...in America is based on polarization between the two major political parties: Republican (red states) and Democratic (blue states) Parties. Due to the presidential election results, there’s a division between the states that led to battleground. The "colors" of these states will not change. "While much "red and blue" ink has been spilled over whether elite polarization is mirrored by the public, existing research provides no consensus when it comes to answering this question. On the one hand, some scholars argue that if citizens take cues from party elites—as recent research suggests they do—then they should come to resemble party elites by becoming more ideologically oriented partisans" (Abramowitz & Saunders, 2008; Carsey & Layman, 2006; Hetherington, 2001). James Wilson, a political science...
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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,...
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...Introduction Amid government shut downs and Congress passing fewer legislations, many seem to believe that the government is not working. Political scientists, Hetherington and Rudolph set out to find an explanation on exactly why Washington “won’t work.” Hetherington and Rudolph’s theorize that due to the increase in partisan polarization there is a decrease in political trust. The lack of political trust is making it impractical to construct a public consensus and nothing is getting done. Political trust is imperative because it is the backbone of stability and longevity of a government. Additionally, Hetherington and Rudolph point out that the polarization in Washington is not really based on ideology, but instead on feelings about the...
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...The polarization of the American political system has received tremendous interest from political scientists. Many longtime political observers, some of whom thought stronger parties would improve American politics, now decry that the parties are out of control. Levendusky in his book argues that “polarization fails to capture” what is actually happening in lives of ordinary citizens. Instead, he argues that “sorting” is a better term which captures recent changes in the American electorate. He believes “elite polarization” has caused this sorting. People are simply getting better at aligning their ideological issues and preferences. Although a good book, it does not clearly establish the mechanism behind elite driven mass sorting. An abortion example clearly highlights what is happening with the US electorate. The distance between Democrats and Republicans on the issue of abortion is evidence of a polarized public. Democrats are now clearly the party of abortion rights and Republicans the party of abortion restriction. Members of the two parties are polarized on the issue of abortion so clearly that we would expect our elected officials to mirror this mass polarization and refuse to compromise on abortion. This shows...
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...What’s the Matter with Polarization? A Reaction to: Political Polarization in the American Public Morris P. Fiorina and Samuel J. Abrams In the world of political science, theories often lack substantial evidence or support to become conclusive. There are nearly always loopholes critics can find in conjectures, and as time progresses, politics can change to falsify or clarify established findings. In the past ten years, the idea of political polarization in the American public has become something that political scientists are obsessed with, yet something that is still puzzling to figure out. Is polarization defined by voters’ preferences, or by their choices? By specific issues, or by party identification? To find whether such a division exists, there must be a way to measure it, and evidence strong enough to support it. Here lies the problem. As Morris Fiorina and Samuel Abrams do in their work, Political Polarization in the American Public, researchers search for ways to prove popular polarization exists, and struggle. With the lack of a universal definition of polarization, the changing and fairly unpredictable nature of the human voter, and even with the proven existence of elite polarization, the existence of true political polarization will never be determined. When attempting to prove polarization, it is much easier to use the choices voters make in elections and determine from that information whether polarization is present. While easier, the...
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...It is very apparent that over the years, the American Political system has become biased. Offending one’s political party is like offending their character it seems. Where does this polarization come from? There are agreements from credible sources stating that American politics are very biased, and other agreements are made claiming polarized minds are caused from biological influences. But when it comes to who is guilty for creating this separation, there are many disagreements. American people have come to the general consensus that political parties are very biased. This causes an extreme sense of partisanship in daily arguments and other political conversations because people tend to take their stances so seriously, even if they do...
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...the growth of the private-for-profit higher education industry by falling prey to two of the most obstructing political issues: polarization and plutocracy. Polarization is the political terminology for when members of Congress often vote almost exclusively alongside the party that they identify as, and plutocracy is "the responsiveness of the political system primarily to the concerns of wealthy powerful interests" (Mettler 5). These two factors were overcome by President Obama during his efforts to reform the student loan system, but drastically failed to curb the growth of the private-for-profit...
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...After this year’s midterm elections Republicans won big, taking full control of the Senate and the House. There are many factors that led to these results and clearly shows the country’s disapproval of the Obama administration. Polarization, demographics, and strong opposition towards the president definitely contributed to the Republican victory over both houses of Congress and will surely result in gridlock; stalling the country from progressing successfully. Demographics may have contributed to the enormity of democratic loss in this past election. The populous, liberal, diverse cities that would increase the Democratic vote had one of the lowest voter turnouts, whereas southern states that would vote Republican came out with the highest voter turnout. A vast majority of these southern voters are old, white Republicans. The young students, the post- generational college students, the minorities – these are the ones that share the same political ideologies as the democratic party, but yet they’re the ones that didn’t vote. Voter turnout for the 2014 Midterm elections was the lowest in 70 years – only 36.4% of voting-eligible Americans went out and voted on November 4th; of those voters, 75% were white (Alter, 2014). Liberal states like New York and California had a decrease in voter turnout while Southern states saw an increase, “Democrats were hindered by their inability to persuade members of the coalition that delivered the White House to Mr. Obama — young voters, women...
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...PRO Resolved: On balance, the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission is undemocratic. We affirm. To better the round, we clarify the following: First, the definition of “election process” ELECTIONS are based on three organizing concepts: equal respect, free choice, and popular sovereignty are the building blocks of fair and just elections. The democratic process should treat all citizens as free and equal persons. As applied to the electoral process this requires that each citizen equal opportunity to have his or her vote equally counted. Contention 1: Super PACs decrease voter turnout Subpoint A: Voter turnout is a pre-requisite to the election process A flourishing democracy presupposes citizens who care, who are willing to take part, and who are capable of helping to shape the common agenda of a society. Participation through the act of voting, is always seen as an essential prerequisite of stable democracy. Subpoint B: Super PACs decrease voter turnout by 25% “Unlimited spending by supposedly independent super PACs is creating widespread perceptions of corruption and undermining public confidence that elected officials serve in the public interest, The perception that super PACs are corrupting government is making Americans disillusioned, and an alarming number say they are less likely to vote this year. Americans say they are less likely to vote because big donors to super PACs have so much more influence over elected officials...
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...Since the dawn of America there have always been major political divisions within both the government and between the American citizens. These issues have ranged from whether it was right to break off from the British Empire, to legalizing gay marriage in all fifty states. And while for some issues, controversial as they may be, both the people and the government were able to ignore their differences and work on a proper solution. However, in recent times, this unified approach to solving the nation’s problems has become a far rarer occasion, which is represented in the political polarization of the two primary ideologies in America: Conservatism and Progressivism. This polarization has lead the citizens of America to essentially coalesce into two major groups, the Democratic and Republican Parties. These groups have been at each other’s throats in recent times, as shown in the congressional...
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...In class, we discussed how media impacts the perception of polarization which supports today’s reading, going further into depth about the causes of polarization and how the media impacts people’s views on red and blue states. Chapter three in Culture War? says the political difference between red and blue states in 2000 and 2004 is smaller than assumed because the ideological difference between Democrats and Republicans differs by only 10-20%. (page 34). This is partly due to the media’s influence. Figure 3.9 on page 47 shows that people’s disposition did not change much from 2000 to 2004, where Democrats are common in both red and blue states. Only 1 out of 5 people wished for a unicameral government in the 2000 presidential election, meaning that the people may have similar interests regardless of whether or not a state is considered red or blue....
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...limited effects of democracy on inequality. So one would be excused for paraphrasing Edwin Starr’s famous song and Ian Morris’s forthcoming book, War! What Is It Good for?, and ask “democracy, what is it good for?” Certainly not economic growth, most would reason. This conclusion is based on a consensus engulfing both academia and the popular press that democracy is at its best irrelevant for growth, and perhaps even a hindrance. For example, Tom Friedman wrote in the pages of The New York Times: One-party nondemocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages. That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century,” Friedman wasn’t making this up. Robert Barro, who has written several papers on the topic, argued in his book Getting it Right: Markets and Choices in a Free Society: More political rights do not have an effect on growth… The first lesson is that democracy is not the key to economic growth. A recent survey of the recent literature similarly concludes: The net effect of democracy on growth performance cross-nationally over the last five decades is negative or null. Equally dominant is the view that democracy isn’t right for low-income countries (which are often the ones trying to turn their societies into democracies). The pages of The New York Times again summarize what most of...
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...The republican leftist government was established in 1931. It inherited the poor economy courtesy of the Great Depression, so naturally unemployment rates were high and wages were low. Ideological differences between various political groups were in existence due to the radicalized time, however not to the extent as in most other European nations at the time as Spain was not as heavily involved in or impacted by WWI. On top of this, Spain had been rife with regional, economic, and social conflict for decades. These factors, although minor in the context of the causes of the Spanish civil war, were important secondary factors that worked in tandem to exacerbate the internal political conflict that preceded civil war. The primary cause for the weakness of the Second Republic was its divisive constitution (Decemeber 1931). The constitution played a large role in weakening the government because it exacerbated the existing divisions within the nation and appealed only to a minority. It was perceived as elitist and angered multiple political and social factions, polarizing Spanish politics. This polarization of factions brought on the collapse of the Republic. Argument #1: The leftist government failed to mature due to the lack of popular and political support for the constitution of 1931 and its constituencies, thus weakening it by dividing society. • The Leftist government was weakened upon its implementation of the constitution of 1931 because it stifled its potential for...
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...significantly fewer seats than the incumbent United Bahamian Party (UBP). In that election , the PLP polled 32,261 votes or approximately 44 percent , winning only eight seats , compared to the UBP which polled 26,500 votes or 36 percent , but winning 18 seats. The Labour Party polled 3,049 votes which represented four percent , winning only one seat. Several reasons were given for the PLP’s defeat, notwithstanding its decisive plurality. Clearly there was considerable gerrymandering of seats, allocating a larger number to the Out Islands where it was much easier for the governing party to influence voting behavior by economic threats and political intimidation. In addition, many voters were still out of the colony “on the contract ” and, finally , there was a level of trepidation and concern about the ability of black government to govern and maintain the level of political and economic stability to which the colony had become accustomed. The victory by the UBP resulted in deep-seated racial polarization for the next five years. The next five years would witness considerably greater political activism in anticipation of the general elections in 1967. The PLP organized and orchestrated its activities with pin-point precision to maximize its political agenda . On February 4, 1965, during the debate ...
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...------------------------------------------------- Spanish Civil War (incidents) – Izquierda Republicana (1937) Izquierda Republicana 2013/1/12 Editorial Denny Kim The ‘Spanish Civil War’ was an outcome of a polarization of Spanish life and politics that had developed over previous decades. Which perhaps was predictable, the “pendulum of Spanish electoral politics swung back to the left” [1] in 1936. Spanish Left-Wing party adopted and practiced electoral strategy called ‘Popular Front’ (strategy of electoral cooperation of unification of vote; thus defeating right-wing parties) supported by ‘Comintern / Communist International’ in France [3]. The practice of ‘Popular Front’ was an effort to prohibit extreme-right from taking power. On the other hand, the Right -Wing formed a ‘National Front’ coalition in response, which caused more polarization. As a result, the socialist withdrew their support for the ‘Popular Front’ as protest of its moderation. Hence, public disturbance occurred sooner soon started spiraling the country out of control. Nevertheless in 1936, February, the first general election of the ‘Second Republic’ was “called to restore order” [1]. The Left-Wing Popular Front coalition won and gave a majority to a coalition of the Republican Left IR (Izquierda Republicana). Out of 13.5 million Spanish populations, over 9,870,000 participated in the election. There were 4,654,116 votes for the ‘Popular Front’, whereas there were 4,503,505 for National Front...
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