Explaining polarization

For nearly two years, the Polarization Research Labhas tracked political polarization in the U.S. by conducting weekly public opinion polls. Its co-director, Yphtach Lelkes, associate professor at the Annenberg School for Communication, explains some of the lab's recent findings, revealing that there is substantial opinion diversity within each party. The Polarization Research Lab is a collaboration between faculty and researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, Dartmouth, and Stanford.

In the lead-up to the presidential election, the lab has collected Americans' opinions on contentious issues, from immigration to banning books, in order to make sense of the current political divide.

"Democrats and Republicans are deeply polarized on cultural issues-those that touch on aspects of identity such as religion, race, gender, and perceived threats to American culture," Lelkes says. "Particularly divisive are issues seen as threatening children's moral development. For example, about 60% of Republicans support removing books from public schools if parents find them inappropriate, while roughly 60% of Democrats oppose this. Similarly, 55% of Republicans back stripping tenure from professors who teach critical race theory, while most Democrats oppose this."

In their most recent paper, "American Partisans Vastly Underestimate the Diversity of Other Partisans' Policy Attitudes," Lelkes and doctoral students Nic Dias and Jake Pearl show that people severely underestimate the diversity of opinions within the opposing party, and misperceptions of diversity are more extreme than misperceptions of extremity.

"In reality, there is significant variation within each party," Lelkes explains. "Some Democrats are more conservative, while some Republicans are more pro-choice, even as others are staunchly pro-life. But when Democrats view all Republicans as uniformly pro-life, they see the party as a monolithic threat, which drives them to block Republicans from gaining power. Ironically, this can lead to support for anti-democratic policies and politicians, as people believe they are protecting democracy by preventing their opponents from taking power."

Read more at Annenberg School for Communication.