American Politics: Polarized And Nonpolarized Distributions

American Politics: Polarization
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American Politics: Polarization
The general perception has been that the contemporary political polarization in the United States (U.S) is disturbingly high. The rift between congressional Republicans and Democrats has debatable resulted in a stagnated economy in the U.S, hence, underscoring considerable hurdles to establishing bipartisan policies around the fundamental economic, social, and environmental barriers of the present times (Zurcher, 2013). A group of social scientists has debated that polarization at Capitol Hill demonstrates and is instigated by polarization perceived by the American public (Abramowitz, 2013). Common Republicans are perceived to demonstrate partisan attitudes that are qualitatively dissimilar from that of common Democrats, as reiterated in the general peculiarity involving ‘blue states’ and ‘red states’. For instance, liberal Democrats are perceived to front bloated government and elated spending while conservative Republicans front for a lean government and minimized spending. Hitherto other social scientists observe that the extent of attitude polarization involving the two political facets is overstated, both in the perception of the general public and in the assessments of social scientists (Seyle& Newman, 2006). The gap arising from much of the concept of political polarization – both within the general opinion and academic circles – is the incorporation common Americans’ notion of polarization involving Democrats and Republicans (Westfall et al., 2015). This paper, hence, serves to deliberate on contrasting assessments of political polarization in the American public and evidences of such polarization.
Political polarization
For much time now, much focus has been on the increasing elite polarization in the U.S. while investigations on polarization of the American public have received considerably minimal attention (Fiorina & Abrams, 2008). Political polarization is a peril to the level that it instigates orientation along diverse lines of probable conflict and aligns persons and groups around limited identities, hence condensing interests into opposing blocs. In this dimension, opinion orientation, and not opinion radicalization, constitutes the form of polarization that more likely to elicit adverse effects onpolitical stability and social integration (Baldassarri &Gelman, 2008). Evidences of public polarization have been reported to present challenges of interference which make conclusions difficult. One of the widely perceived evidence is the Americans’ opinion on public policy matters, which elicits insignificant association with elevated public polarization over some time now. Nonetheless, party sorting – an elevated association involving partisan identification and policy opinions – apparently exists, yet the magnitude has often been overstated. Equally, geographic polarization, the theorized inclination of like-minded persons to group together, has largely been indefinite. Fiorina and Abrams (2008) report that no comprehensive evidence has been fronted to support the claim that elite polarization has positively influenced public polarization or public withdrawal from politics.
Public polarization: its identification and measurement
The English dictionary underscores polarization as concurrent occurrence of narrative contrasting or contradictory principles, propensities, or opinions. Not far from the point, Fiorina and Abrams (2008) conceive polarization as a bimodal distribution of opinions. Whereas most scholars would recognize bimodality a fundamental pretext for a distribution to assume the polarization tag, a limited number would consider it a satisfactory condition. Elsewhere, Fiorina and Abrams (2008) reiterate DiMaggio et al., (1996) who recognize polarization in the dimensions of a state and a process, and concur that characterizing a particular distribution as polarized is dependent on individual judgment.
Figure 1.
Figure 1. Polarized distribution (above) and nonpolarized distribution (below) (Fiorina & Abrams, 2008)
As opposed to identifying magnitudes of polarization, recognizing trends in polarization is much simpler. It is a general perception that shifting far from the centre towards the extremes constitutes a non-contentious perception of polarizing. Much focus has been on the level of polarization due to Medias’ overrated misperceptions of red state and blue state differences. Such differences are not as largely perceived since most persons appear on the same wing of issues (Fiorina et al., 2006).
Evidences of public political polarization
Whereas proponents of the concept of American public polarization have fronted numerous evidences to prop their position, Fiorina and Abrams (2008) observe that a close scrutiny reveals insignificant relevance of such evidences to the question.
* Differences in sociocultural characteristics
Similar vibrant, entertaining, and easily liked controversies are common occurrences in the media. It’s a misconceived notion that red-state citizens are more inclined to being Evangelicals, gun owners, fans of country music, beer lovers, among other things, while blue-state citizens are inclined to being atheists, Volvo drivers, sailors, and art devotees. Such contrasting tenets have been propagated by a number of media outlets (Fiorina and Abrams, 2008).
Coupled with such dissimilarities is the belief that social characteristics is highly associated with political positions, in a manner that, for instance, obscene movie rentals depicts an equivalent difference in, for instance, opinions on the legitimacy of abortion, or even gun acquisition. Such comparisons can at times be valid. If, for chance, a randomly selected subject is African-American, the chances that the subject identifies with Democrats as opposed to Republicans are high. Nonetheless, social characteristics display weak associations with political inclinations, most of the times. If, for instance, a randomly selected subject is White, the chances that the subject is Democrat and not Republican may more likely be even (Fiorina and Abrams, 2008).
Fiorina and Abrams (2008) observe that the association involving most social characteristics and political inclination are not significantly strong, and better still, some that are commonly considered highly correlated to political orientations remain weaker than generally assumed. For instance, the 2004 polls insinuated that John Kerry was voted for by approximately a third of white Evangelicals, as did above a third of gun owners. Hence, dissimilarities in the size of these groups of Americans need discounted when projected into political dissimilarities (Fiorina and Abrams, 2008).
Moreover, the association involving social characteristics and political inclination shift with time. Media consumers indorsed Bush’s 2004 campaign with a complex turnout process that employed ‘door-to-door targeting’. Voter registration data were linked with consumer database to single out probable Republican voters on the basis of their spending and lifestyle patterns. Such association involving consumer behaviour and political inclinations are weak and inconsistent, which surprised the Republican high operatives. In conclusion, personal sociocultural characteristics may or may not form evidence of polarization (Fiorina and Abrams, 2008).
* Diverse world views or moral ideologies
The concept of culture-war arose from the debate on contradictory moral ideologies termed ‘worldviews’. Fiorina and Abrams (2008) deliberate on an argument that there is an increasing division of Americans into two distinct categories: the culturally orthodox who bear a conventional, devout, absolutist opinion of morality, as well as the culturally liberal who bear a contemporary, secularist, relativistic opinion of morality. Consequently, such contradictory value systems offer optimal environment for political polarization and forms the basis of conflicts around particular cultural matters including abortion, stem cell exploration, and gay rights among others (Himmelfarb 2001).
Whereas much of the debate on this matter has been qualitative with scarce statistics, some thor...