Is Polarization a Myth?
Is Polarization a Myth? (DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/s0022381608080493) was written by Alan I. Abramowitz and Kyle L. Saunders in 2008.
Authors attempt to test if voters hold partisan/ideological beliefs.
Fiorina ("not very well-informed about politics, do not hold many of their views very strongly, and are not ideological") and Converse hypothesized that ideology is an elite behavior. Recent body of research contradicts that.
- "studies have found that the political beliefs of Democratic and Republican voters have become much more distinctive... that political divisions within the public increasingly reflect differences in religious beliefs and practices... as well as deep-seated psychological orientations... and that ideological polarization among party elites is explained in part by ideological polarization among party supporters in the electorate..."
Authors attempt to test Fiorina's hypothesis: do voters hold partisan/ideological beliefs. Use ANES data.
Code responses to seven questions in NES since 1982 as liberal or conservative positions.
- Generally, 7-point scales recoded as 1-3 liberal, 4 moderate, 4-7 conservative (or the inverse).
- Refusals are moderate.
- Support for abortion in particular is a 4-point scale: 1-2 conservative, 3 moderate, 4 liberal.
- Construct a 8-point scale (0 to 7) as the absolute difference between the number of liberal positions and number of conservative positions.
- Binned as 0-1 (low polarization), 2-3 (moderate), and 4+ (high).
The authors find that proportion of high polarization grew over time for general population; trend holds across most demographic/vote history splits, too.
Authors also find greater polarization, and greater change in polarization over time, in highly educated, likely voter, politically engaged subpopulations.