@jmcrobert_ asks me an imp Q: why ARE Republicans more polarized than Democrats?
This is true in almost every study of polarization.
It is called party asymmetry & us political scientists have been noting it for 2 decades now
This is true in almost every study of polarization.
It is called party asymmetry & us political scientists have been noting it for 2 decades now
It was 1st documented among political elites by Poole, Rosenthal's work on congress, which today appears in super handy form since being modernized & brought to the masses by Jeff Lewis voteview.com/congress/senate
I found evidence of party asymmetry in my dissertation which pushed back at Morris Fiorina's claim that the public was not polarized (& added support that in addition to party sorting, the public WAS polarized, as argued by @AlanIAbramowitz), as @pewresearch
In study after study of polarization, stronger effects were found for Rs than for Ds, why? I large part of the explanation, I argue in my diss back in 2015, is due to heterogeneity versus homogeneity, both ideological but also in terms of demographics, that resulted from party
sorting, which you can read about at the link below. Once the parties became homogeneous ideologically, THEN, they begin to push out the bounds of the spectrum. BUT, here's the think, ideological homogeneity is much greater within the R Party, than in the D Party AND in the Rs
conservative is the modal ideology, whereas in the D Party its moderate, & that's NOW, in 2020, which means the Ds are more liberal leaning than they were 10 years ago. @MattGrossmann & @DaveAHopkins come in w a fascinating deep dive on Party Assymetry amazon.com/Asymmetric-Pol…
in which they explore how these ideological differences, plus the racial/demographic homogeneity within the GOP vs the heterogeneity within the Dems create conditions for assymetric behaviors, including polarization. Read that excellent book.
