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Review Article: Putting Polarization in Perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2009

Marc J. Hetherington
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Abstract

Scholarly research has demonstrated rather conclusively that American political elites have undergone a marked partisan polarization over the past thirty years. There is less agreement, however, as to whether the American electorate is polarized. This review article evaluates the evidence, causes and consequences of polarization on both the elite and mass levels. A marked difference between the two is found. Elites are polarized by almost any definition, although this state of affairs is quite common historically. In contrast, mass attitudes are now better sorted by party, but generally not polarized. While it is unclear whether this potentially troubling disconnect between centrist mass attitudes and extreme elite preferences has negative policy consequences, it appears that the super-majoritarian nature of the US Senate serves as a bulwark against policy outcomes that are more ideologically extreme than the public would prefer. Moreover, a public more centrist than those who represent it has also at times exerted a moderating influence on recent policies.

Type
Research Article
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 39 , Issue 2 , April 2009 , pp. 413 - 448
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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References

1 Nolan McCarty, Keith T. Poole and Howard Rosenthal, Polarized America: The Dance of Ideology and Unequal Riches (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 2006). Given the equalizing role that the Second World War played, the 1940s are an unfortunate baseline. For one corrective, which provides for a somewhat different story, see Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, ‘The Evolution of Top Incomes’, American Economic Review, 96 (2006), 2000–5.

2 Larry M. Bartels, ‘What’s the Matter with What’s the Matter with Kansas?’ Quantitative Journal of Political Science, 1 (2006), 201–26; Jeffrey M. Stonecash, Class and Party in American Politics (Boulder, Col.: Westview Press, 2000).

3 James Davison Hunter, Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America (New York: Basic Books, 1991); James Davison Hunter, Before the Shooting Begins: Searching for Democracy in America’s Culture War (New York: The Free Press, 1994); James Davidson Hunter and Alan Wolfe, Is There a Culture War? A Dialogue on Values and American Public Life (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 2006).

4 See, for example, Clyde Wilcox and Carin Larson, Onward Christian Soldiers? The Religious Right in American Politics, 3rd edn (Boulder, Col.: Westview Press, 2006); John C. Green, Mark Rozell and Clyde Wilcox, eds, The Values Campaign? The Christian Right and the 2004 Elections (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2006); David C. Leege, Kenneth D. Wald, Brian S. Krueger and Paul D. Mueller, The Politics of Cultural Differences: Social Change and Voter Mobilization Strategies in the Post-New Deal Period (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002); and Geoffrey Layman, The Great Divide: Religious and Cultural Conflict in American Party Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001).

5 See David W. Rohde, Parties and Leaders in Postreform House (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), for the first comprehensive treatment of this question. See McCarty, Poole and Rosenthal, Polarized America, for the most recent one.

6 Morris Fiorina with Samuel J. Abrams and Jeremy C. Pope, Culture War? The Myth of Polarized America, 1st edn (New York: Pearson Longman, 2004).

7 Gary C. Jacobson, A Divider, Not a Uniter: George W. Bush and the American People, The 2006 Election and Beyond (New York: Pearson Longman, 2007).

8 See Alan I. Abramowitz and Kyle Saunders, ‘Is Polarization a Myth?’ (paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Southern Political Science Association, 2006, retrieved 27 February 2007 from 〈http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p68405_index.html〉. It is important to note, however, that Abamowitz and Saunders do not report a growing ideological extremity on the issues, only greater constraint.

9 John H. Aldrich and David W. Rohde, ‘The Republican Revolution and the House Appropriations Committee’, Journal of Politics, 62 (2000), 1–33.

10 Keith Krehbiel, Pivotal Politics: A Theory of U.S. Lawmaking (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998); Bruce I. Oppenheimer and Marc J. Hetherington, ‘Running on Empty: Coalition Building Constraints in the U.S. Senate 1970s and 2000s’ (paper presented at the Conference on Party Effects in the United States Senate, Duke University, 2006).

11 Joseph A. Schlesinger, ‘The New American Political Party’, American Political Science Review, 79 (1985), 1152–69. See also David Rohde, ‘Something’s Happening Here. What It is Ain’t Exactly Clear’, in Morris P. Fiorina and David W. Rohde, eds, Home Styles and Washington Work: Studies in Congressional Politics (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1989), pp. 137–63.

12 Keith T. Poole and Howard Rosenthal, ‘The Polarization of American Politics’, Journal of Politics, 46 (1984), 1061–79.

13 Rohde, Parties and Leaders in the Postreform House.

14 dw-nominate scores account for all the votes cast by members on non-unanimous roll-call votes taken in each Congress. They allow for both between-member and between-year comparisons. These scores have two dimensions. The first is a member’s score on traditional left–right issues, and the second accounts for cross-cutting cleavages. For the sake of computational simplicity, I use only the first dimension, although the pattern is the same if I use both.

15 The fact that this is partisan polarization, specifically, rather than polarization more generally is a subtle but important point. The 1960s and 1970s witnessed plenty of polarized rhetoric and behaviour about divisive issues like Vietnam and Civil Rights. But differences did not break down along party lines.

16 David W. Brady and Hahrie C. Han, ‘Polarization Then and Now: A Historical Perspective’, in Pietro S. Nivola and David W. Brady, eds, Red and Blue Nation? Characteristics and Causes of America's Polarized Politics, Vol. 1 (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 2006), pp. 119–51. See also John Aldrich, Mark M. Berger and David Rohde, ‘The Historical Variability in Conditional Party Government, 1877–1994’, in David W. Brady and Mathew D. McCubbins, eds, Party, Process, and Political Change in Congress: New Perspectives on the History of Congress (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2002), pp. 17–35.

17 See Robert A. Dahl, Democracy in the United States: Promise and Performance, 3rd edn (New York: Rand McNally, 1976), pp. 420–33.

18 While serving as vice president in 1804, Burr killed Hamilton, one of the nation’s Founding Fathers, in a duel.

19 Gary C. Jacobson, ‘Explaining the Ideological Polarization of the Congressional Parties Since the 1970s’(presented at the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, 2004).

20 Poole and Rosenthal, ‘The Polarization of American Politics’; McCarty, Poole and Rosenthal, Polarized America, especially chap. 2.

21 Richard Fleisher and Jon R. Bond, ‘The Shrinking Middle in the US Congress’, British Journal of Political Science, 34 (2004), 429–51; Christian R. Grose and Antoine Yoshinaka, ‘The Electoral Consequences of Party Switching by Incumbent Members of Congress, 1947–2000’, Legislative Studies Quarterly, 28 (2003), 55–75.

22 Timothy P. Nokken and Keith T. Poole, ‘Congressional Party Defection in American History’, Legislative Studies Quarterly, 29 (2004), 545–68.

23 Scholars trace the beginning of southern Democratic defections to the late 1930s. For an excellent treatment of this period, see James T. Patterson, Congressional Conservatism and the New Deal: The Growth of the Conservative Coalition in Congress, 1933–1939 (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1967). It is important to note, however, that, while the Conservative Coalition appeared for the first time in the 1930s, its effect did not reach its maximum until the 1950s. For visual evidence, see McCarty, Poole and Rosenthal, Polarized America, p. 26.

24 Rohde, Parties and Leaders in Postreform House; Edward G. Carmines and James A. Stimson, Issue Evolution: Race and the Transformation of American Politics (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989); Stanley P. Berard, Southern Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2001), especially chaps 5 and 6; McCarty, Poole and Rosenthal, Polarized America.

25 Nicol Rae, Southern Democrats (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).

26 Hahrie Han and David W. Brady, ‘A Delayed Return to Historical Norms: Congressional Party Polarization after the Second World War’, British Journal of Political Science, 37 (2007), 505–31.

27 Sean M. Theriault, ‘Party Polarization in the U.S. Congress: Member Replacement and Member Adaptation’, Party Politics, 12 (2006), 483–503. See also Sarah Binder, ‘The Disappearing Political Center: Congress and the Incredible Shrinking Middle’, Brookings Review, 14 (1996), 36–9; and ‘The Dynamics of Legislative Gridlock, 1947–1996’, American Political Science Review, 93 (1999), 519–33.

28 Gary C. Jacobson, ‘Partisan Polarization in Presidential Support: The Electoral Connection’, Congress and the Presidency, 30 (2003), 1–36. It is clearly the case that elite polarization took place first and changes in the pattern of ideological self-identification followed. In that sense, changes on the mass level are best thought of as reinforcing changes on the elite level rather than causing it.

29 Melissa P. Collie and John Lyman Mason, ‘The Electoral Connection Between Party and Constituency Reconsidered: Evidence from the U.S. House of Representatives, 1972–1994’, in David W. Brady, John F. Cogan and Morris P. Fiorina, eds, Continuity and Change in House Election. (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2002), pp. 211–34.

30 Stephen Ansolabehere, James M. Snyder Jr and Charles Stewart III, ‘Candidate Positioning in U.S. House Elections’, American Journal of Political Science, 45 (2001), 136–59.

31 For example, James Carson, Michael Crespin, Charles Finocchiaro and David Rohde, ‘The Impact of Congressional Redistricting on Candidate Emergence in the U.S. House of Representatives, 1962–2002’ (paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, 2004).

32 Morris P. Fiorina and Matthew S. Levendusky, ‘Disconnected: The Political Class Versus the People’, in Nivola and Brady, eds, Red and Blue Nation? pp. 49–57.

33 James A. McCann, ‘Nomination Politics and Ideological Polarization: Assessing the Attitudinal Effects of Campaign Involvement’, Journal of Politics, 57 (1995), 101–20.

34 McCarty, Poole and Rosenthal, Polarized America.

35 Bruce I. Oppenheimer, ‘Deep Red and Blue Congressional Districts: The Causes and Consequences of Declining Party Competitiveness’ in Lawrence C. Dodd and Bruce I. Oppenheimer, eds, Congress Reconsidered, 8th edn (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Press, 2005), pp. 135–58. See also James G. Gimpel, Separate Destinations: Migration, Immigration, and the Politics of Places (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999).

36 Jacobson, ‘Partisan Polarization in Presidential Support’.

37 John Gerring, Party Ideologies in America, 1928–1996 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998); McCarty, Poole and Rosenthal, Polarized America, see especially chap. 4.

38 See Martin Gilens, Why Americans Hate Welfare (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), for a masterful treatment of this point.

39 McCarty, Poole and Rosenthal, Polarized America, especially chap. 5.

40 Larry Dodd and Bruce I. Oppenheimer, ‘The House in Transition’, in Larry Dodd and Bruce I. Oppenheimer, eds, Congress Reconsidered (New York: Praeger, 1977), pp. 21–53; Julian E. Zelizer, On Capitol Hill: The Struggle to Reform Congress and Its Consequences: 1948–2000 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Rohde, Parties and Leaders in the Postreform House; Barbara Sinclair, Legislators, Leaders, and Lawmaking: The U.S. House of Representatives in the Postreform Era (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995); Barbara Sinclair, Majority Leadership in the U.S. House (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983).

41 Barbara Sinclair, ‘Do Parties Matter?’ in David W. Brady and Mathew McCubbins, eds, Party, Process, and Political Change in Congress (Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2002), pp. 36–63; Gary Cox and Mathew McCubbins, Setting the Agenda: Responsible Party Government in the U.S. House (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

42 Steven Smith, Call to Order: Floor Politics in the House and Senate (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1989).

43 James Sundquist, Politics and Policy: The Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson Years (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1968).

44 Barbara Sinclair, Unorthodox Lawmaking (Washington, D.C., Congressional Quarterly Press, 2000).

45 Glen Krutz, Hitching a Ride: Omnibus Legislating in Congress (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2001); Sinclair, Unorthodox Lawmaking.

46 Lawrence C. Dodd and Bruce I. Oppenheimer, ‘A Decade of Republican Control: The House of Representatives, 1995–2005’, in Dodd and Oppenheimer, eds, Congress Reconsidered, 8th edn (2005), pp. 23–54. It is instructive that the new Democratic majority in the House has retained term limits for committee chairs, though Speaker Pelosi (D-Ca.) has promised to revisit the issue in the future.

47 David W. Rohde, ‘Committees and Policy Formation’, in Paul J. Quirk and Sarah A. Binder, eds, The Legislative Branch (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 201–23; Walter J. Oleszek, Congressional Procedures and the Policy Process, 6th edn (Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 2004); Steven Smith and Eric D. Lawrence, ‘Party Control of Committees in the Republican Congress’, in Dodd and Oppenheimer, eds, Congress Reconsidered, 6th edn (1997), pp. 163–92.

48 Barry C. Burden and Tammy M. Frisby, ‘Preferences, Partisanship, and Whip Activity in the U.S. House of Representatives’, Legislative Studies Quarterly, 29 (2004), 569–91.

49 Richard Forgette, ‘Party Caucuses and Coordination: Assessing Caucus Activity and Party Effects’, Legislative Studies Quarterly, 29 (2004), 407–30.

50 Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein, The Broken Branch: How Congress is Failing America and How to Get it Back on Track (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).

51 Mann and Ornstein, The Broken Branch, see especially chap. 2.

52 Mann and Ornstein, The Broken Branch, see especially chap. 2.

53 Mann and Ornstein, The Broken Branch, see especially chap. 3.

54 This might also help explain why scholars tend not to identify the early Franklin Roosevelt years as particularly polarized even though Democrats and Republicans had sharp party differences. The Democratic majorities in both House and Senate, however, were enormous.

55 Eric S. Heberlig, Marc J. Hetherington and Bruce A. Larson. ‘The Price of Leadership: Campaign Money and the Polarization of Congressional Parties’, Journal of Politics, 68 (2006), 989–1002; Eric S. Heberlig and Bruce A. Larson, ‘Redistributing Campaign Funds by U.S. House Members: The Spiraling Costs of the Permanent Campaign’, Legislative Studies Quarterly, 30 (2005), 597–624; Marian Currinder, ‘Campaign Finance: Funding the Presidential and Congressional Elections’, in Michael Nelson, ed., The Election of 2004 (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Press, 2005), pp. 108–32.

56 See, for example, John H. Aldrich and David W. Rohde, ‘The Logic of Conditional Party Government’, in Dodd and Oppenheimer, eds, Congress Reconsidered, 7th edn (2001), pp. 269–92.

57 John H. Aldrich and David W. Rohde, ‘The Republican Revolution and the House Appropriations Committee’, Journal of Politics, 62 (2000), 1–33.

58 Eric Schickler, Disjointed Pluralism: Institutional Innovation and the Development of the U.S. Congress (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2001); Cox and McCubbins, Setting the Agenda.

59 Zelizer, On Capitol Hill.

60 American Political Science Association, ‘Toward a More Responsible Two-Party System: A Report of the Committee on Political Parties’, American Political Science Review, 44 Supplement (1950).

61 V. O. Key, The Responsible Electorate: Rationality in Presidential Voting, 1936–1960 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1966); Morris Fiorina, Retrospective Voting in American National Elections (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1981).

62 Barbara Sinclair, ‘Spoiling the Sausages? How a Polarized Congress Deliberates and Legislates’, in Pietro S. Nivola and David W. Brady, eds, Red and Blue Nation? Characteristics and Causes of America's Polarized Politics, Vol. II (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 2008), pp. 55–87.

63 Mann and Ornstein, The Broken Branch, see especially chap. 4.

64 Keith Krehbiel, ‘Party Polarization and Bad Legislation’, in Nivola and Brady, eds, Red and Blue Nation? Vol. II, pp. 93–105.

65 Oppenheimer and Hetherington, ‘Running on Empty’.

66 McCarty, Poole and Rosenthal, Polarized America, especially chap. 6.

67 Angus Campbell, Philip E. Converse, Warren E. Miller and Donald E. Stokes, The American Voter (New York: Wiley, 1960).

68 James L. Sundquist, Dyamics of the Party System: Alignment and Realignment of Political Parties in the United States (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1983).

69 Carmines and Stimson, Issue Evolution.

70 Hunter, Culture Wars.

71 In reality, both issues have middle ground. People can prefer that abortion remain legal, but with certain restrictions. Similarly, people can prefer civil unions to either gay marriage or not recognizing monogamous gay relationships. Such middle ground is significantly less sexy than interest groups on both sides of the issue, not to mention the news media, which is driven by conflict.

72 Stonecash, Class and Party in American Politics.

73 Bartels, ‘What’s the Matter with What’s the Matter with Kansas?’; see also Steven Ansolabehere, Jonathan Rodden and James M. Snyer Jr, ‘Purple America’, Journal of Economic Perspectives, 20 (2006), 97–118.

74 Gary Miller and Norman Schofield, ‘Activists and Partisan Realignment in the United States’, American Political Science Review, 97 (2003), 245–60.

75 Paul DiMaggio, John Evans and Bethany Bryson, ‘Have Americans’ Social Attitudes Become More Polarized?’ American Journal of Sociology, 102 (1996), 690–755. See also Fiorina and Levendusky, ‘Disconnected’.

76 DiMaggio, Evans and Bryson, ‘Have Americans’ Social Attitudes Become More Polarized?’

77 John H. Evans, ‘Have Americans’ Attitudes Become More Polarized? An Update’, Social Science Quarterly, 84 (2003), 71–90.

78 John R. Zaller, The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992); and Philip Converse, ‘The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics’, in David Apter, ed., Ideology and Discontent (New York: The Free Press, 1964), pp. 206–26.

79 Dahl, Democracy in the United States, p. 423.

80 I confine this analysis to non-blacks because blacks do not identify with the Democratic party because of its positions on social issues. Indeed, African-Americans are, on average, quite conservative on most social issues, while the Democratic party is increasingly liberal. Since blacks have remained the party’s most stalwart supporters, it appears that this group is not inclined to leave the party based on the party’s socially liberal positions.

81 Carmines and Stimson, Issue Evolution.

82 Peter Beinert, ‘When Politics No Longer Stops at the Water’s Edge: Partisanship and Foreign Policy’, in Nivola and Brady, eds, Red and Blue Nation? Vol. II (2007), pp.

83 Abramowitz also demonstrates that people have become more consistently liberal and more consistently conservative in their preferences over time, which seems more a measure of preference constraint rather than polarization. See Abramowitz and Saunders, ‘Is Polarization a Myth?’

84 Fiorina and Levendusky, ‘Disconnected’.

85 John H. Aldrich, Why Parties? The Origin and Transformation of Party Politics in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995); Fiorina et al., Culture War; Geoffrey C. Layman and Thoman M. Carsey, ‘Why Do Party Activists Convert? An Analysis of Individual Change on the Abortion Issue’, Political Research Quarterly, 51 (1998), 723–49.

86 Greg D. Adams, ‘Abortion: Evidence of an Issue Evolution’, American Journal of Political Science, 41 (1997), 718–37.

87 Christina Wolbrecht, The Politics of Women’s Rights (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000); Kira Sanbonmatsu, Where Women Run: Gender and Party in the American States (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006).

88 Kara Lindaman and Donald P. Heider-Markel, ‘Issue Evolution, Political Parties, and the Culture Wars’, Political Research Quarterly, 55 (2002), 91–100.

89 Jacobson, A Divider, Not a Uniter.

90 Alan Abramowitz and Gary Jacobson, ‘Disconnected or Joined at the Hip?’ in Nivola and Brady, eds, Red and Blue Nation? Vol. I (2006), pp. 72–84 and pp. 85–94).

91 Michael X. Delli Carpini and Scott Keeter, What American Know About Politics and Why It Matters (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1996).

92 Marc J. Hetherington, ‘Turned Off or Turned On: The Effects of Polarization on Political Participation, Engagement, and Representation’, in Nivola and Brady, eds, Red and Blue Nation? Vol. II (2007), pp. 1–33.

93 Donald R. Kinder and David O. Sears, ‘Prejudice and Politics: Symbolic Racism versus Racial Threats to the Good Life’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 40(1981), 414–31; and Donald R. Kinder and Lynn M. Sanders, Divided By Color: Racial Politics and Democratic Ideals (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). Racial resentment is measured on five-point scales ranging from ‘strongly agree’ to ‘strongly disagree’ in response to the following questions: ‘Generations of slavery and discrimination have created conditions that make it difficult for blacks to work their way out of the lower class’, ‘Irish, Italians, Jewish and many other minorities overcame prejudice and worked their way up. Blacks should do the same without any special favors’, ‘It's really a matter of some people not trying hard enough; if blacks would only try harder they could be just as well off as whites’, and ‘Over the past few years blacks have gotten less than they deserve.’

94 Marc J. Hetherington and Jonathan Weiler, ‘Authoritarianism and Political Choice’ (paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, 2005). Authoritarianism here is measured by asking people to choose between attractive qualities in children. Specifically, respondents are asked which qualities they valued more: independence or respect for elders, curiosity or good manners, obedience or self-reliance, and being considerate or well behaved.

95 See, for example, Theodor Adorno, E. Frenkel-Brunswick, D. Levinson and N. Sanford, The Authoritarian Personality (New York: Harper and Row, 1950), for the original treatment; and Bill Peterson, Richard Doty and David Winter, ‘Authoritarianism and Attitudes Toward Contemporary Social Issues’, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 19 (1993), 174–84, for a more recent one.

96 See, for example, Richard Doty, Bill Peterson and David Winter, ‘Threat and Authoritarianism in the United States, 1978–1987’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 61(1991), 629–40.

97 Karen Stenner, The Authoritarian Dynamic (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

98 See, for example, V. O. Key, The Responsible Electorate (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1966); Benjamin I. Page and Robert Y. Shapiro, ‘Effects of Public Opinion on Policy’, American Political Science Review, 77 (1983), 175–90; Zaller, The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion; and Carmines and Stimson, Issue Evolution.

99 D. Sunshine Hillygus and Todd Shields, The Persuadable Voter: Strategic Candidates and Wedge Issues in Presidential Campaigns (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2008).

100 Thomas Patterson, Out of Order (New York: Knopf, 1993). For a recent review, see Richard A. Posner, ‘Bad news’, New York Times, 31 July 2005.

101 Diana C. Mutz and Byron Reeves, ‘The New Videomalaise: Effects of Televised Incivility on Political Trust’, American Political Science Review, 99 (2005), 1–15.

102 Markus Prior, Post-Broadcast Democracy: How Media Choice Increases Inequality in Political Involvement and Polarizes Elections (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

103 Zaller, The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinions.

104 Prior, Post-Broadcast Democracy.

105 Hetherington, ‘Turned Off or Turned On’.

106 Alan I. Abramowitz and Walter J. Stone, ‘The Bush Effect: Polarization, Turnout, and Activism in the 2004 Presidential Election’, Presidential Studies Quarterly, 36 (2006), 141–54.

107 Hetherington, ‘Turned Off or Turned On’.

108 Geoffrey C. Layman and Thomas M. Carsey, ‘Party Polarization and “Conflict Extension” in the American Electorate’, American Journal of Political Science, 46 (2002), 786–802.

109 Donald Green, Bradley Palmquist and Eric Schickler, Partisan Hearts and Minds: Political Parties and the Social Identities of Voters (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2002); Abramowitz and Saunders have a more problematic treatment that shows the same result (see Alan I. Abramowitz and Kyle L. Saunders, ‘Ideological Realignment in the U.S. Electorate’, Journal of Politics, 60 (1998), 634–52).

110 Abramowitz and Saunders, ‘Ideological Realignment in the U.S. Electorate’. But see David W. Putz, ‘Partisan Conversion in the 1990s: Ideological Realignment Meets Measurement Theory’, Journal of Politcs, 64 (2002), 1199–209, for a critique.

111 Thomas M. Carsey and Geoffrey C. Layman, ‘Changing Sides or Changing Minds? Party Identification and Policy Preferences in the American Electorate’, American Journal of Political Science, 50 (2006), 464–77.

112 Paul Goren, ‘Character Weakness, Partisan Bias, and Presidential Evaluation’, American Journal of Political Science, 46 (2002), 627–41.

113 On the increased effect of partisanship more generally, see Larry M. Bartels, ‘Partisanship and Voting Behavior, 1952–1996’, American Journal of Political Science, 44 (2000), 35–50; and Marc J. Hetherington, ‘Resurgent Mass Partisanship: The Role of Elite Polarization’, American Political Science Review, 95 (2001), 619–31.

114 Jacobson, A Divider, Not a Uniter.

115 Jacobson, ‘Disconnected or Joined at the Hip’, p. 92.

116 Larry M. Bartels, ‘Beyond the Running Tally: Partisan Bias in Political Perceptions’, Political Behavior, 24 (2002), 117–50.

117 Philip A. Klinkner, ‘Mr. Bush’s War: Foreign Policy in the 2004 Election’, Presidential Studies Quarterly, 36 (2004), 281–96.

118 Sean M. Theriault, ‘Procedural Polarization in the U.S. Congress’ (paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, 2006).

119 Marc J. Hetherington, ‘The Effect of Political Trust on the Presidential Vote, 1968–1996’, American Political Science Review, 93 (1999), 311–26.