A new survey by the Pew Research Group confirms, empirically, what we’ve all been feeling, intuitively, for the last several years: Republicans and Democrats are more ideologically split today than they’ve been in the last 20 years. Indeed, the animus between the two parties is downright chilling. Twenty-seven percent of Dems don’t just disagree with GOP policies, they think those policies actually “threaten the nation’s well-being.” Thirty-six percent of Republicans return the favor. Those percentages have more than doubled since 1994.
And it’s not just Congress that’s divided. Polarization has infected the American public too. The Pew study, 10,000 adults nationwide, found that the number of Americans in the ideological “center” has shrunk. Just 39 percent of us take liberal and conservative positions in equal measure – that’s down from 49 percent since 2004. These partisan divisions are most pronounced among people who are the most engaged in the political process. Politics does, after all, have a polarizing effect. — M.B.
