One Nation . . . Indivisible? Polarization in America Today

America is an increasingly divided nation. Although politics has always been an invested process that had the potential to bring out the worst in any person, we see a different type of venom present today. We have not returned to an era of duals, but we have seen frequent breaches in decorum even in our most hallowed halls. Americans no longer seem willing or able to look past politics to assure the common good. Without getting into data, theories, or rebuttals, let us just consider America today and in recent years.

Start with the election of president Barack Obama. After Obama’s victory, he was quickly nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize simply for the change in language and ideas coming from the American president to the remainder of the international community. Rather than uniting behind Obama’s winning the prize, we instead watched venomous attacks aimed at discrediting Obama’s worthiness for the award. Politics aside, such an award deserves to be celebrated. Remember that Obama was only our third sitting president to claim the prize. It stretches beyond worthiness, however. During the bidding process for the 2016 Summer Olympics, some Americans celebrated in the games’ going to Rio de Janeiro, as they viewed the decision as a mark against Obama’s legacy. Again, whether an individual agrees with the political beliefs of our chief executive or not, it is hard to not take pride in the possibility of the United States’ hosting the Olympics for the first time since Atlanta in 1996.

It is not just the masses who are becoming increasingly hostile toward each other in the name of politics. Our elected officials have seemingly lost sense of decorum and collective deliberation. Joe Wilson, a Republican member of the U.S. House from South Carolina, demonstrated the new era of politics on September 9, 2009, when he shouted out, “You lie!” during President Obama’s address to a joint session of Congress to outline his proposal for reforming health care. Obama claimed in his address that “there are also those who claim that our reform effort will insure illegal immigrants. This, too, is false—the reforms I’m proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally”. Wilson clearly disagreed but chose a hostile manner in which to express those views. Not to be outdone, Florida Democrat Alan Grayson took to the House floor a month later after reading the Republican alternative to Obama’s health care plan. He summarized it by saying,

The Republican health care plan: don’t get sick. . . . The Republicans have a back up plan in case you do get sick. . . . This is what the Republicans want you to do. If you get sick America, the Republican health care plan is this: Die quickly!

In response, even fellow Democrats wondered whether he had gone too far.

The democratic bargain also seems to be quickly dying in American politics. Parties used to run candidates and allow voters to decide the election. If they lost, they accepted it and began preparing for the next election. The same could be said for voters. Yet the attempted recall of governor Scott Walker in Wisconsin (who ran on the same ideals that would later anger many citizens) points to a change in this dynamic as well.

Theoretically, we can debate for years about what the data reveal regarding the state of polarization in our country. But we know politics have become increasingly ugly. Citizens feel pushed and pulled in each direction, and no one seems to be satisfied with the direction of our country or the decisions of our elected officials. Scholars have long discussed whether we are polarized or not and have come to various conclusions. Morris Fiorina, Sam Abrams, and Jeremy Pope (2006) and Fiorina and Abrams (2008) have presented one of the two main accepted schools of thought related to polarization. They have been unwilling to believe Americans are actually deeply divided on issues. Instead, they argue that we actually share far more in common than we readily realize. The only elements of polarization present are among political elites. They find the following:

The most direct evidence—citizens’ positions on public policy issues—shows little or no indication of increased mass polarization over the past two to three decades. Party sorting—an increased correlation between policy views and partisan identification—clearly has occurred, although the extent has sometimes been exaggerated. Geographic polarization—the hypothesized tendency of like-minded people to cluster together—remains an open question. To date, there is no conclusive evidence that elite polarization has stimulated voters to polarize, on the one hand, or withdraw from politics, on the other. (Fiorina & Abrams, 2008, p. 563)

The opposing camp, anchored by Alan Abramowitz and Kyle Saunders (2008), argues that polarization is a bottom-up phenomenon encouraged by engaged partisans within society. Abramowitz and Saunders also find that elites are highly polarized, which only helps divide the general public. They find that

since the 1970s, ideological polarization has increased dramatically among the mass public in the United States as well as among political elites. There are now large differences in outlook between Democrats and Republicans, between red state voters and blue state voters, and between religious voters and secular voters. These divisions are not confined to a small minority of activists—they involve a large segment of the public and the deepest divisions are found among the most interested, informed, and active citizens. Moreover, contrary to Fiorina’s suggestion that polarization turns off voters and depresses turnout, our evidence indicates that polarization energizes the electorate and stimulates political participation. (Abramowitz & Saunders, 2008, p. 542)

In this issue of American Behavioral Scientist, I present six articles that help us gain a fuller understanding of polarization in the American polis and hopefully begin to demonstrate why American politics have become increasingly less civil in recent years. Using a variety of methodological approaches and making significantly different theoretical contributions, they help us in moving beyond the now-tired question of whether there is measurable polarization within American society.

In the opening article, Gary Jacobson (in press) reports that ordinary Americans, as well as political elites, divide consistently along party lines on many policy issues and legislative preferences. In this sense, he helps advocate on behalf of Abramowitz and Saunders. Yet Jacobson goes a step further. Using survey data from the 2010 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, he finds that partisan sorting by itself can polarize the electorate even if those who are sorted do not adopt extreme issue positions. Such a finding raises questions as we attempt to understand how we can be sorted in a polarized manner yet refuse to accept the polarized issue stance. Ultimately, Jacobson points to strong evidence that partisan polarization is a popular phenomenon as much as it is an elite one.

Edward Carmines, Michael Ensley, and Michael Wagner (in press) use panel data from the Cooperative Campaign Analysis Project and the American National Election Study to examine the partisan consequences of differences between elite and citizen policy preferences. Recognizing the potential for both be polarized, they look for the differences between the two. Citizens who are consistently liberal or conservative in both economic and social issues are more likely to respond to elite polarization with mass polarization. It is citizens whose economic and social issue preferences do not perfectly match the platforms provided by elite Democrats and Republicans who are more likely to shift party allegiances in the short term. Their findings lead us to naturally question the impact played by the party system of today as a cause of assumed polarization.

Michael Heaney, Seth Masket, Joanne Miller, and Darla Strolovitch (in press) choose to focus on likely strong partisans in their study. They use a survey of national delegates to both the Democratic and Republican conventions to examine how political organizations are connected at the level of individual party activists with regard to polarization. Using network regression analysis, they demonstrate that comembership networks of national party convention delegates are highly polarized by party, even if demographic controls are considered. Ultimately, the results suggest that the segregation of organizational ties on the basis of party adds more difficulties to efforts to find common political ground in America today.

Michael Wolf, Cherie Strachan, and Dan Shea (in press) argue that polarization is about more than votes and policies. Instead, they believe there is a second layer of polarization focused on a general unwillingness to compromise. Rather than working together, polarized Americans are more apt to issue blame. Such a finding suggests a different electorate than we often assume in the United States. Deep divisions with a willingness to compromise are manageable, whereas a deep divide and a propensity to blame and unwillingness to work across the aisle makes policy making significantly more difficult.

Brandon Rottinghaus and Kent Tedin (in press) examine how bipartisanship can affect political opinions with rhetoric. They use Obama’s 2010 GOP House Issue Conference speech (which was bipartisan in nature) to see how the one-sided message affected his favorability rating. They then look at the message paired with three competing messages of varying partisanship to see whether any change in favorability occurs. Ultimately, they find that the president’s one-sided message is effective, but it is even more effective if met with a competitive bipartisan message from the opposition. If the president’s bipartisan message frame is responded to with a partisan message from the opposition, however, his approval numbers fall among all partisan Americans.

Finally, Karl Kaltenthaler and I (Kaltenthaler & Miller, in press) set out to examine the individual causes of hyperpartisanship. Although previous work has suggested potential predictors, we insert a new dynamic into the discussion: attitudes toward humanity. As social trust has emerged in more political psychology studies, we contend that individuals with lower levels of such trust will be more likely to identify as strong Republicans, whereas those with more positive views toward the nature of humanity will be more likely to consider themselves strong Democrats. Finding that such a fundamental worldview is a driving predictor of polarization proves problematic for hopes of the reemergence of meaningful bipartisanship in the American polis.

Taken collectively, the six articles aim to enrich our understanding on the theoretical underpinnings of polarization and its subsequent impact on our individual, group, and societal political behaviors and beliefs. They take different methodological approaches and make different theoretical arguments, yet all help us to see the ways that polarization presents itself in the American polis. My hope is they will help further the discourse surrounding polarization beyond questions of its mere existence moving forward and provide new fertile theories for future exploration and study.