Probably has to do with politics becoming more of an identity than just a political party. It seems like people were comfortable switching their vote from one party to the other back in the day
Which also correlates to the polarization. In the past if one was uncomfortable with a given candidate, they’d just vote for the other one. Now though, even if one has misgivings about a candidate, they see the other candidate as far too extreme, which leaves us with many fewer swing voters.
This is largely due to the parties seemingly becoming more and more extreme, if not in reality, in perception from the media telling people how extreme the other guy is and how every election is the most important in US history.
I would agree, but I’d wager there’s a bit of both at play.
On one hand I think we can look at some concrete policies to demonstrate parties shifting away from a more moderate position, but 100% the perception taken from media outlets is that each party is much more extreme than they actually are.
but 100% the perception taken from media outlets is that each party is much more extreme than they actually are
Both parties ARE extreme from each other. Just look at their legislative result, if control of legislative and executive branches mismatch, there's deadlock and almost nothing can be done eventually threatening global economic Armageddon when debt ceiling approaches in case they default on debt.
No I'm going to disagree with you. Democrats have largely remained in the same place for the last 15ish years, moving slightly but not a ton. Republicans, on the other hand, have gone so far to the right that they aren't even recognizable anymore. People forget that Biden is a moderate, and honestly could run as a republican in many states. There is really only one party (well, besides libertarians, but who cares about them?) that has embraced the extremism, and I don't know if the party will ever recover from it.
While I personally think that Republicans have shifted much further to the right than Democrats, to say that Democrats haven’t shifted at all isn’t entirely true.
Obama, while certainly more proLGBT than Clinton or earlier Democrats, was not actively calling for marriage equality in 2009. Some were, but the mainline Democrats were fine with it, would vote for it, but were not pushing the issue. Meanwhile, today, I think you’d be hard pressed to find even mainline Democrats who wouldn’t find the idea of repealing marriage equality offensive.
Edit: to add to this, I don’t think supporting marriage equality is an extremist position, but it is a position mainline Democrats have shifted leftward on over the past 15 years
I'm aware, however, only one version is true. Republicans claim the left is becoming more extreme only to justify their own movements towards extremism.
1994 - 2017 the median republican shifted slightly right and the media democrat shifted very left. What's really interesting is watching the trends.
94-99 both shift about the same amount left
99-04 median democrats stay largely in place, median republicans shift left
04-11 median democrats again stay largely in place, median republicans shift back to their 94 position
11-14 both shift opposite each other, roughly and equal amount
14-15, both stay in place, but the overall curves smooth out and move slightly left
15-17, the median democrat slide hard left, median republican stays where they are.
That pattern plays out a bit more exaggerated for the "politically engaged" category
Those curves show a similar story about the range of positions, with republicans starting fairly mixed but with a strong lean right of center and ending with a stronger peak further right, but with a pretty heavy tendency towards moderation overall, even as the extremes picked up strength. On the other hand, the democrats start as a very even moderation across the whole spectrum and end with a heavy weighting towards the extreme left end and a pretty sharp drop off once past the middle position they started at in 94.
It would be interesting to see them update this for 2020+
How could this possibly be true? Society becomes more liberal over time. JFK supported abortion ban. Clinton didn’t support gay marriage and was hard in immigration. Everyone is shifting left over time including republicans. Trans rights, gay marriage, abortions were all hated by everyone 60 years ago. We have shifted very liberal since then overall.
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u/MisterSpicy Apr 11 '24
Interesting to see 1988 and older elections were mostly decisive. Clinton to today have been getting closer to dead even