylvanians, many of whom might not typically vote for Democrats.
While Fetterman also performed well in urban and suburban areas, his strong showing in rural counties stands out among his fellow Senate Democratic candidates and demonstrates the effectiveness of his campaign’s focus on authenticity, especially compared to his opponent, Mehmet Oz, whose outsider status and perceived lack of genuine connection to Pennsylvania became a liability.
Many Democrats in states like Arizona, Wisconsin, and Michigan performed strongly in suburban areas—and, to a lesser extent, in some urban centers. Yet few managed to meet, let alone exceed, Biden’s already modest rural performance.
Take Mandela Barnes, the Democratic Senate candidate in Wisconsin in 2022. Barnes saw high turnout in Milwaukee and Madison and achieved impressive margins in surrounding suburbs, particularly in Dane County, where Madison is located. However, he struggled significantly in the state’s rural, working-class counties, where his underperformance compared to Biden contributed heavily to his overall 1.6% loss in the statewide vote.
Fetterman’s rural success is a clear example of how authenticity can influence even typically conservative areas, setting him apart in an election cycle where most Democrats failed to make similar inroads with rural voters.
Conclusion: Authenticity’s Quiet Power in Modern Politics
These examples from Iowa, Indiana, Georgia, and Pennsylvania highlight the underestimated role of authenticity in today’s polarized politics. While partisanship and party loyalty are powerful forces, authenticity provides a unique counterweight, enabling candidates to make direct connections with voters’ sense of trust and relatability.
In an era where the average voter sees every political ad as just another tactic, authenticity stands out as something real and unspinnable. As long as this is true, authenticity will continue to be an invisible but potent force in American elections.