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Causes Of Polarization

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guaranteed jobs. This study helps demonstrate greater party-issue alignment, or what Fiorina, Abrams, and Pope (2010) call “party sorting.”
One aspect to consider is the saliency of issue positions of the political parties, salient issues often produce divergence from the median position. Meaning, the problem with party sorting is not knowing which issues are salient to partisans and which policy issues are polarized at any given time (Fiorina and Abrams 2008). No salience, or controversial, issues are less differentiated between the political parties.
Carmines and D’Amico (2015) criticize this debate, as to whether the mass public is polarized, as unhelpful. The debate does not further the evolution of new concepts and measures of ideology, …show more content…
Not taken up in this section is where polarization originates in the mass public or among the elites, either way, the cause and influences of polarization cyclical between elites and the mass public. Brewer (2005), evaluating the cause of partisanship, notes that as new issues arise party elites become polarized on the issues, which then is transferred to the masses—then the masses polarized creating a cyclical pattern by which elites become more polarized given that the public, voters, and constituents are crystallizing their positions on issues and policy …show more content…
Levendusky (2013) evaluates the effects of partisan media on political polarization. Evaluating partisan news outlets Fox News and MSNBC, Levendusky uses experiments and NAES data and finds that weak and leaning partisans can become stronger in their ideological positions. Exposure to likeminded partisan news increase extremity of partisan views, and there is greater polarization on the issues. However, Arceneaux and Johnson (2013) argue that partisan new-seekers are already polarized and predisposed to those positions. However, in the experimental setting, participants forced to exposing themselves to partisans news that opposes their preferences are more likely to demonstrate they are polarized. The effects of media exposure, and the provide motive of media to promote contentious, polarized issue frames promote differentiation of

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