Divided We Stand: Rise of Political Polarization in United States and the Battle for Common Ground

No longer the proverbial Twiddledee and Twiddledum, the ideological divide between liberals and conservatives has increased dramatically in the United States over the past several decades. Researchers have tracked this growing polarization in the American electorate as well as amongst elected officials. Extensive research and data confirms that the United States has steadily increasing polarization over the past 25 years, with far-reaching implications on political discourse, elections, policymaking, and governance.

Analyzing survey data from the Pew Research Center demonstrates the widening gulf between Republicans and Democrats. In 1994, the median Republican was to the right of 64% of Democrats on a consistent ideological scale. By 2017, the median Republican was to the right of 97% of Democrats, reflecting immense gulf between the two parties. The percentage of Democrats with more liberal views than the median Republican rose from 70% to 94% in this timeframe.

Among ordinary citizens, the percentage holding highly negative views of the opposing party has skyrocketed. In 1994, 21% of Republicans had a “very unfavorable” view of the Democratic Party. By 2016, 58% held highly unfavorable views. On the Democratic side, highly negative views surged from 17% to 55%. Interestingly, this animosity is mirrored in personal relationships, with more than half unwilling to date or marry across party lines.

Congress has followed suit, with all Democrats now more liberal than the most conservative Republican and all Republicans more conservative than the most liberal Democrat. Bipartisan lawmaking has declined, even on issues with broad public support like healthcare and immigration. This hyper-partisanship has led to increase in legislative gridlock.

Research points to multiple drivers of polarization including geographic self-sorting, the proliferation of partisan media, money in politics, closed primaries, and gerrymandering of districts. Identity politics and cultural issues have also overlapped with partisan divides. Broadly speaking, this polarization has led to:

• Legislative gridlock - With both parties moving to ideological extremes, and compromises have become more difficult. Enacting major legislation on pressing issues like immigration, healthcare, and entitlement reform have been fraught with intense animosity.

• Government shutdowns - Polarization has led to funding gaps and shutdowns with budgets and debt ceiling increasingly get stalled, disrupting government services. The 16-day 2013 shutdown over the Affordable Care Act and the 2019 shutdown over border wall funding illustrate this.

• Obstructionism - The minority party increasingly uses procedural maneuvers like denying unanimous consent and filibustering judicial/executive nominees to block the agenda of the majority party.

• Executive action - With legislation stymied, presidents have used more executive orders and federal agency regulations to enact their policies, leading to legal challenges over separation of powers.

• Judicial confirmation wars - Appointing federal judges has become intensely partisan, with elimination of the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees and bare majority confirmations.

• Impeachment weaponization - The Trump impeachments demonstrated the extremes of partisanship, with near total party line votes rather than bipartisan consensus.

• Subpoena battles - Congressional oversight of the executive branch has involved intense legal fights between Democratic House and Republican presidency.

• Election legitimacy doubts - Polarization has fueled unproven doubts about electoral outcomes and integrity when the opposing party wins the presidency.

• State versus federal conflicts - Polarized issues like immigration and abortion prompt some state legislatures to challenge or undermine federal laws and policies.

In essence, polarization has made cooperative governance more challenging, damaged policy deliberation, and pushed parties to exercise power without bipartisan consensus.

Voter decisions are increasingly based on party identity rather than candidate qualities. In polarized environments, voters use party affiliation as a voting heuristic or informational shortcut, often voting strictly on partisan lines (Rogowski & Sutherland 2016). Among the electorate, polarization has affected voting behavior in a few key ways. First, research shows that especially among the Republicans, partisan animosity mobilized voters towards greater participation. This gap has widened from 2 percentage points in 1972 to 7 points in 2016 (Abramowitz & Webster 2018). On the other hand polarization has had demobilizing effect on Democrats, moderates and independents, turning them off from the political process entirely (Rogowski & Sutherland 2016). One of the reasons for this outcome is the efficiency of Republican National Conference (RNC) in converting high turnout into victories. Republican voters are more likely to view elections as opportunities for partisan gains while Democrats focus on policy outcomes, affecting their relative motivation (Hersh & Nall, 2016).

Second, polarization also impacts split-ticket voting. As ideological consistency between parties grows, voters are much less likely to split their tickets across party lines. Ticket splitting has declined from 22% in 1992 to just 8% in 2016 and straight ticket voting has become the norm (Jacobson 2017).

Finally, empirical studies find a divergence in issue priorities across the polarized parties. For instance, immigration has become a much higher priority issue for Republicans than Democrats (Gadarian et al. 2021). This can directly impact candidate and policy choices.

In summary, by hardening partisan identities and sorting voters into opposing camps, increased polarization substantially influences voter enthusiasm, decrease in ticket splitting, increase in party-line voting, and divergence in issue priorities. These effects make elections more about partisan teams than individual candidates or issues. Overcoming the divide to make functional governance possible again is now a pressing central issue.