The Wisconsin Voter The Journal Sentinel's Craig Gilbert explores political trends in a purple state and beyond. SHARE Dividing Lines

An exploration of the growing political chasm that has turned metro Milwaukee into the most polarized place in swing-state America. Read the series

By of the

What does it mean to say our politics have grown more polarized?

According to a new national study by Pew, it means many things: that we’re more divided by ideology (right vs. left) than we were a decade or two ago; that we’re more divided by party; that we’re more divided in our social networks and lifestyle preferences; that we’re harsher in our views of the “other side.”

Each of these trends is a hallmark of our polarized politics. And each one should be instantly recognizable to voters in Wisconsin, where these patterns define the political landscape (as reported in our "Dividing Lines" series this spring).

One big take-away from the Pew study, based on a massive survey of 10,000 adult Americans, is that polarization among the public takes many forms. It’s not a single phenomenon, but a collection of intertwined trends that have combined to make our politics more partisan, adversarial and tribal.

Among them:

The right and the left have both grown as a share of the electorate. About twice as many Americans are consistently conservative or liberal in their views today (21%) compared to 20 years ago (10%). That doesn’t necessarily mean that voters have become more extreme. It means more people are consistent in their ideology across different kinds of issues, from the role of government to foreign policy to social issues. Fewer people mix conservative positions on some issues with liberal positions on others. As a result, the left and right wings of the electorate are now larger and better defined than they were in the 1990s. And the middle — defined not as moderates but as people with ideologically mixed views — has shrunk:

Ideology is more lined up with partisanship. Today, 92% of Republican adults are more conservative than the median (or typical) Democrat, compared to 64% 20 years ago. And 94% of Democratic adults are more liberal than the median Republican, compared to 70% 20 years ago. In right-left terms, the distance between the typical Democrat and typical Republican has grown much larger in recent years. Democrats have become more uniformly liberal, Republicans more uniformly conservative:





Negative views of the other side have grown. The share of Republicans with a highly negative view of the Democratic Party has more than doubled since 1994. So has the share of Democrats with highly negative views of the GOP. For many partisans, the feelings go beyond that. Antipathy or alarm toward the other side is especially deep on the right. Among Democrats, 27% say the GOP’s policies are “so misguided that they threaten the nation’s well-being.” Among Republicans, 36% say the same of Democratic policies:

Among consistent liberals, half think Republican policies jeopardize the nation; among consistent conservatives, two-thirds think Democratic policies jeopardize the nation.

All these divisions are sharpest among the people most engaged in the political process. The most polarized Americans are the most politically engaged Americans. People on the right and left — the people with the most negative views of the other party — are more likely than people in the middle to vote, discuss politics with other people, work on a campaign or donate to candidates and political groups:

Consistent liberals and conservatives are more likely to have social networks made up of like-minded people. The more involved in politics you are, the more likely you are to be partisan, have strong and consistent ideological views and have very negative views of the other side.

Our political differences both shape and reflect the way we live, where we live, and the people with whom we spend time. Liberals tend to prefer more urban communities, conservatives less urban communities. Three out of four consistent conservatives prefer communities where “the houses are larger and farther apart, but schools, stores and restaurants are several miles away.” Meanwhile, three out of four consistent liberals prefer communities where “the houses are smaller and closer to each other, but schools, stores and restaurants are within walking distance”:

Liberals tend to value living in diverse communities; conservatives tend to value living among people with similar faiths. The most ideological Americans, especially on the right, place a higher value on living around politically like-minded people and are more likely to report that most of their friends share their politics.

All of these findings, drawn from Pew’s massive survey research, are consistent with the findings of the Journal Sentinel’s recent “Dividing Lines” series, which explored the growth of polarization in Wisconsin and metropolitan Milwaukee.

In our own research, we found that party lines have hardened dramatically over time among voters, with fewer and fewer Wisconsinites splitting their tickets for major office, or crossing over to vote for candidates in the other party.

We found growing and massive gaps between how Democratic and Republican voters view major political leaders such as the governor and the president.

We found an echo of the rising partisan antipathy described by Pew in the declining and almost vanishing levels of support that Wisconsin politicians now get from voters in the opposing party. The same trend has occurred nationally in presidential polling, Pew reports.

We found that political engagement and participation were major keys to the polarization story; that voter turnout and polarization have risen hand in hand in Wisconsin in recent decades (and are almost unequaled today by other states); that the most partisan and ideological voters are the most likely to vote, go to rallies, contribute to campaigns, talk politics with others and try to influence how other people vote.

We also found an extremely stark example in metro Milwaukee of geographic division and political segregation, of red and blue communities growing farther apart as they become more lopsided and like-minded in their politics, of voters in urban neighborhoods and inner suburbs growing ever more Democratic and voters in outlying suburbs growing ever more Republican. This “density divide” may be fueled by the fact that Democrats and Republicans have different neighborhood preferences, though clearly a lot of other factors are at work.

The Pew research is wide-ranging and full of layers and nuance. Polarization is a subject that by its nature invites hyperbole. Pew does not paint a cartoon picture of a nation at war with itself, of one where voters are overwhelmingly fierce partisans and uncompromising ideologues, of one where the political center has shrunk or vanished on every issue.

Most Americans are neither consistent liberals nor consistent conservatives. Democrats and Republicans don’t violently disagree on everything. The country is not divided into purely red and purely blue terrain.

But there’s no question that the political culture has changed in the past two decades, and polarization is a handy term for it.

One of the classic findings of political science a half-century ago was that most voters in America lacked a clear ideology or even coherent set of beliefs, a conclusion that led some political scientists to wonder how our democracy even functions. Today, that incoherence is less evident. The dividing lines in politics are more recognizable and defined.

The American electorate contains a bigger and more coherent right wing and a bigger and more coherent left wing than it did a few decades ago. These wings are not just larger but correspond more neatly to the two political parties than they used to. As a result, partisan differences on most issues have widened. These wings also have a disproportionate influence because their voters are more knowledgeable about politics, care more about politics and participate more in the political process. The America that is tepid about politics is not so polarized. The America that is consumed by politics is quite polarized.

And on top of all that, we know from our own research and that of others that Democrats and Republicans and liberals and conservatives live more physically separate lives than they did a generation ago, with Democrats clustered in more densely populated places, Republicans in less densely populated places.

We don’t know exactly how all these changes interact, but it’s easy to imagine they reinforce each other. Taken together, they have fueled the growth of opposing camps in the electorate.

“Both partisan animosity and ideological consistency are linked to higher levels of political participation, and in fact the effect is compounded among those who think both in ideological and partisan terms. And both also affect how Americans view negotiations and compromise in Washington and even how people interact with those around them,” Pew reports. “As partisan antipathy and ideological consistency have grown, each contributes substantially to a more polarized political environment in elections, in Washington and in society more generally.”

What are the consequences?

One byproduct is greater participation in politics, though that may be a mixed blessing, since political engagement is not only a consequence of polarization but a cause, some experts think.

Other consequences include less competitive elections (where communities, states and regions have become more one-sided) and elections that produce fewer moderates (because the parties have become more uniformly ideological).

The Pew report singles out the implications for political compromise. It finds that people on the right and left are more likely to define compromise as getting their way than voters who aren’t consistently liberal or conservative.

The sorting of liberals and conservatives into more coherent blocs, into opposing parties and into different communities makes compromise harder to achieve. So does rising partisan antipathy. If you think the other side is not just wrong but a threat to your well-being, you are probably going to be more militant in your politics.

And in a political system that so often produces divided government, and has so many built-in checks, lack of compromise is a recipe for paralysis.

Follow Craig Gilbert on Twitter @WisVoter