Party Polarization Research Paper

Over the past three decades, the distance between parties has continued to grow steadily. As their distances increase it has become harder for presidents to receive votes from both parties.

the Civil Rights Act of 1964.82 The passage of that Act ended an era that had

There were many political disputes that happened in the United States. Many people were fighting over which party they should go to or which one was better. They had the Republicans and the Federalists who wanted to sway the vote to their side. They opposed each other and disputed against each other. This caused many conflicts in the United States.

James Campbell’s book is a political masterpiece that outlines how American voters are divided across the United States. Campbell provides a totally new perspective on the polarization with a historically context on how and why voters are politically divided. Campbell’s argument may seem indirect, but he provides circumstantial evidence and empirical evidence to support his claim of polarization. Polarized is significant to understanding American polarization, and surprisingly other books fail in comparison due to their lack of empirical evidence. Campbell’s book was written in 2016 which provides updated information that can help explain the cause of 2018 election polarization among voters.

Party Polarization is a defining feature of contemporary at both the elite and activist levels. Party polarization is defined as “the division between the two major parties on most political issues, with members of each party unified around their party’s positions with little crossover” (371). One explanation for party polarization is how the congressional districts are being sorted and how those districts play a role in the congressional elections. The congressional districts are drawn to favor one political party, republican or democrat, over another; in other words, they are “safe districts”. This is done by drawing a district in such a way that there is a clear majority of one party or the other. Lawmakers want to do this because it eliminates the competition within the general election.

Recently, Party polarization in the US has been gaining more attention. Some claim that it is a recent phenomenon, but in fact polarization has been ongoing ever since the 18th century. Political polarization is when an individual makes a decision on an issue, policy or candidate solely based on the political party they identify with or with their chosen ideology. In the 1790s, the Jeffersonian Republicans and the Federalists were polarized over tariffs, the national bank and federal versus state and citizen power. Between the 1830s and the 1840s, polarization took form between the Whigs and the democrats. In the 1850s polarization was focused on the issue of slavery, agrarian and currency issues. In the 1930s it was welfare and in the 1960s

All 435 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives were up for reelection in 2010. In the 2010 U.S. House election, the average amount spent by Super PACs in 87 districts was $242,580; see Table 1 and Figure 1 for average spending by outside entities and challengers. The maximum about Super PACs spent was $912,503 in Colorado’s Fourth Congressional District, where Cory Gardner (R) defeated incumbent Betsy Markey (D). The average independent expenditures by political parties in 94 districts was $1,238,897. The maximum outside party spending was $4,289,706 in Michigan’s Seventh Congressional District, where Tim Walberg (R) beat incumbent Mark Schauer (D). The average challenger spending was $704,692 in 366 districts. Figures 2, shows the

Although the increase in ideological polarization in the legislative body of our nation has tracked the decline in political trust of the general public over the past several decades, their causal relationship goes in both directions. In other words, congressional polarization is the consequence, as well as the cause, of low-level political trust observed in the mass population. Together, they create a political “death spiral” that can render our legislative body of government dysfunctional. This paper will discuss the definition of political trust, its important role in the well-being of the nation, and its two-way causal relationship with congressional polarization.

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are both running incessantly controversial campaigns, alienating millions of voters in the process. The Morning Consult asked 2,000 registered voters to give two of their main reasons for disliking one of the candidates. 47% of the respondents believed that Clinton was untrustworthy, whereas 39% thought she was corrupt. Likewise, 25% of respondents disliked Trump because they considered him to be too racist, while 20% believed he did not have the proper experience to become president. Even though 75% of registered Democrats and Republicans view their respective candidates favorably, the party platforms of the two main parties barely intersect one another, leaving no grey area that would best appeal to moderate voters (McGill).

In modern American politics it is incredibly difficult for a President to legislate due to the fact that Congress has become incredibly polarized. Obama and other Presidents in the past ran their campaigns stating that they would unite divided government in order for both parties to work together to get legislation passed. What Obama and many other Presidents have found out is that because both parties are sticking to their ideologies the prospects for compromise has lowered and the only way to legislate is to work within one’s party. While political scientist such as Matthew J. Dickson have suggested focusing on issues that will bring bipartisanship and going public, it is clear in the wake of such polarization that change is needed to combat

Representation is an essential component of a republic, yet moneyed interests often seem to carry more weight in congressional representation than the interests of the average citizen. One avenue in which big money can affect polarization is through election communication. For language and communication is the avenue for political conflict and developing policy outcomes (Grimmer and Stewart, 2013). Moreover, voters have ideological preferences that match with the candidates but do not know who is the closest candidates is to their positions. Electoral communications become a salient venue to highlight the congruence between a candidate’s ideological position and a candidate’s (Krupnikov, 2011). Now Super PACs have become an avenue by which

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, Polarization is defined as the “division into two opposites”. (Merriam-Webster) Political Polarization refers to the perceived division of ideologies espoused between the two major political parties in the United States. The topic of political polarization is one frequently referenced in the media and in political discussions. Does political polarization actually exist or is it a myth? In this paper, this question will be analyzed and examined and a conclusion will be reached.

The Republican Party wasn’t made up of just one group of people, in a way it was a melting pot. It was made up of antislavery Democrats, northern Whigs, Free Soilers, and Know-Nothings; all were opposed to the further expansion of slavery. The platform of the Republicans was the idea of free labor which offered each person a chance to move up to the status of a land owning farmer. This was the exact opposite of slavery in which there was no chance to ever be anything but a slave. Republicans are not to be confused with abolitionists whose goal was to emancipate slaves; the Republican goal was to prevent the spread of slavery. One of the main events that led to the creation of the Republican Party was the Kansas-Nebraska Act. The Missouri Compromise

Democrats and Republicans highly differ when comparing views on climate change. The Democrats accept human role in climate change while many Republicans question if climate change is even real. In the 2016 Democratic Party Platform (27), they state “in the first 100 days of the next administration, the president will convene a summit of the words best engineers, climate scientists, policy experts, activists, and indigenous communities to chart a course to solve the climate crisis.” This is highlighted previously when President Obama, a Democrat, traveled to Paris for a convention about climate change where he met other leaders around the world to make a plan to help fix the issues surrounding climate change. This shows the basic principles of the Democratic Party as internationalist and having the large government—as it states in the

Each year scientists cast a prediction on how much the sea levels will rise by the end of the century, but they keep changing to higher numbers because they keep finding that glaciers are melting at an unstoppable rate. Even though glaciers started to melt in the after the Ice Age, our nuclear factories and burning of fossil fuels have been feeding the heat to the Earth, creating our Earth to start changing its climate to higher temperatures. Democrats are trying to change this problem by trying to enforce laws of making more factories go green and power their plants by sawdust and water instead of burning fossil fuels. In my perspective, I believe neither party will fix global climate change because it will cost more to install solar panels and build new plants. The natural human instinct is to be cheap. America depends too much on Wall Street and unhealthy factories in China to produce products and make money. Face it, if someone offered you an organic donut for $5, and then someone else offered you an ordinary donut for $1, you’d pick the ordinary donut because it's cheaper even though it's bad for you. Let’s be real, fixing global climate change is like trying to fix a broken vase with a hot glue gun, it’ll never be the same because the damage is already