Political Polarization Midterm

Question 1

How do we measure/conceptualize/operationalize polarization?

Answer 1

1) Polarization as a red button, moving further apart ideologically? Being able to associate specific stances on policies with a party identity easily
2) Fewer individuals occupy the center or consider themselves independent or conservative Democrats. Ex: Southern Democrats and Rockefeller Republicans
3) Cross-cutting cleavages are decreasing
4) Strong idealized hatred is built and sometimes even encouraged for those across the aisle; shown in the media as there is more space and political dialogue provided to issues that are “yes/no” or issues “built” for polarization. No one wants to talk about what unites the parties

Question 2

Why Hatred and Othering of Political Foes Has Spiked by Scientific American 2020

Answer 2

Describes how partisan polarization is becoming not just an ideological sectarianism, but a moral repugnance towards the other party, also associated with hatred and “othering.” Sectarianism is the growing tendency of one political group to view its opponents as morally repugnant; it is also defined by a highly moralized political identity that views the opposing side as contemptible and associated with a specific personality.

Question 3

What is Political Polarization by Nolan McCarty 2019

Answer 3

Cross-cutting cleavages – whereas parties used to exclude and include individuals based on different parts of their identity whether it be religion, race, or occupation, over time, cross-cutting cleavages are decreasing significantly, and each party is made up of more and more like-minded and like-identitied individuals.
McCarty defines policy polarization as a process where extreme views on some matters of public policy have become more common over time. The taxonomy of polarization can be divided into policy polarization, ideological polarization, and partisan polarization. Polarization generally occurs as issues become more bimodal, in which there are two distinct answers or common opinions regarding political issues, rather than unimodal policies that usually have a single most common position. Ideological polarization occurs as people fall and declare themselves either more left-leaning or right-leaning. Partisan polarization occurs as fewer conservative democrats and less progressive republicans populate the politically active public. From 1974-2004, 2 causes for polarization are indicated by ideological awareness and generational effects of generally changing views, as well as sorting or the feeling of belonging and teambuilding adopted by the parties. People now have incentives to either register as a Democrat or Republican.

Question 4

Are the Partisan Elites Polarized by Nolan McCarty 2019

Answer 4

Affordable Care Act in 2010 during Obama’s presidency was a case of polarization. Progressives opposed the individual mandate and instead wanted to replace the ACA with a single-payer health plan similar to Medicare. Evidence for elite polarization is the Supreme Court nomination votes and system of interest group allocation, choosing votes that disrupt bipartisanship. Roll-call votes can be used to measure polarization by computing party voting scores; a legislator’s party voting score is the percentage of votes they case that agree with the majority of their party, the party vote is a roll call where the majority of one-party votes against the majority of another. Sponsorship is not as evident as polarization due to the requirement of “across the aisle” votes in polarized voting, so co-sponsorship is bipartisan support and for legislation, these sponsorships haven’t decreased much since the 1960s. Ideolite – ideology-like liking choices across different issues together and it generates constituency across legislative behavior, meaning people aren’t just partisan because the way elite vote is more than just ideology, it’s also about incentives like personal relationships and interest group lobbying. The issues that divide Congress the more are sovereignty, organization and the scope of the federal government, international affairs, and domestic affairs. Mainstream media has a liberal bias, also discussed in the Politico 2017 article on the media bubble, as the author claims that if Republicans used more ideologically loaded terms in speeches, a news outlet that used neutral terms would appear left-wing.

Question 5

Has the American Public Polarized by Morris Fiorina 2016

Answer 5

The author first defines the political class, as those who voluntarily take part in campaigns and/or elections, including donors who tend to align themselves with more extremes. The article also describes how current research predicts that Americans will segregate themselves into “ideological silos” where they only receive political news compatible with their preexisting positions. Discussing the process of party sorting and how it is confused with polarization, the normal American isn’t polarized, as measured by the General Self Survey which relies on self-reporting ideology. This is similar to how most people believe that they are middle-class when asked, but it is naturally false as many people are unaware of their inherent or subconscious bias or beliefs. The 2nd measure used is partisanship, as more people are registering as independents, but in most states, there’s a cost to doing so you can’t vote in the primaries, but once you register with a party, you are flooded with content in your inbox to lobby. More importantly, Americans have polarized around certain key issues like abortion and immigration. Studies also show that this so-called political class holds consistently less accurate beliefs and perceptions of society regarding polarization. False polarization, as the author states, is affected by media coverage, but also associated with affective polarization or the tendency to dislike the other side over and beyond their policy differences. Partisans misinterpret the extremity of the other side, causing a larger perceptual gap than the one that objectively exists. The article also discusses how close friends share political views, and when they disagree, they perceive a lower level of disagreement than that objectively exists. Ideological silos are echo chambers that reinforce views and insulate them from opposing views, these include neighborhoods, circles of friends/peers, and the media. Network diversity correlates with political moderation, meaning if you get your news from more diverse platforms, your opinions will be more moderate; the opposite is also true with Fox News and CNN.

Question 6

Americans Aren’t Polarized, Just Better Sorted by Fiorina and Abrams 2014

Answer 6

Self-identified Democrats have become more homogenously liberal and self-identified Republicans are more homogenously conservative. The authors question whether sorting can be reversed, as electoral coalitions are in part endogenous and shape what politicians do but are also shaped by what they do. In the 1960s, the increased political media and partisan opinions circulating regarding abortion, the environment, and immigration effectively reshaped electoral coalitions by the late 1970s.

Question 7

Key Facts About Partisanship and Political Animosity in America by Pew 2016

Answer 7

There are 6 takeaways from the report
1) Many Democrats and Republicans associate negative characteristics with members of the other party.
2) In choosing a party, disliking the policies of opponents is almost as powerful a reason as liking the policies of one’s own party.
3) Political conversations highlight differences, but most think it’s still possible to agree on nonpolitical topics.
4) Partisans on both sides give “cold” ratings for members of the opposing party, and “colder” ratings to that party’s 2016 candidate.
5) Having cross-party friendships is associated with how coldly partisans see the other party.
6) Majorities in both parties express not just unfavorable but very unfavorable view of the other party.

Question 8

Fear and Loathing Across Party Lines by Iyengar and Westwood 2015

Answer 8

Affective polarization refers to the phenomenon where individuals’ feelings and emotions towards members of their own political party or group become more positive, while their feelings towards members of the opposing party or group become more negative. The authors argue that polarization based on party is just as strong as polarization based on race or other factors. Polarization and partisanship are now more than a political dimension and now dictate social cues and norms as a way to sort and promote sectarianism. Their study shows that hostile feelings for the opposing party are ingrained in voters’ minds as subconscious inclinations, as party cues exert powerful effects on nonpolitical judgments and behaviors. While early studies viewed partisanship as a manifestation of other group affiliations, party is now considered an important part of social identity on its own. Partisan cues influence decisions outside of politics. They took 2,000 adults from a Survey Sampling International Panel and completed Brief Implicit Association Tests regarding race and partisanship. Utilizing the D-score to interpret the result, they found that the magnitude of obtained partisan D-score converged with traditional measures of partisan and ideological affiliation. They found that the implicit partisan effects by party and race are comparable, but the separation is greater between Republicans and Democrats than between white people and black people. Supposedly, democrat-learning individuals are significantly less effectively polarized than self-identified Democrats.

Question 9

Issues Versus Affect by Adam Enders 2021

Answer 9

Education makes many feel like they know more about polarization than other educated elite, so we might underestimate our bias level, because we still have personal, emotional opinions that lean certain ways, and education just allows us to defend our perceived opinions better. Extremists are more likely to vote in the primaries due to strongly held, convicted beliefs. The author claims that affective polarization is greater than ideological polarization for elites just as it is for the mass public. Mass ideological polarization has increased, but the gap between mass and elite polarization has stayed the same, the elites are more affectively polarized than the mass public, and more affectively polarized than ideologically polarized, which might lead to more emotional polarizing cues embedded in elite messaging.

Question 10

More Accurate, but No Less Polarized by Lee et al. 2021

Answer 10

The authors argue that political elites are consistently more accurately informed than the public across a wide range of politically contentious facts, but this increase in accuracy doesn’t translate into reduced factual belief polarization. Government officials’ factual beliefs may reflect both the incentives they face to be accurately informed about policy-relevant facts and the pressures to hold beliefs that align with their partisan preferences. Factual belief polarization occurs as partisans frequently diverge in their factual beliefs as well as their policy preferences. Higher levels of education or knowledge which we expect to observe among elites, are associated with higher levels of attitude-consistent factual beliefs in many partisan factual controversies. Only voter fraud produces the preregistered expectation of greater elite belief polarization. This challenges the assumption that belief accuracy and belief polarization are inversely related, increased factual accuracy among political elites doesn’t necessarily translate into greater factual agreement across partisan lines.

Question 10

In a Politically Polarized Era, Sharp Divides by Pew 2019

Answer 10

Age differences are generally wider among Republicans than Democrats, while the same can be said for Democrats with education. Partisan gaps dwarf race, education, and other differences in political values. Race has a partisan difference of 17% while party has one of 39%. Younger and older Republicans differ on foreign policy and immigration but largely agree on race and guns. Black and white Democrats diverge sharply on whether belief in God is necessary for morality.

Question 11

A Brief History of Social Sorting by Liliana Mason 2015

Answer 11

The author argues that ideological polarization based on the average opinions of the two parties has diverged and a much larger division is growing between them in their sense of themselves as liberals and conservatives. The sense of social division radiates out to many other social cleavages between the parties, exemplified by the timing of partisan changes during segregation in 1954. In the 1964 election, many southern states voted for the Republican party, but there was a racially inspired shift in the group basis of the Democratic party with the rights of blacks, causing more conservative southern white Democrats to move to the Republican party. By 1988, 49% of northern whites identified with the Republican party, increasing by 17% from 1972. After civil rights, the policy-based affiliation grew into a distinctly social partisan divide. The author argues that even though social sorting has increased in recent decades, there were social divides before then. In 1952, the two parties were affiliated by religion (Republicans=Protestant, Democrat=Catholic), and geography by north and south. In 1972 racial groups divided the two parties because of the Civil Rights Act. By 1992, the religious divide had cracked open, and ideology according to religion increased greatly. Now, the author argues that television is an indicator of partisan ties like Duck Dynasty and Family Guy.

Question 12

The Big Sort by Bill Bishop 2008

Answer 12

The author discusses the neighborhood ties of polarization based on internet communication and voluntary political expression. In 1976, less than a quarter of Americans lived in places where the presidential election was a landslide. By 2004, nearly half of all voters lived in landslide counties. Americans formed tribes, not only in neighborhoods but also in churches and other groups; now people of specific social groups congregated in specific cities, like gay people, workers, young people, and rich people. In post-materialism, people are free from want and worry and reorder their lives around their values and beliefs.

Question 13

The Big Sort that Wasn’t by Fiorina and Abrams 2012

Answer 13

The authors argue against Bill Bishop and his studies, instead arguing that people in the age of technology don’t communicate or interact with their neighbors hardly at all. While more people living in landslide counties has increased, it requires other factors to remain constant to attribute that increase to a change in geographic sorting. If geographic polarization is tearing us apart, both levels and increases have been greater in the past and the country has survived, this is due to Bishop’s reliance on presidential election returns. Party registration plays a big part in identifying the political affiliation of specific neighborhoods or counties. The percentage of the population living in landslide counties has declined in tandem with the decline in the number of landslide counties. If we defined landslide counties according to their voter registration rather than their presidential vote, the proportion of the American population living in landslide counties has fallen significantly, from 50% to 15%. The assumption is that neighborhoods are important centers of life, and the residents of the neighborhoods talk to each other about politics. They argue also that so many Americans perceive their neighborhoods as politically diverse can explain their reluctance to talk politics due to fear of putting social relationships at risk.

Question 14

Campaign Finance Laws, Purists, and Pragmatists by LaRaja and Schaffner 2015

Answer 14

The authors’ main crux is defining insiders and outsiders among those of the political class. Campaign finance laws come together with the focus on Congress as a result of policy gridlock which exacerbates wealth inequality through a basic failure to adjust policies to new economic and demographic realities. Due to money being an essential electoral/campaign resource, party organizations have struggles to finance politics because campaign finance laws and court jurisprudence constrain political parties tighter than they limit interest groups or individual donors. Essentially, financially strong party organizations should reduce party polarization as parties are the sole political organizations that prioritize winning elections the most. As a result, this trait forces parties to exercise a moderating effect on those who win office, and the introduction of party-friendly campaign finance laws would moderate the distancing of the major political parties in Congress. The main counterargument to their approach is that allowing parties to raise a lot of money will increase the potential for corruption and afford moneyed interests an undue influence contrary to the public interest. There is a direct correlation between campaign finance laws, campaign spending, and GDP in a country; spending is akin to consumption. The main conceptions are that insiders, city officials with party power, operate parties as unitary actors seeking electoral gains, or that parties are controlled by outsiders who work through issue coalitions to advance policy objectives. The main objective of insiders is to use party committees to win elections, contending with other factions for control of the party organization. For outsiders, parties are just a vehicle to achieve policy goals, as they are represented by coalitions and more grassroots movements. There are many models for the party-as-insider approach including insiders desiring economic gains, distinct policy preferences (APSA-backed), ambition, and individual values. The outsider approach is controlled by various groups and activists in which a group-centric approach prioritizes interest groups driven by supposedly more ideal-based agendas. Whereas the insiders are materialists, groups do more than simply lobby with a special interest, behaving as a collective party coordinating their actions to recruit, nominate, and elect candidates who favor their policy positions. This is because traditional lobbying strategies wouldn’t yield the same results. Factions gain leverage in party affairs by having control over valuable political resources, as the ability to finance political campaigns shapes whether pragmatists or purists have more influence in pushing the direction of the party coalition. Rules that restrict issue groups but don’t constrain party organizations give the insiders greater influence on candidate selection and support.

Question 15

The Ideological Wellsprings of Campaign Money by LaRaja and Schaffner 2015

Answer 15

The people who contribute to raising money for reform strategy are those with extreme views who have to influence policy more (people who have more skin in the game). Rules that excessively constrain political parties enhance the influence of the most ideological factions of the party coalition; the purist outsiders whose primary focus is to push policies in government gain leverage because contribution limits on political parties encourage politicians blocked from gaining financial support from parties, to turn to alternative sources. Demographics also show that disposable income means less than 1 in 1000 people donate the most to campaigns. The internet democratized the ability to give money to a campaign, but the amount per individual matters, as concentrated or individual donations affect candidate decisions more. Candidates in state legislatures receive nearly half of their campaign money directly from individuals. Donors tend to prefer to give directly to candidates who think like them instead of giving to general parties, which they may see as too moderate. Super PACs can spend unlimited amounts by independently supporting favored candidates as the rich have ready alternatives when they face constraints on contributing money. It’s not true that limiting contributions will democratize the pool of people who contribute money to politicians, as contribution limits make politicians spend additional time raising money from more of the same kinds of ideological donors. Donors are highly polarized as many few fall near the center of the scale, and there is a relative peak for conservatives who donate more to candidates than parties than Democrats. Donor perceptions of the party and candidates vary depending on their own ideology and Democratic and Republican donor behaviors aren’t symmetrical. Democrats view the party and candidates as indistinguishable in terms of ideology, GOPs (Grand Old Party) extreme donors see the party as much more moderate than candidates, as moderate Republicans see both the party and candidates as very conservative. The authors theorize that Republican party organizations haven’t been mediating the flow of money to candidates from ideological sources as much as the Democrats.

Question 16

Failure to Converge by Larry Bartels 2016

Answer 16

The author argues that Republican candidates have generally been responsive to the positions of their base, but Democratic candidates have often been more extreme than the Democratic base, suggesting that electoral polarization is due to candidates’ convictions rather than the need to mollify core partisans. Neither party’s presidential candidates have been more than minimally responsive to the views of swing voters. This directly opposed the median voter theorem. Both Hillary Clinton in her 2008 presidential campaign and other scholars Hacker and Pierson argue that Republicans have moved further and further from the political center. To win a primary, a candidate will instead appeal to the median voter within their party. For Democrats, the estimated party conviction is substantially more liberal than the base for the party on every issue. The preferences of Republicans and Democrats core supporters have polarized significantly on various issues since 1980, with much being attributed to the Republican base. Personalization over moderation is taking place on behalf of party candidates.

Question 17

Your Brain on Groups by Ezra Klein 2020

Answer 17

The group think, Klein argues, begins with a psychological categorization of us vs them and even if there is no reason to create binary categories for these things or independent interests, we still seek to sort people and ideals. The author questions whether our calculations about our rational thoughts are just extensions of intuition, as in, we seek to find rational explanations to make sense of our intuition, which is easily associated with polarization and ideological/policy-based extremism or political sectarianism as we read about in the “Why Hatred and Othering” Scientific American article. They did a study with young men, 64 boys 14-15 were from the same school and were asked to test visual judgment. They were shown clusters of dots and asked to estimate how many they saw. They sorted boys in groups and told the groups were based on whether they guessed high or low when judging the dots, though they were sorted randomly. They were tasked with handing out a limited amount of real money to other boys and could decide whether they were giving it to their group or the other. The idea was to establish a baseline, but most of them gave more money to their own group than others. Many even gave each individual less if it meant that the team overall had a greater lead over the other team. This, the researcher described, was gratuitous discrimination, as it was the winning that was more important, as well as the team winning, not the individual. Elections accentuate this team building and use parties as identifiers for the established team values, as how we feel matters much more than what we think, and we feel the need to be part of us rather than them. Historically this makes sense and can perhaps even be a survival mechanism as ostracization has real-life consequences and can threaten the individual’s survival. Social cues also indicate party affiliation in campaigning like consumer products (soda, clothing, and cars). Political identities have become mega identities, and activating the one activates all. Obama in his 2004 speech spoke about the inflation of polarization, arguing that polarized media and gerrymandering balkanizes us into our political identities, but these are not our only identities.

Question 18

The Press Secretary in Your Mind by Ezra Klein 2020

Answer 18

We reasoned in groups, shown by Asch’s 1951 study showing subjects a card with a line on it and then asked them to match it to a corresponding length on another card. In critical trials, if other participants (workers for Asch) who gave the wrong answer as a group, the one participant would also guess wrong 37% of the time. This was because of the perceived criticism they felt like they were being subject to if they disagreed with the group. They would rather have guessed wrong than be left out. The same was done with liberals and conservatives on the spectrum. Students with strong opinions of welfare were asked to rate their favorability on programs from 1-7, and for both liberals and conservatives, the effect of reference group information overrode that of policy content. Meaning, if their party endorsed it, and they know they did before voting, the liberals supported even a harsh welfare program and conservatives supported even a lax one. In theory, we join parties because they share our clause and goals that have been passed to us by the other most important groups in our lives like families and communities. Many believe that members of the parties should just be more educated, that if they knew more about the policies, they’d be able to make more confident decisions and discern better policy solutions for the party itself. Many political scientists call this the competence principle, but the author argues that politics makes smart people stupid, based on a study where Kahan presented educated people with math problems related to political views, and when they were told that a researcher gave them the wrong statistic, they redid the math problems incorrectly and saw the researcher as an expert. Once group loyalties are engaged, you can’t change people’s minds by utterly refuting their arguments. Thinking is mostly just rationalization, just a search for supporting evidence or about confirmation bias.

Question 19

Social Media, Echo Chambers, and Political Polarization by Pablo Barbera

Answer 19

Communities of like-minded people are promoted by social media, but the author argues that cross-cutting cleavages and interactions are more frequent than commonly believed, as well as exposure to diverse news. Social networking sites increase exposure to information shared by weak ties (peers, coworkers, middle-school friends). Political polarization in the US has increased the least among citizens who are least likely to use social media. Internet technology steam-rolls opinions on the extreme and connects people with extreme views to other similar individuals, something that doesn’t take place in reality, as real-world interactions force us to deal with diversity. The internet essentially exacerbates already-present tendencies, defined through enclave deliberation causing group polarization where moderates within a group are pressured to have more extreme values. Weak ties are meant to soften one’s tendency to develop extreme views, exemplifying how the degradation of relationship development occurs on social media as it breeds parasocial relationships rather than real-life, cross-cutting interactions. When presented with negative information about a candidate that citizens evaluate positively, support for that candidate may actually increase due to affective biases. Asymmetrical polarization occurs as the same input to members of differing views will have different outputs or reactions. One solution to this includes increasing information quality on social media profiles, incentivizing moderation by upranking reasonable disagreement, and eliminating highly visible quantification.

Question 20

The Difference Between Democrats and Republicans by Ezra Klein 2020

Answer 20

Ornstein and Mann as conservative and liberal representatives together, credit Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House, with polarization upticks in the 90s due to advocating for Senators to live outside DC, as well as bolstering hyper-partisan language and demonizing “outsiders” of the party. They credit the Republican party as a more extreme, ideology-run party, whereas the Democrats are considered more policy-driven. Democrats have a more diverse constituency, due to more range of ideological values among different racial and religious groups. Today, Republicanism is synonymous with white, conservative Christianity. Democrats supposedly want candidates that compromise while Republicans want candidates that “stick to their guns.” Klein disagrees slightly with this argument and says that they mistake an identitarian movement for an ideological movement because if conservatives believed what they claim about executive power, limited government, and congressional primary, they would’ve been more critical of Trump. One example is the opposition to Trump’s “build a wall” rhetoric, which coming from him, the Democrats responded with opposition, even though the history of democratic policy support shows they should’ve supported it. Klein argues that conservatives care more about the direction of Trump than the stance of the policy itself. Republicans mention ideology 2x as much in campaigns as Democrats. Republicans argue that because the media leans left, they had to create outlets that represent their opinions. Klein also discusses how the emphasis on winning votes by geography rather than popularity puts Democrats as a disadvantage as those who live in more rural, less densely populated areas, like the swing states, tend to be more conservative ideologically. In 2018, Gallup asked the parties about the future of the party, and Republicans wanted their party to become more conservative, while Democrats wanted their party to be more moderate.

Question 21

The Media Bubble is Worse Than You Think by Politico 2017

Answer 21

As of 2013, only 7% of journalists identified as Republicans. The percentage of those who voted for Republican candidates was in the single digits for DC, New York, and LA constituencies. People are based in bubbles based on their occupational industries, and more high-paying jobs cluster in denser cities with more liberal views. The economy generally greatly affects media and journalism sorting of political interests. This assertion wasn’t as present in 2008 but is becoming more and more extreme today as internet publishers increase nationwide, and 73% of all internet publishing jobs are concentrated in Boston, New York, DC, Richmond, LA, Seattle, and San Diego. In the 2016 election, nearly 90% of all internet publishing employees worked in a county where Clinton won and 75% of them in a county where she won by more than 30%; Clinton was the national media’s candidate. Since the media in 2016 poorly predicted Trump’s win, there could be some incentive to eradicate the liberal journalism bias, because journalists hate being wrong more than anything.