Are Americans Polarized?

• In Event: Political Polarization

Abstract

Political scientists have sharply disagreed if the American public is polarized or not. I show that this disagreement is a function of one's operationalization of ideology and polarization. My solution to the debate is twofold. First, instead of assuming that Americans have an overall ideology or that they have an ideal point on very specific issues, I assume that they have values in broad issue areas and construct ideal points on three of them: economics, race, and morality. Second, instead of fitting the public into the dichotomy of polarized/unpolarized, I provide a discussion of the conceptualizations of polarization and on what each is capturing. I focus on the difference between Democrat and Republican party identifiers and how much they have clustered at the poles of the distribution on each issue. My finding is that Americans are moderates on economic issues but are polarized over race and morality. However, I also find that most people contain a mixed-bag of liberal and conservative opinions. There are very few extreme ideologues in the mass populace.

Author

• Marcos Menchaca, University of Texas at El Paso