Polarization of the United States of America
Has the United States of America become not as united as it started? Over the years political parties have become more polar opposite and views have been mixed. Now it is possible for people to have anger towards people of opposite parties just because their views are different. It has driven family and friends apart from that once were healthy because of the true people they are but now politics have snuck its way into relationships. Prejudice started with ethnicity, then sexuality, and although those things still may be judged, are political views the new issue to judge? Over the years those other topics have slowly been getting better, so there is hope for politics. It used to be where politics, religion, and money were faux pas, but now as social media has risen in popularity and people are behind a screen it has translated to people being bold and speaking their views and being hard-headed about them. It is important for people to talk about their differences and now discriminate against them. But with social media, it has led to a lack of consideration for loved ones and even when talking (writing online) to strangers.
Now with social media, it is easy to find out almost anyone’s party. Because of this social media has not only created more of a gap between the parties with harsh slander. And now it has also caused the misconceptions that originally created the bias towards the opposing parties. People that solely rely on social media for their news are generally misinformed. Inaccurate information threatens the peace between the parties. The culture of fake news came about around when social media became a popular source.
This starts with people judging their parties which connects to their beliefs. Their ideology is different and that can be difficult for people to get over. It can be topic by topic basis; some people may be more passionate on certain critical issues that affect them. Then the issue here is that people then judge the whole person based on these beliefs. This brings to identity politics which is “a tendency for people of a particular religion, race, social background, etc., to form exclusive political alliances, moving away from traditional broad-based party politics.” Identity politics are starting on both sides of the political spectrum. In some of these identity-related topics, there are wide partisan gaps between Democrats and Republicans, concerning racial equality, there is a 45 % gap. There is a 42% gap on immigration topics and a 29% gap with homosexuality. Political scientist, Lilliana Mason’s, wrote a book called Uncivil Agreement. It shows how identities now align with social identities more closely than they did when” southern segregationists shared a party with northern labor. “ These identity politics caused more issues because of how personal they were. Hate crimes have increased 20% during the 2016 election.
This all affects us not only because of driving relationships apart but also how Americans view issues and in our democracy everyone’s viewpoint counts and are important to the foundation of the United States. These charts show Americans’ views on the economy.
In the bottom graph, it shows that democrats feel that corporate profits are ‘too much’ according to their higher percentage. These lines are on the same pattern of increase and decrease until about 2010 when republicans’ percentages drop as democrats’ percentages rise. This is pretty typical that conservatives put their faith in corporate companies and do not think that they make ‘too much’. This is one of the topics that separates them. Another thing that wedges the parties are their beliefs on what is the best way to achieve peace. There is a 50% difference in how the parties think this can be done. 83% of Democrats think democracy will create peace while 33% of Republicans agree but the rest believe in the military and that it will create peace. Recently in 2019, Republicans believe that terrorism, the economy, social security, immigration, and the military should be the first priority, but the Democrats picked healthcare, education, environment, Medicare, and the poor and needy as their top priorities.
The top graph shows views on the fairness of the economic system in the U.S. in the years 2014–2017. The total numbers show that generally the economy unfairly favors powerful interests. But if you look at the parties individually the republicans have half and half of the same views and the democrats in themselves are split in their ideals. This is a whole other topic on differences within a party. But on this subject, democrats show consistency in their views and now on the graph, it looks like Republicans have average views of democrats and not such different views. Democrats in this would have a stronger fight and viewpoint of the fairness of the economic system.
These differences show that there is no agreement on America’s main concerns. This graph above shows the percentage of Republicans and what they think about the democratic party and on the right, it shows the opposite, what the democratic party thinks about the republican party. 81% of Republicans and Democrats think that the other parties are equally unfavorable. Both parties have seen a 28 % increase in the ‘very unfavorable’ category compared to 1994.
Once there was an overlap of views and a bell curve for the two parties but now according to this GIF, in 2017 it is much more progressively opposite. Arguably, bipartisanship is dead. According to this other graph below, there is an average 36 percent point divide making bipartisanship even further away. It shows the median of democrats and republicans on an x-axis consisting of consistently liberal, mixed and consistently conservative with democrats being blue and republicans being red. It shows graphs from the year 1994–2017. The graph is based on surveys of over 5,000 adults to track the shifts. Over 23 years the biggest shift noticeable happened around 2011 and on. America went from our first president, George Washington, saying that we should not have parties because of polarization to having it be at the worst state.
Now that it is shown that the United States have become polarized over the years it is plausible that certain areas are worse than others. The geographic polarization has been progressively getting worse since the 70’s in the U.S. It is geographically polarized because of population density. Republicans have taken over rural areas and the opposite goes for Democrats in urban areas. They even prefer to live in these areas based on their political views whether it be because of lifestyles or wanting to be around their “own” type of people. Which brings up the note again about people not wanting conflict and prefer to be with like-minded people. This is proven by a study that observed registered voters who moved within Florida from 2008 to 2010 which turned out to be about 1.1 million people. The new-neighborhood choices were noted and it was seen that Democrats choose denser and more Democratic-voting neighborhoods.
There is a question if this is fixable. A lot of things in government are debatably fixable with education. This study says that this issue of polarization and hatred toward the opposite party is not fixable with education. Although education may not be a resolution, information may be when it comes to prejudices. Democrats are shown to believe that Republicans oppose immigration and in themselves have prejudices about religious groups and are oblivious to existing racism or sexism in modern day. When democrats are asked to say if they think Republicans believe that immigration can strengthen America so long as it is “properly controlled,”, Democrats guessed about 50% of republicans would be for immigrants. Nine in ten agreed with this 50% number. These are just pure guesses based on their view of the republican party. In an even more negative light, Democrats estimated that four in ten Republicans believe in the statement that “many Muslims are good Americans,” and that only half would admit to thinking that “racism still exists in America.” The real numbers are higher, and two-thirds of republicans say that “many Muslims are good Americans,” and four in five recognized that “racism still exists in America.” Republicans are also guilty for these biases. They believe that only half of the Democrats are “proud to be American” but it was shown that four in five democrats would say that they are “proud to be American”. Like most things, people are just misinformed and filled with misconceptions. Republicans also guessed that less than four in ten Democrats would decline the idea of open borders. But in reality, seven in ten said they do which seems to be leaning on the conservative side of things. The “Perception Gap” study has been brought up many times in research. It suggests that the media or schooling are both unlikely to fix this communication fault. Having a low news following surprisingly does not eliminate you from being able to guess the views of the opposing party. Averagely it is a less than ten percent of misjudgment. Those who do follow the news are shown not to know the opposite views. They see the opposing parties as very extreme and guess that they have extreme views about 30 percentage higher than their views are. If you look at schooling, Democrats who have a high-school degree have a greater perception gap compared to those who do not have a high-school degree. And Democrats who went to college have greater misinterpretations than those who did not. And it gets worse as those with a more schooling after college have a skewed view of
Republicans than anybody else comparatively.
Even before the 2016 election, the parties went even more to the left or right as shown in the graph to the right. It is harder to tell the difference between liberal and democratic and conservative and republican now. They are strictly left or right generally it seems. Also before Trump took office, there was already a downward trend in presidential approval ratings. Which Trump was no exception. Trumps Presidential ratings are more polarized than the past presidents since 1953. 88% of Republicans approve of his job performance but Democrats are only at an eight percent approval rating.
The 2016 election was when the country was truly divided between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. There are charts that support that polarization would increase if Clinton had become president, about 41% of voters said that with only 9% saying that the war between the parties would decrease once a president was voted upon. Not only did the candidates play dirty, so did the voters. This election became personal for many and would make people very defensive. From protests to the impeachment and beyond, the United States of America has been against one another and lost contact with people based on their political views.
In conclusion, it is only on a downward streak and the 2020 election is predicted to be no different.
Bibliography: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/charts-americas-political-divide-1994-2017/
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0213500
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/07/americas-political-divisions-in-5-charts/
https://www.livescience.com/56707-why-presidential-election-feels-so-personal.html
