Behind the campaigning and polling in the lead-up to midterm elections, UCLA experts can unpack what issues and events shape voters' lives and might influence their voting decisions and behavior.
Aliza Luft, a sociologist and the interim director of the UCLA Bedari Kindness Institute, home to the Initiative to Study Hate and the Dialogue across Difference initiative, studies how ordinary people make high-stakes decisions under political threat. Her work sheds light on how polarization, hate and mass deportation may shape how Americans act ahead of the midterms.
We caught up with Luft for a few questions on how her research interests connect to current events.
What do you study that relates to this election?
I study how ordinary people make decisions during war and genocide: why some participate in violence, why others resist and why many look away. Often the same person does more than one, harming at one moment and saving at another. That tells me these choices turn less on hatred or ideology than on people's relationships, the institutions they're embedded in and the situations they find themselves in.
Leaders' words and policies matter less because they convince people than because they shape perceptions: what is happening, what is possible, what is safe and who is safe. That fear can keep people from speaking out or acting to protect their communities. And since dehumanization often follows violence rather than causing it, we should watch the practices that make exclusion feel routine, not only hateful words.
I see UCLA's Compassionate Conversations series as an example of what we need to be doing more generally. It brings together speakers committed to engaging others with empathy and respect to talk openly about hard topics, from migrant scapegoating to justice and forgiveness.
How does polarization impact this November's election?
Much of today's polarization is perceived rather than real. Research on "false polarization" and partisan misperceptions consistently finds that Americans overestimate how extreme, hostile and dangerous the other side is. We feel far more divided than we are, and that generates fear, anxiety and anger. Those feelings can push people to the polls, but they can also push them toward cynicism and withdrawal.
Party leaders have grown more extreme, and extreme views travel further on social media, where algorithms reward outrage and drown out moderate voices. This also leaves many people feeling isolated and unsure where they belong, which may shape who shows up in November and how they read the results.
For some Americans, though, the fear is not a distortion at all but concrete: Mass deportations and family separations have made a parent's detention a daily possibility in mixed-status households. For many Latino and immigrant-origin Americans, including citizens, that climate shapes whether voting feels safe.
Is there more hate in the U.S. than ever before? How does hate impact elections?
I don't think so.
Looking back at this country's history, we have been in similar places before: slavery, the Civil War and Jim Crow; the first and second Ku Klux Klan; waves of anti-Asian violence and the Chinese Exclusion Act and Japanese internment; Islamophobia and the targeting of Muslim Americans after 9/11; and recurring waves of antisemitism and antisemitic violence — not to mention extreme xenophobia and anti-immigrant sentiment and actions. We got through those moments, though never easily and without cost.
What makes this moment particularly concerning is that so much of the hatefulness comes from the top. In late 2023, while campaigning, President Trump said that undocumented migrants were "poisoning the blood of our country" and described his political rivals as "vermin." Rather than backing away, he doubled down, and many around him defended it.
This matters for elections because words from leaders and their policies redraw the lines of who counts as "us" and who counts as a threat. That fuels fear, and fear shapes who votes, how they vote and whether they trust the process. It also shows up as hostility toward the people who run elections. In early 2026, 54% of local elected officials reported experiencing insults, harassment, threats or attacks in the prior three months, and a Brennan Center survey found that 32% of local and state election officials have experienced threats, harassment or abuse. That same survey found that 23% of election officials are concerned about being assaulted at home or at work. One recent poll found over a third of Americans believe the midterms are likely to be "stolen."
The fear extends to voters. Several civil rights groups are suing over the administration's move to allow some ICE presence at polling places, arguing it places voters in fear of confronting armed federal agents. Administration officials say agents would be there only in response to specific threats or to serve warrants.
Whatever the intent, the fear alone can keep people home, and there is a real risk that eligible citizens, especially Latino Americans, could be questioned or turned away because someone assumes they are immigrants. Efforts to require documentary proof of citizenship to register, like the SAVE America Act, which has passed the House, compound that risk, even though federal law already bars noncitizens from voting and cases are rare. Add a wave of mid-decade gerrymandering that both parties have pursued, and growing concern about political interference in how elections are run, and the result is an erosion of trust in the process itself.
What can a person do to counteract hate in the U.S.?
Start by getting offline and engaging with people in the real world. Algorithms thrive on extreme emotion, show us more of what we already believe, drown out moderate voices, and make "the other" seem far more dangerous and hateful than they really are. Talk to your neighbors, get involved in your community, and build bridges toward common goals. Stand up against narratives that target entire groups, as if we weren't all complex human beings who share more than we think.
But this can't only be individual. My research on World War II–era Vichy France shows how much institutions and moral leaders matter in a crisis. French Catholic bishops, who held enormous moral sway, offered private sympathy and reassurance while staying publicly silent or retreating after brief protest, and that ambiguity shaped how people understood the political moment they were in and their actions in response.
Today, universities, faith communities, businesses and local leaders need to speak clearly and act early to protect democratic principles: free speech, the safety of election workers and the right of every eligible citizen to vote. Quiet reassurance can feel safer, but it has costs. Ordinary people can hold the institutions they belong to account.
Check out UCLA Bedari Kindness Institute events including "Beyond the Divide: What the Science of Polarization Reveals, Right Before the Midterms."
