SUMMARY: There is a discrepancy between widespread public support for certain policies and the passage of contrary legislation, particularly regarding divisive social issues. What political and psychological influences explain this divide? How can there be so much agreement on what should be done, and so little action towards it? Personal perceptions, mainstream and partisan media narratives, and the role of political polarization influence candidate recruitment and election outcomes. The belief that only extremist candidates can turn out the base helps keep us polarized. The disaffected and moderate electorate needs to become more engaged in our politics.

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KEYWORDS: Polarization, Legislation, Perception, Media, Politicians, Extremist candidates, Voter turnout, Compromise, Policy differences

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COMMENT: Which came first, the polarized electorate or the polarized politicians?

Biden Polling, Trump’s Trials, and Tuesday’s Elections Skew the Anchoring Effect

We hear a lot that Americans agree on certain policy proposals and initiatives and issues and stuff. Overwhelming majorities support codifying Roe v Wade, “common sense” gun legislation, DACA, marriage equality, trans transitions, and other hot button culture issues. However, legislation keeps getting passed that is contrary to the polling. Worse, the legislators and governors that enact the laws are not punished at the polls for their actions… that is until abortion rights became a voting issue, and, boy oh boy, are voters punishing elected officials for their abortion issues.

Tied to this issue of one side of a “divisive” social issue polling in overwhelming majorities, is the belief that our politics is hyper-polarized. How can the electorate be so polarized when the polarizing issues all have widespread agreement? Why are abortion rights amendments and initiatives passing in conservative states and legislative seats and governors being overturned based on the issue and legislatures still passing draconian anti-abortion legislation?

Are we really this schizophrenic as a nation or is there another explanation?

You’re in luck in two ways: First, political scientists actually research the current state of our politics. And, second, I read their research and report it to you. The MSM doesn’t read it, and if they do, they give it short shift, so here’s the inside skinny on why there seems to be such a gap between the polling, the legislation, and election outcomes.

Perceptions of Our Politics

Influences on our Personal Perceptions

Gaslighting Perceptions of Politics

The first thing we have to look at is our perceptions of our current situation. We all use several sources of data to inform our perception of our current political situation:

• The people around us. We look to friends, neighbors, co-workers, family, and our social media feeds as sources of opinion and perception. It is natural. We evolved to live in tribes and agreement on how the environment is interpreted helped our tribes be cohesive and group action effective. If everyone around you is saying the 2020 election was stolen, you’re very likely to believe that it was. If everyone around you is saying Trump is an unproductive malignant narcissist, you believe that he is. Conformity is a real thing. We act on perceptions that are contrary to direct evidence just to fit in.
• The mainstream media narrative. The MSM is all about the clicks, likes, and shares. It is all ad-revenue driven on the Interwebs. It’s one reason Ye Olde Blogge has only made $18.67 in three and a half years of advertising. They have to present the world in the most garish way possible so that its headlines serve as clickbait for all of us stuck on this side of the paywall and even for those of us with deep enough pockets to vault it. It is in the best interest of the MSM to present both sides as being extreme, the world as having this wide political gulf, and the extremists as being normal. Without all that, they don’t make their moneys.
• Partisan media narrative. Like it or not, there is a lot of partisan media out there on both sides. I know I read very liberal and snarky sources like Wonkette, Crooks and Liars, The Daily Kos, and Mock, Paper, Scissors. We all know about the the right-wing media bubble that seemingly all of our parents live in.
• Media whores. Let’s face it there are people whose whole lives revolve around their “ability” to get national or local media attention. That pushes the Overton Window towards extremes, and it just keeps on being pushed further and further out.
• Sources I’ve forgotten or otherwise left out. I’m sure there are sources of information that pollute our perceptions of our current political situation. Please let me know in the comments.

The upshot of all of this perceptioning and misperceptioning is that we as in you, me, and your favorite drunk rage uncle, all think the other side is more radical and far removed from centrist politics than they actually are. The polling suggests that there are few differences in our policy goals on big important issues. So, what are the differences?

Dissecting Policy Differences

Left Brain, Right Brain; One Brain, Two Brain: The Difference Between Conservatives and Liberals

First, there is the speed of change. Liberals tend to want big changes right now. Conservatives tend to take a wait and see attitude. Both sides want change to happen. It is just a question of when and how much. That’s what good honest political debate resolves. We come to a compromise on those issues. It pushes our policies and laws to the center, which leaves the radicals on the extremes of both sides dissatisfied, but the vast majority happy.

Second, there are the solutions themselves. Liberals are more comfortable overturning the way we do things. Handing impoverished families money to help lift their children out of poverty, for example. We’ve demonstrated that that is a successful and cost-effective way of reducing childhood poverty. Conservatives favor incremental change. There “solutions” tend to be more tentative and take smaller steps.

Third, we also differ in how we see the solutions. Liberals see a bigger role for the government to play and conservatives see a larger role for the market place and big business. Now, here’s where my liberal — and perhaps yours, too — reality steps in. We’ve seen fifty years of trickle down economics putting us on a boom-and-bust cycle with Democrats correcting the list of our economic ship providing the boom and the tricklers attempting to capsize us with the busts. The truth of the matter is, liberal solutions frequently work and conservative’s don’t. However, that’s not the point. The point is that both sides have solutions even if conservative “solutions” are just transferring the wealth of the nation to the one percent as quickly as possible masquerading as solutions. More on this later.

And fourth, the level of our involvement in politics also affects how we see the other side. Those of us most involved, tend to see the opposition as more radical. The disaffected disinterested disengaged voter see’s both sides as, meh, making them the key to any and every election since 2016.

Our perceptions of the other side, tend to paint them as far more radical than they are. If the polling is to be believed, both sides want a solution to gun violence. Neither side wants to condemn trans kids to a living purgatory. So, if the people have common ground, why don’t our politicians?

The Polarized Candidate Conundrum

The Dehumanizing Metaphor: The One Weird Trick that Autocrats Use to Hardwire Hate and Division into Their Followers

This is where the Great Civics Lesson rears its head again. Most of us — not most of my readers, but most of the electorate — don’t know how candidates for office become candidates for office.

Recruitment and Influence of Party Chairs

Our politicians tend to be highly polarized at least more polarized than the electorate. Our politicians, I’m looking at you Ted Cancun Cruz, Mitch No SCOTUS Appointment For Dems McConnell, and the House Freedumb Cockups and the rest of the Republican House caucus, tend to believe that compromise is a dirty word and refuse to do it unless they are drug kicking and screaming to it as we are seeing for funding for Ukraine, the border, and funding our government.

Where do polarized office holders come from? Polarized candidates.

Where do polarized candidates come from? No one seems to know, except them that do know. It is the national, state, and local party chairs that recruit candidates to run for offices. The chairs are appointed or elected by the party committees at each level. These party chairs tend to believe that extremest candidates win elections.

In 2013 county party chairs appointed extremist candidates at a ten-to-one clip in the Republican Party and two-to-one for Democrats. Conclusion, it isn’t just the “safe” seats delivered by gerrymandering, Constitutional advantage, and demographic changes that are creating the polarization in our governing bodies. It is the parties themselves.

The Vicious Cycle of Primary Elections

• Party chairs believe that polarizing candidates win, so they recruit radical candidates.
• Moderate candidates file to run in the party primary.
• Primary voters tend to be the party faithful, the more involved-in-politics voters who gravitate to the policies of the extremist candidates.
• The extremist candidates win the nomination.
• Their polarizing rhetoric is normalized.
• Party chairs have their view that polarizing candidates win, because they win the primaries. Why recruit a moderate when they don’t have a chance of winning the primary, right?

Polarization’s Impact on Voter Turnout

Election 2022 Hot Take: White Voters REWARD Republicans for Fascism

However, that isn’t the whole story. Voters that don’t like either candidate, tend to stay home during the elections. If you’re a moderate Republican and don’t like the Trumpist candidate primary winner, you don’t go out and vote for the Democrat, you just don’t vote. If you’re an indifferent inactive, inattentive sometimes voter, you probably weren’t going to vote anyway, and you don’t vote now.

Extremist candidates appeal to the base, turn off the meh voters, and win because the base in their constituency is bigger than their opponent’s base.

The base may support all of these issues like abortion access and gun legislation, but still vote for candidates that will not advance them and in fact work against them. Now that’s a conundrum, right? To answer that question, you’ll have to tune in to our next blog post on affective polarization.

Until then, we have to be satisfied with trying to find a way to appeal to the vast swath of mehing middle of the sometimes voting crowd. It is only through getting everyone to see voting as the solution to our polarization that we untangle this complex web that seems to keep us divided and unable to solve the myriad of problems that our MAGA brethren refuse to compromise on.

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Image Attribution

This image was generated using Poe’s StableDiffusionXL bot using the prompt, a political cartoon of political polarization