The non-polarized segment of America

It’s large, according to a study by Stephen Hawkins, Daniel Yudkin, Miriam Juan-Torres, and Tim Dixon, helpfully summarized by Yascha Mounk, who writes,

According to the report, 25 percent of Americans are traditional or devoted conservatives, and their views are far outside the American mainstream. Some 8 percent of Americans are progressive activists, and their views are even less typical. By contrast, the two-thirds of Americans who don’t belong to either extreme constitute an “exhausted majority.” Their members “share a sense of fatigue with our polarized national conversation, a willingness to be flexible in their political viewpoints, and a lack of voice in the national conversation.”

If Lilliana Mason and Ezra Klein are correct in forecasting a future alignment between a Social Justice party and those who are opposed, the Social Justice party has little chance. Which means they are not correct.

The paper offers this ideological picture:

– Progressive Activists: younger, highly engaged, secular, cosmopolitan, angry.
– Traditional Liberals: older, retired, open to compromise, rational, cautious.
– Passive Liberals: unhappy, insecure, distrustful, disillusioned.
– Politically Disengaged: young, low income, distrustful, detached, patriotic,
conspiratorial.
– Moderates: engaged, civic-minded, middle-of-the-road, pessimistic, Protestant.
– Traditional Conservatives: religious, middle class, patriotic, moralistic.
– Devoted Conservatives: white, retired, highly engaged, uncompromising,
patriotic.

I am skeptical of this breakdown. Where do African-Americans or Hispanics fit? Libertarians and others who with some beliefs that align left and other beliefs that align right?

Still, this report is catnip for me, with all sorts of interesting nuggets. Another excerpt:

The old left/right spectrum, based on the role of government and markets, is being supplanted by a new polarization between ‘open’ cosmopolitan values and ‘closed’ nationalist values. Insurgent populists, usually advancing a strident ‘closed’ agenda, are disrupting many political establishments. Yet we also find in each country that somewhere between 40-60 percent of people do not identify unambiguously with either the open or closed ends of the spectrum, and many are disturbed by the increasing sense of division in their country.

13 thoughts on “The non-polarized segment of America

  1. So many things, so debatable…One wonders if the study was simply designed to paint extremism as mainly a “conservative thing” — as a matter of definition and as a matter of tally. “(R)eligious, middle class, patriotic, moralistic, white, retired, highly engaged, uncompromising, patriotic” are traits likely to put you ” far outside the American mainstream”. So much for defining extremism. As far as the tally on the other side of the spectrum, I think your point begins to address the “leakage”. Can they really expect us to believe that the various victim groups that the Left seeks to represent can not possibly be “angry” and “combative”. Their leaders sure sound that way, and their media too. And just the ethnically aligned of these groups account for way more than 8% of the population.

    • I thought this too. I read through this and concluded that, for the most part, this group sought to blame conservatives.

      • Especially when that 25 percent is unevenly distributed, and more or less defines the mainstream in rather large sections of the country.

  2. It is very curious that the study chose to lump “traditional conservatives” in with “devoted conservatives”, and contrast those with “progressive activists”, excluding both “traditional liberals” and “passive liberals”. The 25% for the “conservative” camp contrasts with 8%, 19% and 34% for the “liberal” camp as you include the last two groups.

    The density scatter plot in Figure 2.1 (page 28) of the study does not really support the group boundaries — it appears to me that there are some orange (traditional liberal) dots that are both more conservative and more politically active than the “devoted conservative” exemplar. The same chart suggests that there is a “silent majority” of conservatives, as shown by the intense dots in the lower right hand part of the plot.

    The study’s data certainly does suggest, although the study never hints, that the “liberal/conservative” axis is not a good measure of how Americans break down on public policy and affairs.

  3. “Where do African-Americans or Hispanics fit? ”

    As individuals they fit into a wide range of categories. See Ben Carson and Ted Cruz. Time to retire the monolithic block assumptions. Polls show Trump getting 25% of African-American vote and possibly 30%+ of Hispanics. Pro-growth policies are not just for white people.

    • Those numbers are both, as I understand it, well below 50%. Which last I checked is how we determine if you win an election. Minority votes for the GOP are like an old business joke, “we lose money on every unit, but we’ll make it up on volume.”

      It is useful to see how Trump, who bucked the trend on all PC rules surrounding minorities, did a lot better than Romney and others (who were willing to throw their own base under the bus to stay in the progressive Overton window). It’s a good data point. But it’s not one to get carried away by.

    • I would think that most African-americans and Hispanics would fit into one of these categories:

      Progressive Activists: younger, highly engaged, secular, cosmopolitan, angry.
      Traditional Liberals: older, retired, open to compromise, rational, cautious.
      Passive Liberals: unhappy, insecure, distrustful, disillusioned.
      Politically Disengaged: young, low income, distrustful, detached, patriotic,
      conspiratorial.
      Moderates: engaged, civic-minded, middle-of-the-road, pessimistic, Protestant.
      Traditional Conservatives: religious, middle class, patriotic, moralistic.

      I suspect that a large number would fall into the passive liberal category and the politically disengaged category, with smaller but substantial numbers in the progressive and traditional conservative categories, and some in the moderate category, and a very small number in the devoted conservative category. In fact, I think this typology is probably a useful heuristic for thinking about the diversity of opinion that one sees among blacks especially, as even the old church ladies, who are otherwise traditional conservatives, vote for Democrats largely due to the perception that Democrats are better for blacks as a group than Republicans (not absolutely good, but just better).

  4. If Lilliana Mason and Ezra Klein are correct in forecasting a future alignment between a Social Justice party and those who are opposed, the Social Justice party has little chance. Which means they are not correct.

    I wouldn’t be so sure. Lots of opportunities for graft under the Social Justice paradigm.

  5. As I mentioned in a previous thread on this matter, there is considerable reason to be skeptical of the conclusion of that report that politics in this country haven’t become polarized, and certainly much more so than in recent decades.

    For one, there is the Pew polarization report, showing the shift from a normal to bimodal, bifurcated distribution.

    For another, just today at WaPo Money Cage, “Should you worry about American democracy? Here’s what our new poll finds.” – there is a graphic from the 2018 American Institutional Confidence Poll about trust in institutions and rankings which shows some tremendous partisan gaps.

    Then there’s the fact that 80% see PC as “an issue”, but 82% also think hate speech is “a problem”, which makes it seem like there’s broad (albeit somewhat contradictory) consensus on these matters, but in fact just elides more than it reveals. For example 74% of progressive activists say we need to protect people from dangerous and hateful speech, but 70% of then also think people should be able to say what they really think, even when it offends people. Ok. “The thermostat setting should go up for people who feel too cold, and also down, for those who feel too hot.” If that’s a finding from your report, you probably did something wrong.

    In general, it’s not very informative to ask people about vague, socially-desirable value statements. People agree that polarization and ‘tribalism’ are bad things and the situation is getting worse … which is the fault of all those guys on the other side. Is that “commonality”?

    Do people even approach concepts like “hate speech” or “PC” with consistent definitions? More likely, many people will think of different extreme cases for either issue, and think they are against those extremes. Many people will say they think they are open-minded and “in favor of compromise” or that other people should be more open-minded and willing to compromise (that is, more like the respondent). But in a dispute the individuals will still split in predictable ways about which value has priority. The differences in feeling about being “American” aren’t a good sign for coming together over a common identity. Better questions would pose questions in the form of choices or trade offs.

    The headline on page 15 is “Devoted Conservatives Stand Out on Immigration”, but that’s false, as the figure directly below shows progressive activists even further away from the average coordinates. That statement is made to try to balance out the much more obvious “standing out” of progressive activists on speech and affirmative action (page 101). (By the way, I happen to know something about refugee screening, and whatever one’s opinion or preference about it, it isn’t remotely ‘tough’ by any reasonable and objective standard, and with over three quarters currently obtaining a “credible fear” determination from countries with no war or persecution, the scrutiny of claims is pretty much at the level of “does it pass the laugh test.”)

    Speaking of laugh test, on page 62 there is a “Tribes: Central Issues” table, and LGBT and gender/women’s issues are near 0% for everybody, including progressive activists. Huh? That doesn’t seem right at all.

    in fact the parts that speak about deep splits, rifts, gaps, and polarizations are oddly much more specific and convincing than the “more in common” bits.

    The second half gets into a deep-dive on Haidt-style “moral foundations” political differences, but as I’ve said before, the basic critique of that analysis is the deviation between self-regard and (lack of) self-awareness, and actual beliefs and behaviors. For example, for any definition of ‘authoritarian’, progressive activists report in polls that they are against it, but then also report in polls that they support any Democratic president’s policies when consistent with those authority-based definitions, especially, “Should break rules to get things done.” Again, asking people about vague (or controversially ‘defined’) values is much less illuminating than asking people what they think about particular acts by particular people.

    The real irony here is that this report’s approach claims more commonality when there is actually polarization, and more difference when there is commonality.

    There were a few interesting tidbits. 73% of Asian Americans thought people were too sensitive about race, which is higher than whites at 64%.

    Finally, not to put too fine a point on it, but the “exhausted majority” seems to be characterized by low-information and low-motivation to vote or do just about anything. Probably not the best model for comity and civic harmony.

    • 73% of Asian Americans thought people were too sensitive about race, which is higher than whites at 64%.

      I live in the American South, and I’ve seen much more hostility between Asians and Blacks than between Whites and either.

  6. Looks mostly like an exercise by PC dominated academics trying to pretend to be objective, yet to blame the polarization problems on conservatives. Even from the executive summary, Left wing – exhausted middle – Right wing.
    8% — 11+15+26+15(=67%) — 19+6=25%.
    The numbers, and recently reality, are more:
    8+11=19% — 15+26+15+19=75% — 6% << 19% wing Left, only 6% wing Right.
    This more correctly puts the "Trad Libs" on the wings, with the progs.

    Similarly, what does "open to compromise" or "uncompromising" mean? In fact, there is an uncompromising on the principle of Life, for pro-Life folk, abortion is always wrong. But for 45 years since Roe in 1972, the uncompromising pro-Life folk have been pretty peaceful, altho angry and outraged. They obey the law and have peaceful protests, like the yearly March for Life — usually much bigger but with far less publicity than the various gender and anti-Trump rallies. The big sizes of Trump rallies is also de-emphasized by the Dem media.

    On page 12, the graph of actions, shows that Trad Libs and Progs act very similarly, in fact more similarly than the Devoted Cons with the Trad Cons — the latter of which act much more like the moderates.

    So I'm not going to study the report. If it doesn't clearly address the secret discrimination by Universities against pro-Life folk and Republicans, then it's unlikely I'll agree that their proposals are worth studying. [Quick Fix: require Universities that receive Fed Funds or whose students get loans, to have a quota of open supporters of both Dems & Reps, at least equal to the levels of national registration, (35 – 28% Dem-Rep) << these quotas are unlikely to be supported, but would hugely reduce the polarization problem.]

    It's worth mentioning that Trump is constantly trying, tweeting, to "bring us together" as Americans, and the PC bullies don't want that – the Prog & Lib activists do NOT want to have peaceful dinners with Reps they don't like; they do NOT want to have dignified Senate hearings; they do NOT want actual compromise when it means they lose.

    Finally, there is Reality, or Truth. Men and women are different. Blacks and Whites and Asians are different, but not so much so. Christians and Muslims are different. The world needs to have laws and customs to live in peace with differences, and different lifestyles — but to accept that there will be different economic outcomes.

  7. The authors are trying to squeeze opinion distribution into one axis, but they probably need more. Do you not have such a model? I think I prefer yours.

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