We Can't Even Agree on What Is Tearing Us Apart

Thomas B. Edsall of The New York Times spoke to a number of Political Scholars including Dartmouth's Sean Westwood on "Sorting". 

Sean Westwood of Dartmouth stressed the importance of "sorting":

Sorting argues that citizens and elites proactively move themselves to parties that best capture their views. By consequence this should reduce the prevalence of misaligned senators like Joe Manchin. Sorting makes the parties more cohesive and moves the party toward more extreme positions on average, increasing ideological polarization. Evidence for sorting among elites is very strong. The best way to think of this, I think, is that sorting causes polarization.

What, then, about affective polarization?

Affective polarization is more widespread than principled ideological polarization among voters. Even voters entirely ignorant of the policy positions of their party can develop an emotional attachment to co-partisans and a negative view of the opposition.

Unfortunately, Westwood continued,

We don't really know where affective polarization comes from or why it is surging. Some argue that it comes from ideological sorting, but this isn't very satisfying because many people have affective preferences and are simultaneously unable to correctly identify the policy positions of the parties.

How do sorting, ideological polarization and affective polarization interact?

Sorting among elites makes it less likely for more conservative voices to exist within the Democratic Party and for more liberal voices to exist in the Republican Party. This makes the parties more ideologically cohesive and more likely to adopt more extreme policy positions, increasing ideological polarization. This is magnified by the lack of centrists running for and winning office. Polarization is the consequence of the complementary phenomenon of growing ideological cohesion among the parties and fewer moderates to temper the movement of parties to ideological extremes.

At the same time, Westwood argues:

Voters are becoming more affectively polarized. The connection between elite ideological polarization and citizen affective polarization seems credible on face value, but evidence to support such a relationship is very hard to come by. This is what makes research on the causes of affective polarization so important and our current understanding so frustrating. I would see ideological polarization and affective polarization as two parallel and related phenomena, but with different antecedents and different effects on behavior.

Read the full NYT article HERE!