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Political Polarization May Be Waning [1]

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Date: 2022-11-19

For years, Americans have been warned about the perils of political polarization. Heading into the midterms, President Joe Biden warned that “democracy is under assault”, while House Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) warned that a Republican victory would signal the end of democracy. Those warnings were heeded. Earlier in the year, just one in three Americans said that they viewed political polarization as a top issue. In a piece for The Hill , political scientists, Yphtach Lelkes and Sean J. Westwood, reported that by the midterms, that number had jumped to 57%. We may be witnessing a waning in political polarization in America, and a growing understanding that we need to do more to defend democracy.

We Agree That Political Polarization is Problematic

Lelkes and Westwood report that, going into the elections, 53% of Democrats and 65% of Republicans, agreed with the statement that “America is heading toward the end of democracy, where free and fair elections will no longer occur”. What that tells us is that each side believed that the other side was preparing to unleash a wave of undemocratic measures. It is also obvious that agreement on political polarization is not the same as agreeing on what the causes are. A Republican who supports the January 6 rioters may feel that attempts to punish the rioters are anti-democratic, while a Democrat who thinks January 6 was an attempted insurrection, will vehemently disagree. However, the results of the midterms suggest that we are not as far apart as that interpretation would lead us to believe.

Support for Democratic Norms is High

Lelkes and Westwood argue that many far-right Republicans have respected and shown faith in the democratic norms that are our heritage. The duo, who conduct a weekly survey of political opinion , show that a majority of Republicans and Democrats now have positive feelings about the other side. Most strikingly, support for democratic norms has risen and is strong. For example, the vast majority of Americans are opposed to reducing access to voting facilities in areas dominated by the other side, with just 6% of Democrats and Republicans saying they support restricting access.

What we should take away from this is that perceptions of the other side’s willingness to upend democratic norms are vastly overstated. For instance; Democrats believe that 60% of Republicans would approve restricting voting access, while Republicans believe that 55% of Democrats would support such measures. This mismatch between perception and reality exists across a range of issues, as the polling data shows. Given the nature of social media, the loudness of extreme voices are amplified, leading to this distortion.

Far-Right Elites are Driving Anti-Democratic Practices

So where does this leave us? The reality is that Republican elites are far more extreme than their voters, and that in an era of polarization; fear of Democrats has been drummed up to a point where it is unthinkable for Republican voters to defect and vote Democrat. However, in the midterms, we started to see Republicans coming round and voting Democrat, and many independents swinging towards the Democrats. Many Democratic senate candidates outperformed their state’s partisan lean.

We may be headed toward a time when more and more Republicans are willing to cross over and vote Democrats, as awareness of the risks to our democracy increase.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/11/19/2137351/-Political-Polarization-May-Be-Waning

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