1. Party Polarization
A deeper Exploration

2. Party Systems Party polarization
Sharp divisions between the two parties
Congress is most polarized today since 1956
Measured in Congress using roll call votes
Party unity: frequency and strength
How often does the party vote as a cohesive bloc?
How strong is party bloc vote: unanimous, 90 percent, or 60 percent?
Measured in public opinion as well
Party identification, election margins of victory

3. First Some Graphic Representations
For each of the following graphs, write down at least 2 things that they tell about the nature, depth and/or causes of polarization for discussion in class tomorrow.

9. What produced the present polarization?
1. Not Historically this way
2. The Constitutional system does make it all too possible
3. The evolution of the present deadlock
4. Structural basis for polarization: demographics and districts

10. Not Historically this way
True after the CW radical republicans v. Burbon Democrats
issues of reconstruction
Post WWI , great depression, WWII polarization went way down ,
low immigration also a factor
Sense of shared national identity takes time.

11. The Constitutional system does make it all too possible
Founders presumed “republican virtue” among the citizenry –
Jefferson = yeoman farmers,
philosophical blacksmith
Different constituencies for House, Senate, President mean that polarization and party deadlock is possible.

12. The evolution of the present deadlock
The counterculture and the 60’s – Enter Nixon..
Vietnam and the anti-war
An affluent working class – silent majority
Southern Strategy
Reagan democrats
Culture wars
Coalition with the Rel Right
Newt Gingrich 1992
Contract with America

13. Structural basis for polarization: demographics and districts
the arms race in campaign finance
Mobilization of one’s base = negative advertising
technology
Tragedy of the commons:
Democrats don’t need rural or suburban white voters, = esp males

14. Demographics
The economic decline of the Midwest Rust Belt and the rapid growth in the Sunbelt were also big parts of this process.
It's difficult to draw competitive districts in a deeply polarized country. Americans are geographically segregated along a variety of demographic lines, and most demographic groups side decidedly with one party or the other.
The Lone Star State has 254 counties, 244 of which were won by either Obama or Romney by at least 10 points.

15. The arms race in campaign finance
These days, the average Senate candidate raises and spends $9 million to win election, which works out to slightly more than $4,000 for each day of a six-year term. For the average House candidate, it’s $1.4 million, or just under $2,000 per day in office (including Saturdays, Sundays and holidays). These sums are several times what they were 25 years ago.

16. Mobilization of one’s base = negative advertising
the real effect of negative advertising is to 1. 2.
Especially effective in primaries and midterm contests.
Now true also in…
another important advantage:
Thus perpetuating the cycle

17. technology you can tailor your messages to different groups.
the rise of “independent campaigns” run by PACs, unions, business organizations and other special interest groups has also heightened the polarization.

18. Tragedy of the commons
The individual pursuit of rational self-interest by parties and politicians, which in political and economic theory is supposed to generate the best outcome, but….

19. Democrats don’t need rural or suburban white voters, = esp males
Democrats have been constrained since the 1960s by fear of losing the blue-collar, rural, and older white voters who traditionally made up the conservative end of their electoral coalition.
House Blue Dogs, as well as swing-state and red-state Democrats in the Senate,
In 2012, Obama lost more than three-fifths of noncollege whites and whites older than 45; he carried only one-third of noncollege white men, the worst performance of any Democratic nominee since Walter Mondale was buried in Ronald Reagan’s 1984 landslide. Yet Obama nonetheless won a solid victory by posting strong numbers with minorities (a combined 80 percent), the millennials (60 percent), and college-educated white women (46 percent overall and more in many key states); moreover, each of those groups expanded its share of the total vote. (For the first time, white women with college degrees cast more votes last year than white men without them.)