Party Polarization is Real and Multifaceted

Party Polarization is Real and Multifaceted 

Mark D. Brewer, University of Maine 

Party polarization is a hot topic in American politics. Debates over polarization have raged among political scientists now for over thirty years with seemingly no end in sight. In recent years, discussion of the polarization of American politics has spread outside of academic circles, something that happens to very few subjects of scholarly discourse within political science.

The first thing we need to do is to define what we mean by party polarization, which is more complicated than one might think. In the broadest sense, party polarization refers to there being large differences between the United States’ two major political parties, the Democrats and the Republicans. From here, things get complicated quite quickly. Some scholars speak of affective polarization, which put simply means that Republicans and Democrats like members of their own party and dislike members of the other party at high levels. Others focus on issue polarization, which, as the name implies, holds that Democrats and Republicans have very different positions from each other on the various political issues of the day. Still others examine ideological polarization, a phenomenon in which Republicans and Democrats exhibit large differences on many issues, and those issue differences align consistently along a liberal (or progressive)/conservative spectrum. Beyond these different characterizations of party polarization, there is also the question of just who is polarized. Generally, this element is referred to as elite vs. mass polarization. Elite polarization argues that only the party elites—office holders, candidates, party officials and other party activists—of each party have large differences from each other, while a position arguing for mass polarization claims that the differences extend throughout the entirety of the parties, from the highest office holders all the way down to rank-and-file voters. There are many more terminological nuances to the party polarization debate, but this gives us enough to work with.

One would hope that any scholarly debate extending over thirty years would produce at least some areas of agreement, and that is indeed true for the case of party polarization in the United States. Scholars now overwhelmingly agree that affective polarization—“the tendency of people identifying as Republicans or Democrats to view opposing partisans negatively and co-partisans positively”—is real and that its effects on American politics are highly negative. One scholar argues the increase in affective polarization is rooted in the concomitant rise in the number of Americans who see their partisanship as an important (if not the most important) part of their personal identity; in other words, they see their partisanship as a central element of who they are. According to another scholar, partisanship as social identity has become one of the most important in-group/out-group distinctions in contemporary American society. Given that powerful in/out-group distinctions tend to generate powerful emotions and reactions, it is not surprising that strong affective polarization has developed out of the increase of partisanship as social identity. Another area of agreement is that the elites of both parties are polarized. Mounds of evidence have been produced by various scholars demonstrating that Republican officeholders, candidates, donors, and activists hold very different views than do their Democratic counterparts.

But while agreement exists on the two areas of polarization noted above, political scientists still very much disagree on other elements of party polarization. Issue polarization and ideological polarization both deal with questions of substance, so perhaps it is useful to evaluate them along such lines. Starting first with issue polarization, it has become increasingly clear that Republicans and Democrats are deeply divided on many of the most prominent issues in American politics. Consider the partisan differences on the following issues (all figures are from 2024):

• Percent who agree that government should do more to solve problems: 28% Republicans/76% Democrats
• Percent who agree that the amount they pay in federal incomes taxes is too high: 68% Republicans/37% Democrats
• Percent who agree that government aid to the poor does more harm than good: 65% Republicans/23% Democrats
• Percent who agree that abortions should be legal under any circumstances: 12% Republicans/65% Democrats
• Percent who agree that it is the responsibility of the federal government make sure all Americans have healthcare coverage: 32% Republicans/90% Democrats
• Percent who support a national effort to deport undocumented immigrants: 63% Republicans/11% Democrats
• Percent who worry a great deal/fair amount about global warming: 28% Republicans/90% Democrats
• Percent who favor stricter laws covering the sale of firearms: 25% Republicans/89% Democrats

While it may have been true at one time that Americans’ positions did not diverge all that much on the major issues of the day, that is no longer the case.

Assessing the level of ideological polarization is a much more complicated matter. As my colleague on this Point-Counterpoint essay, Verlan Lewis, correctly points out in his essay, ideological polarization is a multi-dimensional phenomenon that is difficult, if not impossible, to reduce to a one-dimensional liberal/conservative scale. He is also correct in that the substance of what it means to be liberal and/or conservative is malleable, as are the relationships of the parties to these meanings. That being said, at the very least we should agree that those who identify as liberals/progressives increasingly identify with the Democratic Party, while those who say they are conservative now identify with the Republican Party. Indeed, in 2024 the conservative/moderate/liberal split among Republicans was 77%/18%/4%, while the same split among Democrats was 9%/34%/55%. So, in that sense, there is clear ideological polarization between the two parties. But in other ways, the jury is still out on ideological polarization. First, political scientists have raised real questions as to what the average American means when they identify as conservative or liberal. Second, and perhaps more important, is the appearance of ideological polarization between Democrats and Republicans really a product of the high levels of affective polarization that we discussed at the outset of this essay? If this is the case, then one must question just how much substance is behind what appears to be a high level of ideological polarization. This would also bring into question just how much polarization exists at the mass level.

In a way, we end this essay where we began: polarization is a hotly debated topic about which there are some things that we can say with a fair amount of confidence and many other things about which we are unsure. Perhaps one more thing that we can agree on is that party polarization—however one characterizes it—has reached the point where it is negatively affecting public life and civil governance in the United States. If, in fact, we can agree on this, then it becomes our task to try to figure out how to reduce the political temperature in the country so that people and groups of different views can engage in civil discourse and work together to govern their society.