The human condition is, and always has been, like a ship at sea; its crew subject to navigating the murky waters of compromise with a broken compass. Which direction is the ship to sail in to find land’s firm, safe stability? Disagreements and inconsistencies rattle the boards of the ship, as if mocking the vaunted opinion of the crew. Shall we, the crew, sail north, towards individual success, or south, towards the collective benefit of the whole? Or should we sail northeast or southwest or any other amalgamation between north and south? Any individual crew member can at least be expected to give a unique direction for the ship to travel. And clearly, this is a massive decision. The direction a ship traverses is not easily forgotten. Supplies are consumed, lives are lost, and mistakes are made. In order to turn the ship in a new direction, the wind has to change, and in these times the changing winds are hard, albeit impossible, to predict. But finally, consider what happens on the days when there are no winds carrying the ship through the dreary waters? Are supplies, lives, and precious time not lost?
Equate the human condition to the United States as a personified body, the crew to be normal citizens, the wind to be election cycles/elected and appointed political officials, and let the sea be the course or journey the nation can be taken through. It’s not hard to visualize the struggle and turmoil the citizens of the United States must go through in order to steer the ship. With differing viewpoints a crux of what makes us all individuals, it would be hard to imagine that the ship’s course could easily be decided. And this gets to the heart of what politically divides most, if not all, citizens at some point. The general consensus around the buzz phrase “political polarization” (which we will set a definition for ahead) is that the United States is more divided than ever. Indeed, there is plenty of evidence to support this narration; according to the Pew Research Center (“Pew”) the results from research on the distribution of political views conducted in 1994 shows that 49% of people viewed themselves as mixed, or moderate. This data was obtained not by asking participants in the research their allegiance to a particular party or ideology, but simply by asking a variety of questions that gauged their political ideologies across a wide variety of topics. The 49% figure indicates a bell curve of political view distribution in 1994, which means the extremes of both conservative and liberal views were at the lowest points across the distribution. The same research was conducted again in 2014, with the results indicating the 10% of the mixed views had found their way either to the left or right on the spectrum. Clearly, the population’s holistic views have become more extreme, tending to now collectively be majority liberal or majority conservative in nature. Now, this can be attributed to a wide variety of factors; Pew research found that a majority of liberal Democrats desire to live in a highly populated, condensed urban area, while a majority of conservative Republicans desire to live in big homes, with large plots of land, spaced out from each other in rural settings. An analysis by political analyst Emory University professor Alan Abramowitz suggests that these many fundamental differences in desired living conditions has attributed in small part to the growing polarization over the years. Because we have technology, there is less need to interact with those who live in rural settings, if you live in a populated urban area with other like-minded liberal Democrats. And conversely, without loss of generality, the same is true for like-minded conservative Republicans who live in rural settings. If your views are not regularly challenged, and instead reinforced by the group dynamic you live with, it is highly unlikely that you will ever challenge the herd mentality. Thus, changing your views from such an acclimatized group won’t happen. But the question is: is this really political polarization, or difference in opinion? What evidence is there that suggests animosity for different opinions between both political parties? Again, Pew in another study found that the percentage of Democrats that view Republicans as “very unfavorable” has nearly doubled to 38% from 1994 to 2014, and the percentage of Republicans that view Democrats as “very unfavorable” has more than doubled to 43% in the same time frame. So this growing division speaks to a highly polarized political climate, where people are becoming increasingly unwilling to consider opposing viewpoints. Polarized to such a degree that one side views the other as a threat to the wellbeing of the United States.
But polarization is nothing new; we’ve seen it in many, many forms throughout the history of the United States. Before looking into why polarization is occurring, we have to understand how it is possible that it is occurring in our modern day political sphere. Let’s take a look at why the United States is dominated by only two political parties, because of course other democracies across the world do not have just two parties. The way we legislative officials is written about in great detail in the Constitution. Plurality voting is referenced many times, and plurality voting is basically where whoever gets the most votes (a plurality) wins. Now, logically, a consequence of plurality voting is the formation of two factions. The reason sources back to what’s known as Duverger’s Law. In William H. Riker’s “The Two-party System and Duverger’s Law: An Essay on the History of Political Science” from the University of Rochester, Riker establishes that Duverger’s law is “the simple-majority single-ballot system favors the two-party system.” Riker goes on to essentially discuss that the reasoning behind Duverger’s law is that, in a system where there are many parties and coalitions trying to win an election under a plurality or majority voting system, it is in the best interest of the losing coalitions to unite to attempt to win plurality or majority the next election. Repeating this process many times over ultimately results in a two party system, where both parties consist of many coalitions that ultimately agree on some fundamental identity. Riker goes on to evaluate this assimilation of many parties throughout the United States, such as the Whigs forming from many factions to oppose Andrew Jackson and the Democratic Party. Over time, this explains the existence of two predominant parties, which we know today as the Republican and the Democratic Party.
Since our Constitution set up the United States to essentially fall under control by two dominating parties (under Duverger’s law) and we have seen increased polarization by individual preferences being reinforced by a growing dependence on technology, we’re left wondering if there are other major causes of political polarization today. The Alben W. Barkley Professor of Political Science at Emory University, Alan Abramowitz’s publication in The Washington Post titled, “How race and religion have polarized American voters”, details perhaps the two biggest reasons for political polarization today, namely religion and race. Empirical data shows the proportion of “nonwhite” voters in presidential elections has quintupled since the 1950s (and doubled since the 1990s). This is not much of a surprise, given that the 1965 Voting Rights Act resulted the enfranchisement of African Americans in states. However, what is apparent is that the Republican voter demographic remains overwhelmingly white. In fact, Abramowitz points out that only 10% of Romney voters were nonwhite. Naturally, given that the number of nonwhite voters has quintupled, of course these voters have aligned with the Democratic Party. “Nonwhites comprised 45% of all Obama voters in 2012, and a majority of Obama voters under age 40”, Abramowitz concludes. This is extremely significant, because it provides a much greater explanation of the growing and ever present divide between the Republican and Democratic Parties. And this supports disdain that the Democratic Party has for the Republican Party, given that many minority voters (who statistically are in the Democratic Party) live in a unequal society. In Abramowitz’s words, “African Americans and Latinos continue to experience significantly worse health outcomes, poorer educational and job opportunities, inferior housing, higher unemployment, etc. than white Americans.” So it makes perfect sense that there will be sharply differing views on issues such as the government’s role in social services and taxation. It’s no coincidence that these two topics are often cited as the two major topics that define the difference between the Republican and the Democratic Party, or if you hold a strict conservative or strict liberal ideology, respectively.
So long as there is a racial division between parties, there will be political polarization to an extreme degree for the foreseeable future. Abramowitz, Riker, and Suh all predict that there is no indication that political polarization will diminish. Abramowitz even makes a compelling argument that the party polarization will worsen as racial tension escalates between wealthy white elite class (typically Republican) and the low-income, “segregated society” (Democrats). And of course, even the white Democrats will support their fellow party members, given that 1) they live in close quarters (relying on their Pew Research Center gathered preference on where to live) as discussed previously, and 2) their defining value lies in government taxation and social services to assist those less privileged and worse off.
So perhaps the metaphor of a ship sailing murky waters isn’t as fitting for our United States political atmosphere. Because it seems as though there’s a fundamental difference in what type of ship either party would even allow themselves to set sail in, and the data by Pew seems to suggest many of the crew members wouldn’t dare sail with each other to begin with, given that they view them as potential threats to the wellbeing of the ship. In any case, there’s a lot to be said for those brave few willing to take a stand and steer the ship.