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Ginny Schweiter '26
I’m sure the election is on many of your minds right now, and it’s definitely on mine. You’re likely wondering how this ties into our theme of sports, but hear me out here. Amidst the flood of election content I’ve seen in the past few weeks, one video stood out. A short video by a creator known as Etymology Nerd, talking about how so much of the language we use around the election comes from sports- specifically, horse racing. Take the concept of the “presidential race.” Now, while the candidates aren’t literally racing each other, this framing creates the false suggestion that the election is an ongoing contest, when in fact it is a singular event in which speed certainly doesn’t matter. There are many other similar phrases as well, from the more obvious ones like “neck-and-neck” and “gaining” to the subtler, but equally race-like “ahead” or “behind”. All these terms are part of a concept called horse race journalism, a framework for discussing and analyzing elections that treats them as if they were literal horse race. This language contributes to distrust in electoral systems because a candidate may seem to be “ahead,” when in fact some votes just hadn’t been counted yet. It can also affect the outcome, because if reporting prior to an election presents one candidate as having a lead, or seemingly set to win, people might not feel the need to vote. Thus, on the actual election day, with the only votes that truly matter, that frontrunner (yet another racing term) can end up losing. This is sometimes cited as a cause for Hillary Clinton’s loss in 2016. Not only can this language play into election denial, but it is also indicative of the way America treats politics today. Politics today are as partisan, divided, and extreme as they have ever been, neatly fitting into the sports framework with the idea of having one team that you unconditionally support no matter the circumstances. Complete loyalty is not the way our governmental system is intended to function and is very dangerous, because the more we treat elections as games and competitions between teams as opposed to our part in the governing of our country, the more likely it is that we will elect people on the basis of their party without considering their actual qualifications and policy. As we become more removed from the origins of these terms and pay less attention to the language surrounding our elections, we start to forget that they create false perceptions and influence our political system in ways that we might not want.
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