The Great Alignment: Race, Party Transformation, and the Rise of Donald Trump by Alan I. Abramowitz

Author:Alan I. Abramowitz [Abramowitz, Alan I.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: 21st Century, Campaigns & Elections, Political Parties, Political Process, Political Science, Politics & Government, United States
ISBN: 9780300207132
Google: ix9dDwAAQBAJ
Amazon: B07FGD7CFG
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2018-03-15T03:00:00+00:00

How Polarized Is the American Electorate?

The results of recent elections at all levels of American government show that the U.S. electorate is sharply divided along racial, cultural, and ideological lines. These divisions explain the record levels of party loyalty and straight-ticket voting in these contests. But does this mean that the parties in the electorate are also polarized? Could these trends just reflect, as some scholars have argued, that the two major parties’ supporters are better sorted along ideological lines?

According to Morris Fiorina and others, Americans today are better sorted by party than they were thirty or forty years ago, but they are no more polarized. By this, Fiorina means that party identification today is more closely related to ideology, values, and specific issue positions than it was in the past. Democrats and Republicans are more likely to be found on the opposite sides of these divides, but the distribution of opinion is still a bell-shaped curve, with most of us near the center where we have always been. The large majority of Americans, according to Fiorina, hold moderate views. It is the elites and activists who are divided into polarized camps with few centrists, not the voters.6

It is certainly possible for voters to become increasingly sorted but not increasingly polarized. But the evidence from the ANES does not support this conclusion. Instead it shows that in practice, sorting and polarization are almost indistinguishable. As the American electorate has become increasingly sorted by party, the distributions of ideological positions, policy preferences, and even candidate evaluations have become increasingly polarized, with fewer Democrats and Republicans found near the center and more near the opposing attitudinal poles. But this shift toward the extremes has not always affected supporters of both parties equally. On some questions, Republicans have moved further to the right than Democrats have moved to the left.

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