It’s Only You and Me and We Just Disagree: The Ideological Foundations of Affective Polarization
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Alan I. Abramowitz
Alan I. Abramowitz’s research interests are in American politics, political parties, elections, and voting behavior. His current research involves party realignment in the U.S. and its consequences for presidential and congressional elections. His most recent book is: The Great Alignment: Race, Party Transformation and the Rise of Donald Trump.
Essay prepared for inclusion in special issue of
The Forum on tribalism in American politics.
Abstract
Using the extensive battery of issue questions included in the 2020 ANES survey, I find that a single underlying liberal-conservative dimension largely explains the policy preferences of ordinary Americans across a wide range of issues including the size and scope of the welfare state, abortion, gay and transgender rights, race relations, immigration, gun control and climate change. I find that the distribution of preferences on this liberal-conservative issue scale is highly polarized with Democratic identifiers and leaners located overwhelmingly on the left, Republican identifiers and leaners located overwhelmingly on the right and little overlap between the two distributions. Finally, I show that ideological preferences strongly predict feelings toward the parties and presidential candidates. These findings indicate that polarization in the American public has a rational foundation. Hostility toward the opposing party reflects strong disagreement with the policies of the opposing party. As long as the parties remain on the opposite sides of almost all major issues, feelings of mistrust and animosity are unlikely to diminish regardless of Donald Trump’s future role in the Republican Party.
About the author
Alan I. Abramowitz’s research interests are in American politics, political parties, elections, and voting behavior. His current research involves party realignment in the U.S. and its consequences for presidential and congressional elections. His most recent book is: The Great Alignment: Race, Party Transformation and the Rise of Donald Trump.
Essay prepared for inclusion in special issue of The Forum on tribalism in American politics.
Appendix A: Questions included in issue scales and factor loadings of questions on scales.
| Scale | Question | Factor loading |
|---|---|---|
| Social welfare scale | Business/environment tradeoff | 0.771 |
| Government aid to blacks | 0.780 | |
| Health insurance | 0.796 | |
| Jobs/living standards | 0.819 | |
| Spending and services | −0.767 | |
| Gun control scale | Ban on assault rifles | 0.810 |
| Mandatory buyback | 0.816 | |
| Background checks | 0.655 | |
| Stricter federal gun laws | 0.797 | |
| Immigration scale | Birthright citizenship | 0.655 |
| Children brought illegally | 0.672 | |
| Path to citizenship | −0.616 | |
| Illegal immigrants cause crime | 0.715 | |
| Illegal immigrants take jobs | 0.668 | |
| Immigration levels | −0.687 | |
| Return to native country | 0.803 | |
| Separating children | 0.561 | |
| Policy toward unauthorized | 0.680 | |
| Wall on Mexican border | 0.801 | |
| Racial justice scale | Police use of force | −0.672 |
| Police treat blacks/whites better | 0.816 | |
| Protestors violent/peaceful | −0.766 | |
| How to deal with unrest | 0.840 | |
| Cultural issues scale | Abortion | −0.698 |
| Same sex marriage | 0.795 | |
| Same sex couple adoption | 0.729 | |
| LGBT job discrimination | 0.607 | |
| Businesses serve LGBT | −0.694 | |
| Transgender bathroom use | −0.745 | |
| Transgender military service | 0.725 | |
| Climate change scale | Regulate greenhouse gases | −0.832 |
| Importance of climate change | 0.916 | |
| Climate change affects weather | 0.918 |
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Source: 2020 American National Election Study.
Appendix B: Factor loadings of ideological identification and individual issue scales on liberal-conservative issues scale.
| Question/Scale | Factor loading |
|---|---|
| Ideological identification | 0.825 |
| Social welfare scale | 0.890 |
| Cultural issues scale | 0.772 |
| Racial justice scale | 0.849 |
| Gun control scale | 0.722 |
| Climate change scale | −0.820 |
| Immigration scale | 0.837 |
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Source: 2020 American National Election Study.
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© 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- Introduction Fall 2021
- Articles
- It’s Only You and Me and We Just Disagree: The Ideological Foundations of Affective Polarization
- When Rural and Urban Become “Us” versus “Them”: How a Growing Divide is Reshaping American Politics
- Tribes and Proto-Tribes: The Deep Roots of Political Differences
- The Role of Political Elites in Eliciting Mass-Level Political Anger
- The Legacy of Rush Limbaugh Will Always Be Tied to Donald Trump
- Reflections on the Past and Present of Research on Partisan Identity
- What Do We Mean by Negative Partisanship?
- Religion as Political Tribalism
- The Tribal Economy: Economic Perceptions, Economic Anxiety and the Prospects for Political Accountability
- Book Review
- Andrea Benjamin: Racial Coalition Building in Local Elections: Elite Cues and Cross-Ethnic Voting
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- Introduction Fall 2021
- Articles
- It’s Only You and Me and We Just Disagree: The Ideological Foundations of Affective Polarization
- When Rural and Urban Become “Us” versus “Them”: How a Growing Divide is Reshaping American Politics
- Tribes and Proto-Tribes: The Deep Roots of Political Differences
- The Role of Political Elites in Eliciting Mass-Level Political Anger
- The Legacy of Rush Limbaugh Will Always Be Tied to Donald Trump
- Reflections on the Past and Present of Research on Partisan Identity
- What Do We Mean by Negative Partisanship?
- Religion as Political Tribalism
- The Tribal Economy: Economic Perceptions, Economic Anxiety and the Prospects for Political Accountability
- Book Review
- Andrea Benjamin: Racial Coalition Building in Local Elections: Elite Cues and Cross-Ethnic Voting
