Matthew Dickinson is professor of political science at Middlebury College and author of the Presidential Power blog.

The Pew Research Center got a big bang last week out of its new survey finding that, in the words of the center’s president, Alan Murray, we are living in the “divided state of America.” The report’s authors conclude, based on responses from more than 10,000 adults polled between January and March, that “Republicans and Democrats are more divided along ideological lines – and partisan antipathy is deeper and more extensive – than at any point in the last two decades.” According to Pew’s report, “Today, 92% of Republicans are to the right of the median Democrat, and 94% of Democrats are to the left of the median Republican.” In a nod to today’s busy, techno-savvy audience, Pew provides a handy summary interactive graph that allows readers to easily visualize the growing divide between Democrats and Republicans during the last two decades:


Most pundits, in publicizing Pew’s report, keyed on Murray’s theme by highlighting the central finding that America is increasingly fractured along partisan and ideological lines. But had they dug beneath the summary headlines into the report’s actual text, they would have found this important caveat to the dominant media narrative: “These sentiments are not shared by all – or even most – Americans. The majority do not have uniformly conservative or liberal views. Most do not see either party as a threat to the nation. And more believe their representatives in government should meet halfway to resolve contentious disputes rather than hold out for more of what they want.” Moreover, readers who accessed the interactive graph showing the growing partisan divide only had to click the icon labeled “overall” situated on the same screen tab to see this far less alarming picture:

When not filtered by party affiliation, the data shows more people having mixed views rather than consistently conservative or liberal views.

Rather than a country growing more deeply divided along ideological lines, this second graph seems to show that most Americans possess a mix of liberal and conservative views, and that this has been the case dating back to Pew’s 1994 survey. And, in fact, this finding is quite consistent with other social science data regarding Americans’ political attitudes going back more than four decades. For instance, the American National Election Studies, a highly respected consortium of academics that conducts periodic surveys of the U.S. electorate, has regularly asked Americans to place themselves on a seven-point partisan scale. Since at least the 1970s about as many Americans consistently classify themselves as independents, or independents leaning Democrat or Republican, as they do strong or weak partisans. Similarly, ANES data indicates that strong pluralities of most Americans across the same time period regularly categorize themselves ideologically either as moderates or claim not to have thought about their ideology at all, rather than identifying as liberal or conservative.

Finally, if we think about polarization in terms of specific policy issues, respondents’ answers to the 10 value-discerning questions Pew has asked in each survey dating back to 1994(such as the need to regulate business or to protect the environment), shows almost no consistent movement in eight of the 10 questions across two decades. Only the public’s views pertaining to homosexuality and immigration have changed significantly during this time span.

If most Americans hold stable, moderate political viewpoints, then why do so many pundits insist that the country is becoming increasingly divided along party lines? The answer, as I’ve frequently discussed at my Presidential Power website, is that they too often confuse signs of “party sorting,” as political scientists call this phenomenon, as evidence of ideological polarization. The Pew report provides a handy illustration. The authors, looking at the 10 questions mentioned above, write, “more Democrats now give uniformly liberal responses, and more Republicans give uniformly conservative responses than at any point in the last 20 years.” This doesn’t necessarily mean that individuals have become more ideologically polarized, though. Instead, as Stanford University political scientistMorris Fiorina has argued, it likely reflects a process in which more liberals now consider themselves Democrats, and more conservatives self-identify as Republicans, than was case when Pew first conducted this survey two decades ago. So partisanship appears stronger even if the number of conservatives and liberals has not changed appreciably in that time.

To see what I mean by party sorting, consider two archetypal baby boomer Americans – let’s call them Johnny South and Billy North. Johnny is a conservative Democrat whose political views were shaped by growing up in the solidly Democratic South of the 1940s and ‘50s. Johnny, a staunch believer in federalism, nonetheless supports a strong military and accepts some types of federal spending on infrastructure projects and to subsidize agricultural crops. However, he has a strong aversion to federal intervention into private social mores affecting race relations or education, such as affirmative-action hiring polices or forced busing for racial integration of schools. Johnny’s counterpart, Billy North, is a liberal Republican who grew up in the northeast. Unlike Johnny, Billy tends to be an isolationist in foreign policy and he is moderate – even progressive – on many social issues. However, he is a staunch fiscal conservative.

How do these views translate into political behavior? In the 1950s, ‘60s and even into the ‘70s, Johnny usually voted Democratic in congressional elections, but he could be persuaded on occasion to vote Republican in presidential elections, as in 1972, when he backed Richard Nixon. During this same time period Billy typically voted Republican at the congressional level, but he too would occasionally pull the Democratic lever, as when he backed Lyndon Johnson in 1964.

The point is that although both Johnny and Billy had coherent and largely stable ideological views, neither fit comfortably with one of the two major parties; indeed, they occasionally supported the opposing party candidate and on more than one occasion split their congressional and presidential vote. (We might call Johnny a Scoop Jackson Democrat and Billy a Rockefeller Republican, to borrow two familiar archetypes.)

Now jump ahead 40 years. Neither Johnny nor Billy has changed his political ideology, but each man’s party affiliations and voting habits have undergone a significant transformation. By the 1990s, Johnny is consistently voting Republican in national elections. Billy, on the other hand, is uniformly voting the straight Democratic ticket in these same races. What changed? Not Johnny and Billy’s political beliefs – they did not become more conservative or liberal. Instead, what changed was their understanding of what it meant to be a Republican and a Democrat. That, in a nutshell, is what party sorting refers to – a process by which partisan conversion, combined with the influx of new voters, has made each party more ideologically homogenous, even though Americans as a whole have not changed their ideological positions.

In other words, Americans’ views haven’t necessarily become more ideologically extreme – they just fit better under a particular party label. That is why Pew shows a growing consistency between ideology and party affiliation. Of course, this interpretation does not discount the overwhelming evidence that our elected officials, and the political activists who support them, are increasingly polarized (although it is worth noting that political scientists don’t always agree on just how large this class of political activists is).

I’m not saying we shouldn’t be concerned about the consequences of party sorting. As the Pew survey shows, party sorting surely contributes to the increased antipathy party members feel for the folks across the aisle. As parties become more ideologically homogenous, it is easier for opposing partisans to dismiss them as ideologically too extreme. This likely contributes to the growing incivility, or at least the perception thereof, of our political discourse. Perhaps more worrisome, it means that an increasing number of moderate Americans might not find themselves comfortable in either major party.

But we shouldn’t miss the forest for the trees. Outside the relatively small world of the politically active, America is not divided into two ideologically hostile camps of unyielding partisans. Instead, the general public has much more in common politically than the media coverage of the Pew findings might suggest. If we hope to temper the partisan gridlock that characterizes our national politics, we need first to identify the source of that gridlock. Contrary to what some pundits would have us believe, it is not coming from the American people.