Free Republic

For 10 years, American politics has been sharply polarized, with just about equal numbers of Republicans and Democrats arrayed angrily against each other. We have come to think of this as a permanent condition. Yet by the next presidential election, that may very well change. The reason: The leading candidates for both parties' 2008 nominations are in significant tension with their parties' bases -- and, in some cases, outright opposition.This is most clearly the case on the Republican side. The consistent leaders in 2008 polls are John McCain and Rudolph Giuliani. Of the two, Giuliani is most sharply out of...

Only 59 of the Nation's 435 Congressional Districts Split Their Vote for President and House Political polarization intensified during the 2004 elections, continuing a trend that has defined voting behavior for most of the past decade and that has left the two major parties increasingly homogenized and partisan. Only 59 of the 435 congressional districts went in different directions in presidential and House elections last year, according to newly released data from the political analysis firm Polidata. In the remaining districts, voters either backed both President Bush and the Republican House candidate or John F. Kerry and the Democratic House...

...snip... Foreign Born vs. Polarization -- r = .92. The percent foreign born are from the U.S. Census. The basic idea is that immigrants tend to come in at the lower end of the income/wealth distribution. Hence, the more foreign born there are, the more inequality of income/wealth.

PRINCETON, N.J. -- The title of the conference held here last weekend, appropriately enough, included a question mark: "The Polarization of American Politics: Myth or Reality?" The 45 academics, politicians and journalists who gathered at Princeton University's Center for the Study of Democratic Politics never reached a vote, but all the evidence pointed toward the second alternative. It quickly became clear that there is nothing new or unusual about the pattern of sharp partisanship shown in the past two presidential elections and in the frequent battles on Capitol Hill. David Brady of Stanford University made the point that the late...

Intensity of opinion by party greatest ever measuredPRINCETON, NJ -- In the most recent CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll, 51% of Americans approve and 47% disapprove of the job George W. Bush is doing as president. While those figures reflect the division of opinion on Bush, a follow-up question measuring intensity of opinion shows just how polarized views of the president are -- 73% have a strong view of Bush's job performance, with nearly equal percentages strongly approving and disapproving. Previous Gallup polls have shown views of Bush to be the most polarized along party lines for any president, but never before...

How polarized politics and a radical GOP have put a chill on measured debate. ___ Walk into a bookstore today, throw a stick in any direction, and it's likely you'll hit a dozen savage attacks upon George W. Bush. Future historians will surely regard the deluge of Bush-bashing books and films that appeared in 2004 as a remarkable cultural phenomenon, a tribute to the vitality of American publishing and to the surviving political literacy of the public. They will certainly note that elevating the nation's liberal blood pressure helped rally the troops to John Kerry's campaign. But they may find...

The Polarization of the Political Parties in Congress

I've been writing about polarization a fair bit recently, and the more I look into it, the more I think I'll just move to Tahiti. That's because the causes of polarization — at least among elites — have little to do with passing arguments about the war, the Bush leadership style or the Clinton scandals. The causes are deeper and structural. To a large degree, polarization in America is a cultural consequence of the information age. This sort of economy demands and encourages education, and an educated electorate is a polarized electorate. In theory, of course, education is supposed to...

Six in 10 Republicans strongly approve; 6 in 10 Democrats strongly disapprovePRINCETON, NJ -- An analysis of Gallup Poll data reveals extreme and unprecedented levels of polarization in George W. Bush's job approval ratings. Currently, Democrats and Republicans evaluate the president very differently, with Republicans overwhelmingly positive and Democrats decidedly negative. Views among both groups are quite strong, which means they are probably unlikely to change much between now and the election. Never before has Gallup data shown such a high proportion of partisans with such strongly opposing views of a president. The Partisan Gap in Approval Ratings In the...

<p>When California voters head to the polls on Tuesday, Democrats will select a challenger to President George W. Bush and Republicans will pick their contender against U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer. Equally important, in a state where party control of legislative seats is all but assured by redistricting, it is these same Democratic and Republican voters who will determine which of the current primary candidates will go on to reap lopsided state Senate and Assembly victories in the general election this fall.</p>

One of today's popular myths is that we've become a more "polarized" society. We're said to be divided increasingly by politics (liberals vs. conservatives), social values (traditionalists vs. modernists), religion (fundamentalists vs. everyone else), race and ethnicity. What has actually happened is that our political and media elites have become polarized, and they assume that this is true for everyone else. It isn't. Anyone who lived through the 1960s, when struggles over Vietnam and civil rights spilled into the streets, must know that we're much less polarized today. It's not a close call. Unlike then, today's polarization exists mainly on...

The Presidency About Nothing Reviewing the legacy. The publication of Mrs. Clinton's memoirs gives us an opportunity to try to size up the Clinton presidency from a position, two and a half years down the line, from which some perspective is possible. It is not an opportunity for much else. The excerpts I have seen so far from the book are dully predictable. Mrs. Clinton is, as William Safire pointed out long ago, a congenital and very skillful liar. There is no reason to believe anything she says, in her book or elsewhere, and a great many excellent reasons to...