Polarization in Us Politics

Analyze the endorse that American regime is becoming more polarized. If so, is this a answer to the polarisation of governmental elites? Approx 1500 words 13/12/10 The election of 2008 tag the end of an epoch. No longer could re popularans press on the basic conservatism of the American people, the reflexive hostility to candidates who favour cock-a-hoop government (Darman, 2010, 34)In the 1970s and 1980s in that respect was a consensus that the brilliance of governmental parties was in dec bank bill, that the sh argond right ideology of the American electorate was reflected in the similar ideology and policy of the pop and Republican caller. Now, however, the parties atomic number 18 manifestly taking on renewed importance as the population of the United secerns grows little and slight homogenous. thither is direct a consensus in the American media that their regime argon increasely Polarized between the self-aggrandizing ballotingrs who vote Democrat, and th e more traditional conservatives who run on the Republican Party.This essay bequeath assess the evidence for whether or not the American semipolitical system is indeed polarizing, and if so, then for what reasons? The percentageage of political elites testament excessively be examined, whether or not they atomic number 18 polarizing aswell, and whether this is a hulking contri justing cause of the polarising of the raft? Many, including Marc Hetherington, contend that on that point has indeed been a period of slew and elite polarisation, and Hetherington believes that the mass polarization is a reaction to the elites increasing partisanship (2001, 621, 629).Thither is evidence in surveys that the political elite is polarizing the amount of self proclaimed very conservative Republicans in sexual relation and senate has go up from 12 to 30 percent since 1972, and the amount of very liberal Democrats has risen from 8 to 20 percent (St peer little, 2010, 39), this memori alizes that as much as half of delegates atomic number 18 radicals. For this reason political debate has braggy more and more rancorous, some(prenominal) in Washington DC and in the media. The agency of information in Democracy cannot be under positd, it is a cornerst bingle(a) of Dahls Polyarchy (1972).Although some media companies whitethorn attest to tackleing to provide news without bias, their schedule as businesses is to turn a improvement and as it is common for them to take up political positions in put in to attain market share. To illustrate this, Fox exchange 24 hour television stake was introduced in 1996 (this in itself could be seen as evidence for polarization) and by 2000 had managed to attract 17 percent of the US population by adopting a staunchly conservative stand (DellaVigna, Kaplan, 2007), sequence one must send away short of attributing the Republican success at the 2000 election to the introduction of a conservative news station.The same study shows that not Fox watchword emergences causation with an increase in voter turnout (DellaVigna, Kaplan, 2007, 1228), arguably mobilising a previously disenchanted group. The radical left and right leaning delegates mentioned above are naturally the most visible politicians to the public in terms of media insurance coverage as a result of the medias wint for framing politics in terms of contravene (Hetherington, 2001, 622).It follows that the mass public will lot their positions from the partisan opinions and attitudes which they are exposed to on their televisions and in their newspapers, either in support of, or by vehemently disagreeing with, the moot politicians, political pundits and journalists, and will express these outlooks in the polls come election time. superstar tool which the media can use to bulge out an image of a polarized country is by utilising state boundaries to show the success of the incompatible parties in dry landwide elections.The carmine stat e/ grubby state maps are now a fixture of the news coverage as election results flood in, but it is provoke to note that as lately as 1984 Democratic victories were shown in ablaze(p) and Republican in zesty. It is also odd that red, long the colour of Marxism, of Red china and Communist USSR (Patton, 2004). The only relevance of these points is to show that the apparent deep rooted polarized political situation is both modern and face to quite sudden change. The red/ blue map shown in Figure one shows how modern Polarisation has manifested itself over the locomote intravenous feeding elections.The dark red and blue show that those states come voted Republican or democratic respectively all four times. Lighter shades show that caller has won all but once, while purple shows states which have gone to the Republicans and Democrats doubly each. On first glance this seems to plunk for up the polarization theory, as Fiorina and Adams frame up it when the 2004 election almos t reproduced the 2000 map, belief in the polarization narrative peaked as social conservatives gloated about the purported importance of value voters for the re-election of President Bush, and liberal commentators bitterly accept that interpretation. (2008, 564, 565)However when one examines the map in physical body 2 which breaks down the 2008 election by county, rather than state. This map seems to throw an interesting side note onto the red state/ blue state theory. While in that respect is seldom a completely red or blue dominated state, in terms of area cover on the map, there is far more covered by republican red. The fact that the democrats won the election with so much less area covered shows that the blue areas are high in population denstity- cities and large towns. Rather than Republican south versus Democratic coasts, Figure 2 indicates a class between Rural Republican and urban Democrat areas.Fig. 1 Fig. 2 There are other problems with the above quote, which Fiorina and Abrams do draw attention to. For instance the anticipate intrinsic connections common to the value voters are not as strong as they may seem. For instance Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry managed to pull one leash of white evangelicals, and one third of gun owners (Fiorina and Abrams, 2008, 568). These are deuce metre of the stereotypical conservative Bible-Belt citizen, and the media would have us believe that almost any ace one would have supported the officer George W.Bush. This exaggeration is typical of the American medias attempt to depict American politics as more polarized than it is. Haley Barbour, governor of Mississippi and origin chairman of the republican party here how he takes political news (in this encase the pessimism about the future of the Republican party after the election of Barack Obama in 2008) with a pinch of salt In politics, things are never as good as they seem (in the media) and theyre never as tough as they seem (Darman, 2010 )If there is such polarization in the USA, such be political cleavages, why then is every election so tightly contested, which Barone calls The 49 Percent Nation (Kaus, 2004)? Surely if the realm was split along regional, urban/ rural, apparitional or ideological divides, then for certain one group would be able-bodied to dominate the other, at least periodically, and one party would enjoy longer periods in office. In the past two decades no Presidential candidate has acheived more than 54% of the popular vote. Barbour implies that the greatest reason the democrats won the 2008 election is because it was entirely their turn (Darman, 2010).Mickey Kaus of political comment website Slate Magazine, attributes this seemingly strange run of results to the Median Voter Theory, also known as the Black Theorem (Black, 1948). Kaus explains that the ideological positions of the Republican and Democratic parties are not fixed, they do not re principal(prenominal) where the lines in fig ure 3 show, rather they will gravitate towards the point upon the scale which will guarantee the greatest support. Because of this, in both the upper and lower graphs (ie regardless of whether the ballot public is polarized or not) both the main parties would lie more or less in the centre of the graph.The non proportional representation, two party electoral system reinforces this, as if their were many parties competing seriously it would allow for minority parties which could take up more utmost(prenominal) left or right points on the scale. Figure. 3- the vertical lines represent where ideology-driven liberal and conservative parties would be fixed upon the scale. The other line in each graph shows the how the voters are distributed along the political spectrum. In conclusion, there is significant evidence to show that a period of polarization has been occuring in the politics of the United States of America since approximately the middle 1990s.There are a myriad of reasons w hich could be applied, too many to be mentioned here, for precedent Hetherington mentions that Presidential approval ratings and poor stinting performance can often use up to polarization. The greatest factor however, to stretch the US electorates homogeneity is the influence of the elites and the mass media. arguably this could be seen as a give-and-take progression, with the elites emerging from the mass to elevated positions from which they may influence the mass, and the media reacting to the mass in order to produce a marketable service.Furthermore it is eventful to note that although the USA does exist in a somewhat polarized state, the extent of that polarization is not as clearcut as sections of the media would have one believe. The US is not simply a nation off quondam(a) gun toting, jocund hating, anti stillbirth Republicans and younger coastal, ethnically diverse gay loving pro-choice socialist Democrats. perhaps a more apt verbal description would be as a nation o f centralist influenced by a weeny amount of more extreme outliers of liberal and conservative persuasion.Bibliography policy-making Polarization in the American Public, Fiorina, Morris and Abrams, Samuel, 2008, Stanford Resurgent Mass partisanship The Role of Elite Polarization, Hetherington, Marc, 2001, American Political Science Review The Fox News Effect Media Bias and Voting, DellaVigna, Stefano and Kaplan, Ethan, 2007, Harvard On the principle of Group Decision Making, Black, Duncan, 1948, Chicago The Anti-Obama,Darman, Jonathan, 2010, Newsweek combat Club, Thomas, Evan and Taylor Jr, Stuart, 2010, Newsweek