"America’s polarization is emotional, not ideological" remains really the punchline of this era.
Also I'll just point out that the Pew data makes no attempt to account for varying salience of the different policy questions it asks. That seems like a potential flaw in their typology: their analysis takes as a given that voters have the same degree of feeling about say taxing the rich as about a path to citizen or whatever else.
Like James said, the Pew data does give a bit of this nuance, by asking people whether they “strongly” or “somewhat” agree with various stances (which I then grouped together to calculate the total number who agreed). To Paul’s point, though, the data doesn’t tell us much about respondents compare issues to the other -- maybe you’re in the “Left-Out Left,” for example, but being pro-life is your top issue, and you will only vote for the party that shares that stance, no matter their stance on other issues, because it is so much more important to you than any other issue. That wouldn’t necessarily have been relevant to their putting people into sub-groups, but it is critical information when trying to find out how people will vote -- and I agree, in an election context, people often mistake the # of people who agree with them on a given issue with the # of people who prioritize that issue enough to cast their vote on it.
There is also the fact that “the economy” is pretty much always the number 1 issue, but people’s evaluation of the economy only mostly seems to be “what do things feel like lately” rather then tied to specific policy prescriptions. The OBBB is practically the exact same legislation as Trump passed in his first term, but it was popular then and unpopular now because underlying economic conditions are different.
I liked the analysis so much I went through the sign-up four times to get through as a paid subscriber, upgrading--it's a tough row to hoe with us, given the multitude of Substacks!
I do have some comments, though: 1) The Tuned-out Middle group (9%) is useless. They are the equivalent of the 10% of Independents who answer "Don't know" to every polling question. They don't vote. Take them out of the calculations.
2) There is very little experience in USA elections of three genuinely competitive candidates, one of which is in the middle and the other two the nominated party candidates. Ross Perot is the only one who comes to mind in a national election, and he got zero Electoral votes. On the other hand, 40% could win if the two parties on the extremes split the other votes. 50% is not actually needed.
3) Finally, I took the Pew quiz the other day and got Order and Opportunity, but I am an extremely loyal Democrat, and not really that moderate (Pew didn't get me right). The only way I would desert them for a 3rd-party moderate was if it were clear the Democrat had no chance to defeat the Republican.
I actually think the future could be four parties, two from the current Republicans and two from the current Democrats, when they fracture along the lines already present. Looking forward to it!
Thank you for upgrading, James! Respectfully, I don’t agree that the Tuned-Out Middle should be removed — per Pew, about one-third of them did vote in the 2024 election, which is still enough to have an electoral impact. And even apart from their electoral impact, they are still a huge chunk of the American public who it is important to understand. It’s true that their stances and level of political engagement are hard to predict, but they can still play a role when activated -- other Pew data shows that about one-quarter of 2020 non-voters voted in 2024 (https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/feature/how-changes-in-turnout-and-vote-choice-powered-trumps-victory-in-2024/). Who comes out to vote isn’t always stable election to election. I agree with your other point on 50% not actually being needed, I should have noted something to that effect. And that’s interesting to hear you felt mis-categorized by the Pew quiz! Would be curious how frequent that is.
Gabe - This is a brilliant analysis that goes well beyond the surface of the Pew study. What this suggests to me is that the reason that we are split 50-50 politically is because the wings dominate and would rather be right than in power. If the members of one party, across the different policy groups, were willing to compromise on some, but not all, of their principled stances, that party would be able to capture a much larger part of the vote.
However, the engaged partisans are so fixated on either getting everything or making sure that their opposites get nothing, that we end up with the current unstable situation.
It is my opinion that a politician who ran a Clinton-esque (Bill, not Hillary) campaign that was laser-focused on the economy and pushed all other non-economic concerns to the side would have a significant edge over the culture warriors.
Interesting ly enough, when we look at European countries with roughly the same divided electorate, what we see in terms of third parties rising are nativist or authoritarian parties—Im thinking Germany and the UK (which surprises me, having grown up there many years ago). Here in the US, while I think the GOP in its current form is the authoritarian one, the GOP claims that the regulatory state and the Democrats are. So it’s tough to see how anything good or even possible is gling to. On my way! from a. Third party. As you point out, any defector from the current two parties would be seen as a traitor or opportunist and not someone to follow into an u known third party. It’s going to have to be someone from outside current politics. And even then, the structural advantages the two party system have would make it impossible without a lot of money behind it—you’d have to pick your tech zillionaire, and we already know what way they want to go. Non-parliamentary systems like ours are much slower to change than parliamentary ones, too. I have no hope anything other than the current alignment will exist until both parties somehow take a beating—hiw that happens i have no idea.
Problem is, most people actively engaged in political discourse don’t want that. You have to shit on one side and stay silent about the other due to “enemy of my enemy” rules.
Those who are less engaged? I would bet based on this data they are on board. Frankly I am as well.
Great idea. End the 250-year-old American experiment by handing victory to the Republican Party by splitting the Democratic vote between Democrats and a third party.
FWIW, I don’t really think there’s any reason to believe the hypothetical “Centrist Party” — which I’m not advocating for, merely exploring what it would look like — would take more Democratic votes than Republican votes. The middle five groups in Pew’s typology are pretty evenly split between the two current party coalitions.
I appreciate your response. I suggest the following. I hope you find this helpful.
There is a centrist party. It's called the Democratic Party. A centrist party is biased in favor of getting to the truth. In Abraham Lincoln's words, the centrist party has faith that right makes might.
A not-centrist party is biased in favor of getting "our" way at "their" expense. The current version of the Republican Party is a not-centrist party. Clearly, the Republican Party has gone "all in" on might makes right, and Lincoln is rolling in his grave.
For literally every unresolved issue, there is a to-be-but-not-yet-discovered win-win resolution. The one (only) obstacle is a bias in favor of getting "our" way at "their" expense.
I was defining centrist as holding neither consistently left-wing nor right-wing policy positions. Of the mix of majority-supported issues I identified to fall into that basket, many of them are supported by Democrats and opposed by Republicans; may others are supported by Republicans and opposed by Democrats.
Your heading toward the true meaning of left-wing (progressive) and right-wing (conservative). When both sides are biased in favor of getting to the truth, conservatives protect the status quo by identifying flaws in the logic the progressive uses to justify a proposed change, then the progressive corrects the flaw, then the process repeats until there are no flaws and both sides agree that the issue has been addressed.
Identifying an issue as specific to one side of the political spectrum is a not-centrist's way of getting "our" way at "their" expense.
Am I overlooking something, or oversimplifying the situation? I don't think I am.
Maybe you know something I don't know. Based on what I know, your comment falls in the "idle speculation" category. So, what do you know that I don't know?
You're right, it's speculation. What holds the Democratic party together is its opposition to the Republicans. There is a lot of tension within the party between the "left" and "center-left".
Okay, but that explains your logic. Did you read my responses to Gabe's replies? I think there's an achievable future state where "we the people" are addressing real issues and not made up (aka "wedge") issues.
Good stuff here.
"America’s polarization is emotional, not ideological" remains really the punchline of this era.
Also I'll just point out that the Pew data makes no attempt to account for varying salience of the different policy questions it asks. That seems like a potential flaw in their typology: their analysis takes as a given that voters have the same degree of feeling about say taxing the rich as about a path to citizen or whatever else.
Not quite true: some groups with varying intensity of feeling in the quiz are lumped together here for the purposes of the argument.
Like James said, the Pew data does give a bit of this nuance, by asking people whether they “strongly” or “somewhat” agree with various stances (which I then grouped together to calculate the total number who agreed). To Paul’s point, though, the data doesn’t tell us much about respondents compare issues to the other -- maybe you’re in the “Left-Out Left,” for example, but being pro-life is your top issue, and you will only vote for the party that shares that stance, no matter their stance on other issues, because it is so much more important to you than any other issue. That wouldn’t necessarily have been relevant to their putting people into sub-groups, but it is critical information when trying to find out how people will vote -- and I agree, in an election context, people often mistake the # of people who agree with them on a given issue with the # of people who prioritize that issue enough to cast their vote on it.
There is also the fact that “the economy” is pretty much always the number 1 issue, but people’s evaluation of the economy only mostly seems to be “what do things feel like lately” rather then tied to specific policy prescriptions. The OBBB is practically the exact same legislation as Trump passed in his first term, but it was popular then and unpopular now because underlying economic conditions are different.
I liked the analysis so much I went through the sign-up four times to get through as a paid subscriber, upgrading--it's a tough row to hoe with us, given the multitude of Substacks!
I do have some comments, though: 1) The Tuned-out Middle group (9%) is useless. They are the equivalent of the 10% of Independents who answer "Don't know" to every polling question. They don't vote. Take them out of the calculations.
2) There is very little experience in USA elections of three genuinely competitive candidates, one of which is in the middle and the other two the nominated party candidates. Ross Perot is the only one who comes to mind in a national election, and he got zero Electoral votes. On the other hand, 40% could win if the two parties on the extremes split the other votes. 50% is not actually needed.
3) Finally, I took the Pew quiz the other day and got Order and Opportunity, but I am an extremely loyal Democrat, and not really that moderate (Pew didn't get me right). The only way I would desert them for a 3rd-party moderate was if it were clear the Democrat had no chance to defeat the Republican.
I actually think the future could be four parties, two from the current Republicans and two from the current Democrats, when they fracture along the lines already present. Looking forward to it!
Thank you for upgrading, James! Respectfully, I don’t agree that the Tuned-Out Middle should be removed — per Pew, about one-third of them did vote in the 2024 election, which is still enough to have an electoral impact. And even apart from their electoral impact, they are still a huge chunk of the American public who it is important to understand. It’s true that their stances and level of political engagement are hard to predict, but they can still play a role when activated -- other Pew data shows that about one-quarter of 2020 non-voters voted in 2024 (https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/feature/how-changes-in-turnout-and-vote-choice-powered-trumps-victory-in-2024/). Who comes out to vote isn’t always stable election to election. I agree with your other point on 50% not actually being needed, I should have noted something to that effect. And that’s interesting to hear you felt mis-categorized by the Pew quiz! Would be curious how frequent that is.
Good stuff is right!
Gabe - This is a brilliant analysis that goes well beyond the surface of the Pew study. What this suggests to me is that the reason that we are split 50-50 politically is because the wings dominate and would rather be right than in power. If the members of one party, across the different policy groups, were willing to compromise on some, but not all, of their principled stances, that party would be able to capture a much larger part of the vote.
However, the engaged partisans are so fixated on either getting everything or making sure that their opposites get nothing, that we end up with the current unstable situation.
It is my opinion that a politician who ran a Clinton-esque (Bill, not Hillary) campaign that was laser-focused on the economy and pushed all other non-economic concerns to the side would have a significant edge over the culture warriors.
Interesting ly enough, when we look at European countries with roughly the same divided electorate, what we see in terms of third parties rising are nativist or authoritarian parties—Im thinking Germany and the UK (which surprises me, having grown up there many years ago). Here in the US, while I think the GOP in its current form is the authoritarian one, the GOP claims that the regulatory state and the Democrats are. So it’s tough to see how anything good or even possible is gling to. On my way! from a. Third party. As you point out, any defector from the current two parties would be seen as a traitor or opportunist and not someone to follow into an u known third party. It’s going to have to be someone from outside current politics. And even then, the structural advantages the two party system have would make it impossible without a lot of money behind it—you’d have to pick your tech zillionaire, and we already know what way they want to go. Non-parliamentary systems like ours are much slower to change than parliamentary ones, too. I have no hope anything other than the current alignment will exist until both parties somehow take a beating—hiw that happens i have no idea.
Problem is, most people actively engaged in political discourse don’t want that. You have to shit on one side and stay silent about the other due to “enemy of my enemy” rules.
Those who are less engaged? I would bet based on this data they are on board. Frankly I am as well.
Fascinating. Thanks!
10% of America would be over 30 million, not 3 million 😉
Thanks, fixed!
Great idea. End the 250-year-old American experiment by handing victory to the Republican Party by splitting the Democratic vote between Democrats and a third party.
FWIW, I don’t really think there’s any reason to believe the hypothetical “Centrist Party” — which I’m not advocating for, merely exploring what it would look like — would take more Democratic votes than Republican votes. The middle five groups in Pew’s typology are pretty evenly split between the two current party coalitions.
I appreciate your response. I suggest the following. I hope you find this helpful.
There is a centrist party. It's called the Democratic Party. A centrist party is biased in favor of getting to the truth. In Abraham Lincoln's words, the centrist party has faith that right makes might.
A not-centrist party is biased in favor of getting "our" way at "their" expense. The current version of the Republican Party is a not-centrist party. Clearly, the Republican Party has gone "all in" on might makes right, and Lincoln is rolling in his grave.
For literally every unresolved issue, there is a to-be-but-not-yet-discovered win-win resolution. The one (only) obstacle is a bias in favor of getting "our" way at "their" expense.
I was defining centrist as holding neither consistently left-wing nor right-wing policy positions. Of the mix of majority-supported issues I identified to fall into that basket, many of them are supported by Democrats and opposed by Republicans; may others are supported by Republicans and opposed by Democrats.
Your heading toward the true meaning of left-wing (progressive) and right-wing (conservative). When both sides are biased in favor of getting to the truth, conservatives protect the status quo by identifying flaws in the logic the progressive uses to justify a proposed change, then the progressive corrects the flaw, then the process repeats until there are no flaws and both sides agree that the issue has been addressed.
Identifying an issue as specific to one side of the political spectrum is a not-centrist's way of getting "our" way at "their" expense.
Am I overlooking something, or oversimplifying the situation? I don't think I am.
See above--Democrats will split within four years after the Republicans do!
Maybe you know something I don't know. Based on what I know, your comment falls in the "idle speculation" category. So, what do you know that I don't know?
You're right, it's speculation. What holds the Democratic party together is its opposition to the Republicans. There is a lot of tension within the party between the "left" and "center-left".
Okay, but that explains your logic. Did you read my responses to Gabe's replies? I think there's an achievable future state where "we the people" are addressing real issues and not made up (aka "wedge") issues.
Maybe we ought to call it the Independent Party.