Fiorina's The Disappearing Center

" This article contends that the polarization in American political parties stems from the weakness of the parties themselves. Weak party structures might lead to fragmented ideologies, lack of party discipline, and susceptibility to outside influences such as special interest groups. Consequently, without strong leadership and cohesive party platforms, members may resort to

In her article, Page first demonstrates how American citizens believe they are the last people to blame for America’s separation and division of people. She then outlines how American citizens are truly the ones to blame for polarization due to their

In the book, Culture War?, by Morris Fiorina, the myth of a polarized America is exposed. Fiorina covers issues such as why Americans believe that America is polarized, that Red and Blue State people aren’t as different as they are made out to be, and that the United States is not polarized along traditional cleavage lines. This book even covers perspectives on abortion, homosexuality, and whether or not electoral cleavages have shifted. A large point of Fiorina’s is his take on the 2004 election. He ends the book with, how did our great nation get to this position of proclaimed polarization, and how do we improve from here?

This creates a paradox for the reader. In a book designed to remove the impression of polarity, why single out specific subjects in this polarizing way? The logical conclusion is that these topics do have a specific effect on refuting the polarization claim. In the opening chapters, Fiorina et al. illustrate the perceived polarization of partisans, the war in Iraq, and a myriad of other factors like gun control (p. 1-75). With partisanship they found the issue to be a problem of “confusing positions with choice” (2011, p. 25) and thus dismissing the polarization of Americans. Analyzing he war in Iraq yielded similar results (p. 51-55). The authors found that when asked to judge broad statements, like Bush’s handling of Iraq, respondents answered in the partisan way, with more republicans supporting and democrats disapproving (p. 54). However, when the same people were asked to rate Bush’s handling of Iraq in terms of individual acts, the polarization faded (p. 52-53). While there were still dissidents and supporters, the divide was not along partisan lines but rather individual lines, evidenced by the near equal support of republicans and democrats for the use of military force overseas. All of this supports the argument that Fiorina et al. make throughout but provides no insight into why some topics are grouped

It is present among the voters as well as our elected representatives, at all levels of government (Jacobson 2000, Aldrich and Battista 2002). We can see it through simple measures like red states and blue states and in more sophisticated ones like party unity. For instance, it may be that elites have become more extreme in recent years and the voters are forced to choose between increasingly divergent candidates. Along with these examples, the article from the Washing Post states that, “This is true in both chambers, although polarization has progressed at a greater rate in the House. Congress is now more polarized than at any time since the end of Reconstruction.”

As society rapidly changes with an influx of new ideas and issues, studying the college educated and those who are not will help evaluate behaviors and attitudes towards the government, ultimately, clearing the way to adaption into a modern society that perhaps offer remedies of educational and voting discrepancies or even close the gaps between political ideology or identification. Hence, this paper proposes the research question: How does education level influence political party identification.

This can mainly be attributed to the continued attempts to appease the more radical sects of each party, and the bicameral legislatures in many states being controlled by a single party. The consequences of this are that it the becomes more difficult for legislatures to effectively govern because the gap between the political ideologies of the candidates from each party continues to increase, where there was once somewhat of an overlap. This also causes the governance strategies of the chief executive in each state to change. In a state that is controlled by a differing party, the governor must find other methods in which to have his policy implemented, whereas in a state in which the governor is of the same party as the controlling party the governor would be able to more directly push for his policy goals to be implemented. The polarization of political parties in the United States as whole, as well as in state legislatures, is a trend that has negative effects on the efficiency and effectiveness of state governments.

Increased shifts to the political extremes causes voters to vote in lockstep with party leaders. Polarized voters are less informed on energy, healthcare, education, and other key issues4. Polarized voters also ignore fundamental arguments in favor of partisanship. When told that their party endorsed a certain stance, the polarized voters became more supportive, regardless of facts. Because the election process requires

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, Polarization is defined as the “division into two opposites”. (Merriam-Webster) Political Polarization refers to the perceived division of ideologies espoused between the two major political parties in the United States. The topic of political polarization is one frequently referenced in the media and in political discussions. Does political polarization actually exist or is it a myth? In this paper, this question will be analyzed and examined and a conclusion will be reached.

The United States has always seen political disputes between both ends of the liberal/conservative spectrum. However, this polarization has increased significantly within the past few decades. As the graphs show, there has been a noteworthy rise among “consistently liberals” and “consistently conservatives” since 1994. In addition, the placement of “median” Republicans or Democrats on the spectrum have distanced themselves farther apart (Pew Research Center). This is the ultimate gap visible within the entire entity of polarizing politics. Republicans and Democrats are becoming further apart, thus creating a lack of understanding and compromise between the two parties.

"It's a reflection of the political dynamic in America, where we don't look at America as a whole. We look at it through the red and blue prism” (Taylor, 1). The red and blue prism that Senator Olympia Snowe is referring to is the political parties that function in the United States. The current existence of political parties in America is a hindrance to effective representation of the people. Because of the lack of bipartisanship between the parties in Congress, the absence of compromise leads to gridlock in regards to passing legislations by members of Congress. In this paper, I will argue how the strengthening of political parties’ polarization in America—and the priority of party over constituents—contributed to a lack of effective

     As a conservative, I still feel that the social class of the individual greatly affects the political ideology that they have chosen. I have analyzed, that the education of the individual has a great deal of affect on the political party of their choice. Most liberals are only against conservatives due to medias bad review of conservatives. The media can affect our lives tremendously if we believe what they have to say. Education is the key to determining the political party or political ideology of our choice; therefore education is one of the leading issues many Americans feel strongly about today. As I stated in my last paper, schooling is very important to the success of our country. Although there are people that will argue that school should not be mandatory if the family must send there children to work to provide

Why do Americans have limited amount of political knowledge? It’s because the public lacks interest in politics. They rely on group/party loyalty, rather than reasoning. Their responses change randomly from survey to survey. Recent research shows that the public knows some basic things. For example, they know the location of the capital and the length of president’s term, but they lack knowledge about other basic things. About 50% know there are 2 senators for each state, and only 66% know which party controls the House. They show high instability of their preferences, so explosion of information sources has not helped. The authors Greenburg and Page believe that political “trivia” may not be a good measure of adequate knowledge. They also mentioned that the reason for the instability of preference is because people change their minds and reflect on multidimensional ideology. It’s understandable that American citizens have lost trust in the government as well as interest, but the group of people that show the least amount of interest in politics and voting are the young generation.

Studies conclude that citizens who tend to classify themselves as either conservative or liberal tend to have opposing political and policy views (p. 571). This means that social opinions alone does not have a significant or resilient influence in elite or mass polarization. This leads us to our next variable, partisan elections.

Hillygus analyzed whether the polarization in Washington, DC was representative of the American public in “The Nature of Political Ideology in the Contemporary Electorate”. They did this by focusing on responses to 23 questions from the 2000 American National Election Study that reflect a variety of politically relevant issues (Treier and Hillygus 684). This way, they could see how well a person’s policy positions correlated to their ideological identification. These questions covered both economic and social issues, so they were able to look at economic/social policy positions as independent of each other (Treier and Hillygus 686). While many political scientists agree that economic and social issues are separate issue areas, this mindset is not reflected in America’s two-party system. This could potentially muzzle voters whose economic and social policy positions do not line up with the same