Why Politicians Need to Know History

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People seeking to win an election often use emotional words to trigger voters.

These emotional words tend to trigger people into four different groups: loyalists, riled-up resisters, mild moderates, and disenchanted drop-outs.

What we see today is people getting into power with less than a majority of people because they're able to divide this four-way voter split.

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BILL EDDY

Bill Eddy is the co-founder and president of the High Conflict Institute, a company devoted to helping individuals and organizations deal with high-conflict people. Eddy is a Certified Family Law Specialist and Senior Family Mediator at the National Conflict Resolution Center in San Diego. He is also a Licensed Clinical Social worker with twelve years' experience providing therapy to children, adults, couples and families in psychiatric hospitals and outpatient clinics.

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TRANSCRIPT:

BILL EDDY: So high-conflict politicians — or what I call "wannabe kings"— because that's really what they want. They want to take over and eliminate opposition. How they effectively gain power in an election — and we're not talking about people that just became dictators from a war or something. We're talking about people getting elected. And what happens is they put out all this emotional message — all these emotional words. And these emotional words tend to trigger people into four different groups.

And I call this the four-way voter split. What happens is, they are loving loyalists. They seduce by saying, you're wonderful. You and I want the same thing. We know and believe in all of that. It's really calculated, because most of these politicians shift all over politically to see what works to get them power. What the loving loyalists want to hear. And so the loving loyalists just go, we love this person. And then they change their policy. It's all right. We're already in love. So that's maybe 30% of people. Then on the other side of that, they trigger the riled-up resisters.

And the riled-up resisters are emotionally hooked and they're angry. They don't like this person. They see this person as very dangerous and a threat to society. And we've got to do something about this person. But they're emotionally engaged as well. Then there's the mild moderates. And to some extent, they're stuck. They don't know. Well, is this different? Or is this politics? And they generally view it through the lens of-- this is politics. So if they're on our side politically, we'll support them. But we don't like the personality. We wish the person would stop talking so much. And if they're on the other side, they go, we don't like this personality. But we really don't like his politics. But they're kind of mild moderates. So they're not really emotionally activated. In fact, they may actually be emotionally intimidated, because they don't want to get fired upon by the verbal tongue-lashing that HCPs are always putting out.

But then the fourth group is the disenchanted drop-outs. And these folks feel emotionally pushed away. It's like, just leave me out of this. I'm not political. I don't want to be involved. In all the countries where we see high-conflict politicians rising to leadership, there's a huge percentage of people that emotionally drop out. And so they don't need a majority of people. Typically, they may have 40%, maybe 45% of the vote. But these high-conflict politicians rarely get over 50%. But because they're able to divide these other groups — that they push away the disenchanted drop-out so they just don't vote. And the riled-up resisters go with, maybe, extreme candidates who don't have a chance. And the mild moderates often have a candidate that has a chance.

But the moderates and the resisters are opposing each other, mostly because the high-conflict politician has divided them. And so what we see, over and over again around the world, is they're getting into power with less than a majority of people, because they're able to divide this four-way voter split.