Political Science Educator: volume 27, issue 1
The Teacher-Scholar
Elizabeth A. Bennion, Indiana University South Bend
In the introductory discussion board for my Summer 2023 online U.S. politics course, every student mentioned how divisive politics is today. Many noted that they generally avoided politics because political disagreements had created rifts among their family or friends. Their responses were consistent with students in my previous classes.
As I was thinking about students’ responses and how to talk to them about political polarization, I received an email advertising a webinar on Party Polarization in The Nation and the Classroom [1],featuring Thomas Patterson, the Bradlee Professor of Government and the Press at Harvard University discussing party polarization’s roots, impact on U.S. politics, and influence on our classrooms. Having participated in past Patterson webinars and used his free short video lectures as supplemental materials in my online U.S. politics courses, I immediately registered to attend. In the essay below I pose several frequent questions students ask about political polarization and use Patterson’s thoughtful presentation (combined with my own thoughts, citations, recommended resources, and experience) to provide tentative answers to these questions. This essay offers evidence, analysis, and advice to instructors on these thorny issues.
Thomas Patterson's Teaching Tools:
1. Using Student Polling as a Teaching Tool in the Introductory
American Government Course, APSA Educate
2. Patterson's Harvard University Teaching website
How did we become so polarized?
According to Patterson, the success of the Civil Rights Movement to help African Americans gain the right to vote, shifts in gender roles, and changes in the view of government brought about a political realignment between 1960-2000 where West Coast and East Coast became solidly Democratic while the South became solidly Republican. Richard Nixon developed the Southern Strategy in 1968 that courted Whites in the South who disliked of the role of the Democratic Party in passing the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Changes in gender roles in the late 1960s and 1970s, women’s access to work, and the role of Roe v. Wade in gaining access to abortion services fostered a conservative shift. Later, the expansion of federal programs in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s created a debate about the size of government that supported the successful 1980 campaign of Ronald Regan and the Republican Revolution in the 1990s (Abramowitz and Saunders 1998, Scofield, Miller, & Martin 2003).
A change in people’s lifestyles, identities, and fundamental understanding of democracy also contributed to polarization. In the past, people held cross-cutting identities (e.g., religion, income, and geographic location) that did not easily align with a single political party or ideology. Along with a general acceptance of pluralism and incrementalism, these complex political identities created room for moderation, collaboration, and compromise (Goodin 1975). In contrast, Americans today often hold overlapping and reinforcing beliefs, creating sharp entrenched partisan identities and more distrust of those with different party label. When ideas about race, culture, and the size of government merge, Americans become sharply divided, creating mutually antagonistic parties in the electorate and in government (Lee 2021).
The intra-party takeover of the GOP has also contributed to party polarization. For many years, an establishment wing dominated the Republican Party. George H.W. Bush (1988, 1992), Bob Dole (1996), George W. Bush (2000, 2004), John McCain (2008), and Mitt Romney (2012) were part of this wing. Late in the George W. Bush administration, cultural conservatives began to push back against the establishment. The Tea Party developed in reaction to Democrats’ approach to the economy and expanded healthcare access in 2009-2010, as well as establishment Republicans bailing out the banks, which many conservatives viewed as government overreach. The nomination of Donald Trump, and his subsequent Republican primary victory over establishment candidates, completed the takeover of the GOP by the cultural conservatives (Patterson 2023).
How polarized are we, really?
A Pew Research Center poll in 2015 provides clear evidence of intra-party division within the Republican Party. At a time when Republicans controlled the U.S. House and Senate, 31% of Democrats and only 23% of Republicans held favorable views of Congress (Pew 2015). Further evidence comes from 2016 primary exit polls that found a majority of Republican voters (59%) felt betrayed by politicians of the Republican Party, with 55% of these folks voting for Donald Trump (Gass 2016).
In many ways, today’s party system pits a Democratic party (forged during the 1930s-1960s as the party of economic security programs, civil rights, and cultural liberalism) against a Republican Party (transformed in this century into the party of economic and cultural conservatism). The Democrats moved from a states’ rights party to a federal party while Republicans became the states-rights party (Patterson 2023).
Meanwhile, the parties have seldom been further apart. Partisan views on abortion illustrate this point. In 1975, Democrats and Republicans were equally likely to believe that abortion should be allowed in all circumstances. Today, Democrats and Republicans are polarized on this and other issues. Even more concerning, people in both political parties increasingly describe each other as “enemies” rather than political opponents. In an August 2022 YouGov poll, about half of all partisans reported seeing people who don’t share their partisan beliefs as enemies: 47% of Democrats see Republicans as enemies rather than merely political opponents, and 49% of Republicans see Democrats as “enemies” (Salvanto 2022).
The rise of alternative realities (i.e. perceptual polarization) is also on the rise. In the mid-1990s there was little difference between Republicans and Democrats regarding beliefs about global warming. In the 2020s, the gap grew significantly with a 2023 Gallup poll showing that 88% of Democrats, but only 29% of Republicans believe that human activity impacts the earth’s temperature (Gallup 2023). What’s more, 85% of Democrats compared to 33% of Republicans believe that the effects of global warming have already begun (ibid 2023).
What role do political leaders and the media play in political polarization?
Unfortunately, any change in the amount of polarization seems unlikely in the short-term. The number of uncompetitive states and districts (increased by partisan gerrymandering) keeps growing. The “Big Sort” (where people vote with their feet, moving to places that better reflect their own political views) makes the red states redder and the blue states bluer. This can turn primary elections into general elections with extreme candidates from the Left and Right triumphing.
Meanwhile, politicians appeal to our political divisions and the media benefits financially from exploiting partisan and ideological divides. Traditional and partisan outlets dominate the landscape. These outlets link to other sources in their own cluster and reinforce the insularity of information. Each cluster presents different versions of reality. Partisan outlets are less in number, but overwhelmingly conservative in their orientation. This causes and reinforces partisan gravitation toward specific outlets. The success of conservative news outlets like Fox News spurred progressives to follow this model, creating MSNBC to offer overt liberal and progressive commentaries. A 2019 Pew opinion poll found that 93% of those who listed Fox News as their primary news sources are Republicans while 95% of those who list MSNBC as their primary news source are Democrats. Similarly, about nine-in-ten of those who name The New York Times (91%) and NPR (87%) as their main political news source identify as Democrats, with CNN at about eight-in-ten (79%). Network news viewership was more diverse, but leaned Democratic, with 57% of NBC viewers identifying as Democrats versus 38% Republicans (Grieco 2020).
How can we bridge the divide?
Chris Bail, director of Duke University’s Political Polarization Lab, suggests that people tend to overestimate the ideological extremity of those who don’t share their view while underestimating the extremity of views on their own side, creating an exaggerated sense of polarization in which people think that ordinary people are more polarized than they really are (Bail 2021). Yet, there is no doubt that our perceptions that those who disagree with us are extremists, combined with evidence of increased party polarization in Congress, creates a real problem in our ability to work together toward policies that benefit the nation.
If polarization is both pronounced and robust, how can we escape it? Patterson argues against any simple solution. First, he argues that the relative strength of the two major parties incentivizes polarization. The major political parties are closely matched. The Republicans have a 9-seat advantage, about the same size that the Democrats had before the 2022 midterm. We also see very narrow majorities in the Senate. Each party has a chance of winning majority status. This tight electoral competition furthers polarization as each party tries to weaken the other. Both are more interested in gaining partisan electoral advantages than governing together.
In contrast, when one party has a substantial electoral advantage over the other, the majority party is more focused on getting things done while the weaker party moves closer to the majority party as it tries to pull away some of the majority party’s supporters (Patterson 2023). Patterson suggests that polarization will be reduced when either Republicans or Democrats gain a major electoral advantage.
But which party will win? On the one hand, the Republican party holds greater support than the Democrats at the state and local levels. The Republicans control more statewide offices (e.g., governor and attorney general) and more state legislative seats than Democrats. The GOP has also begun to cut into the Democrats’ lead among the nation’s two fastest growing demographics: Asian Americans and Latinos. On the other hand, since 2004, young voters have favored Democrats in the midterm and presidential elections, with voters ages 18-39 giving 63 percent of their votes to Joe Biden in 2020 (Pew Research Center 2021). It is unclear which party, if either, will become dominant in the future.
How can we deal with polarization in the classroom?
Party polarization results in discomfort, disrespect, name-calling, silencing of minority voices, and close-mindedness. This makes for difficult discussions of politics inside and outside of the college classroom. This section of the essay combines the ideas that Patterson outlined in his webinar with ideas with my own ideas and suggested resources to prevent party polarization from undermining student learning.
Patterson offers several ideas for dealing with polarization in the classroom:
- Explain the purposed of the course and stress the goal of better understanding politics rather than settling policy debates between liberals and conservatives.
- Set some ground rules including civility. Encourage respectful disagreement that focuses on ideas and evidence-based arguments rather than personal attacks. Focus on deliberation, the careful consideration of multiple viewpoints and policy options, rather than winning the argument. If you use formal debates, set clear ground rules and frameworks to avoid name-calling and enhanced polarization in the classroom.
- For example, my own teaching includes a political controversies course in which students engage in debates, as well as role playing, deliberation, and collective policymaking, I use structures and rules that make debates more productive. In class debates, I place students into teams with specific debate rules. I prep students by having them read and discuss a wide range of viewpoints and topics to better understand the complexities, consequences, and benefits of any policy solution. To keep students focused on key points and policy disputes, I also outline a wide range of key topics that each team will have to address during the in-class debate and after the debate we hold a class debriefing to discuss logical fallacies, unsupported claims, strong arguments, personal reflections, and new questions that emerged from the debate. More information about my approach to helping students understand why others may think differently than they do is featured in a September 2019 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education (McMurtrie 2019).
- Patterson also recommends using a keep-them-guessing strategy with your own political ideology as the instructor of the class. Avoid discussing who you voted for or normative judgments towards parties, candidates, and policies. Though, note that sometimes students may make assumptions about your political ideology based on your racial, gender, or occupational identity. In the Q&A portion of the Patterson webinar, a Black male instructor noted that his students automatically assume that he is a liberal Democrat before he opens his mouth, which makes it harder to pursue the “keep them guessing” strategy. There is also evidence that students will project ideological viewpoints onto instructors based on their overall relationship with the professor, regardless of the professors’ ideological beliefs or openness in discussing them (Braidwood and Ausderan 2017, 2019).[2]
- Discuss the importance of political compromise in a democracy, the roots of party polarization, and the danger of polarization for representative democracy. Bring about the negative partisanship and how this tendency to act based on fear and hatred of the other party affects our politics and our relationships with other Americans, including our own neighbors and family members. By revealing the larger patterns and political context that embody their lives, students start to challenge their established routines, change the pattern, and become part of the solution.
- Provide examples of strong bipartisan friendships and working relationships where people work together to achieve common objectives and treat each other with respect despite major differences in their political beliefs. Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Antonin Scalia, President Ronald Regan and House Speaker Tip O’Neill, President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner, Senator John Kerry and Senator John McCain, and President Bill Clinton’s relationships with Presidents George H.W. and George H. Bush provide notable examples of these bipartisan relations.
- Anonymously poll the students in the course to determine the overall leanings of students in your course. Empower those in the minority to speak up, either by noting that their voices are especially important or by noting the absence of certain perspectives and raising those viewpoints in ways that encourage students who share the believes to speak up or that challenge the majority to consider these perspectives seriously. As an example, Patterson’s classes contain more liberals than conservatives. He compares the graph of instant poll responses to a graph of the nation, and notes that the class does not reflect the country. He encourages conservative students to be a robust and outspoken minority so that both liberals and conservatives in the class will have an opportunity to understand how people with different perspectives think about politics.
- Help students understand the ubiquity of confirmation bias (that all of us are susceptible to believing claims that support our existing biases and worldview). Getting students to study sources of bias, though websites like yourbias.is, shows the limits of our own perspectives and opens the door to learning from others.
- Discuss the problem of misinformation and disinformation in today’s world. Provide students with the tools they need to fight misinformation by refusing to spread it. Help students understand the bipartisan nature of the problem. Indiana University’s Observatory on Social Media[3] provides helpful data tracking unsupported narratives in the 2020 presidential elections including false claims believed by Democrats, Republicans, and Independents, while Mike Caulfield Web Literacy for Student Fact-Checkers[2] provides a practical approach to quick source and claim investigation.
- Help students understand the complexity and tradeoff of policy decisions, as well as how different decision-makers may come to different conclusions about the best course of action. Patterson uses the example of the Pandemic to note the difficult choices stemming from simultaneous health and economic crises. The rapid spread of the disease and filling up of hospitals coincided with a rapid rise in unemployment. States with Democratic governors had much higher vaccination rates and lower death rates, but states with Republican governors fared better economically. Democratic and Republican governors prioritized distinct aspects of the crisis with both positive and negative consequences for their constituents.
What resources can you use to fight polarization?
I recommend the following free, high quality, low barrier resources to encourage productive conversations, deliberation, and dialogue in the classroom that helps students talk across difference.
- National Issues Forums[1] provides free issue guides and discussion start videos, as well as moderating tips and training materials on their website.
- Caitlin Quattromani and Lauran Arledge TEDx talk entitled “How Our Friendships Survives Our Political Differences”[2] provides a relevant example of everyday people learning to bridge the partisan divide. Based on their own discovery of their substantial political differences during the 2016 presidential election, the talk offers specific advice for promoting understanding and maintaining friendships despite deep political disagreements (Quattromani and Arledge 2017).
- The free websites is[3] and yourfallacy.is[4] offer free materials to teach students about logical fallacies and individual biases that clog our thinking and prevent us from logical, evidence-based reasoning and discussions.
- The Duke University Polarization Lab[5] offers free online resources to help fight polarization by allowing students to measure the strength of their echo chamber, learn what their tweets say about their political ideology, and follow bots that help find conversation partners with views that differ from their own.
- The Constructive Dialogue Institute[6] offers the “Perspectives” curriculum free online. The six interactive online lessons weave together psychological concepts and practice scenarios. They also offer three peer-to-peer discussion guides and a dashboard to track learners’ progress and quiz scores for instructors who want to assign the lessons as a required part of a graded course.
- Unify America hosts The Unify Challenge[7], including online college bowls that match people from different ideological backgrounds for one-on-one guided conversations online. The easy-to-use online platform provides everything participants need to engaged in a one-hour guided activity appropriate for extra-curricular, co-curricular, and curricular use. Unify America offers twelve date options for easy scheduling, handles all reminders to students, and even records which students participated and how many questions they answered for instructors who wish to assign the Challenge for credit.
These approaches engage students in critical thinking, self-reflection on their own values and beliefs, democratic dialogue, and skills building. Students can use these skills outside of the classroom to resist dismissing almost half of the country as ignorant, uninformed, deluded, or evil; and to consider political difference in more productive ways through constructive dialogues and coalition-building.
Endnotes
[1] https://scholar.harvard.edu/thomaspatterson/2020
[2] College professors, who tend to lean liberal (Gross and Fosse 2012; Rothman, Lichter, and Neil Nevitte 2005) are aware of public concerns about ideological bias (Selingo 2004), though several studies have shown such concerns to be largely unfounded (Marianai and Hewitt 2008, Woessner and Kelly-Woessner 2009). Students tend to project their own ideology onto professors whom they like, but the oppositive ideology onto professors they dislike (Braidwood and Ausderan 2017). This is important because students’ perceived ideological distance between themselves and their professors substantially increases perceived political bias in the classroom (Yar and Sulitzeanu-Kenan 2015). Students also report more negative course evaluations when their professor does not share their ideology (Kelly-Woessner and Woessner 2006), while students who view their instructors as sharing the same ideology put more effort into a course and report higher levels of learning and enthusiasm (Kelly-Woessner and Woessner 2009; Linvill and Havice 2011; Braidwood and Ausderan 2017; Wood, Kiggins, and Kickham 2017).
On the whole, students and professors generally agree that ideological bias should be avoided in the classroom (Tollini 2010) and research shows that ideological shift among young people who attend college matches that of non-attenders, suggesting that students are not being ideologically brainwashed in the classroom (Mariana and Hewitt 2008). Moreover, ideological projection takes place many weeks into the semester as students form attitudes strong enough to justify ideological projection, especially for those with negative opinions of their professors (Braidwood and Ausderan 2022). This leaves room to build positive relationships with students that allow for greater flexibility when discussing political ideas in the college classroom.
Endnotes:
[4] https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/textbooks/454
[6] https://www.ted.com/talks/caitlin_quattromani_and_lauran_arledge_how_our_friendship_survives_our_opposing_politics?language=en
[8] https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/
[9] https://www.polarizationlab.com/
[10] https://constructivedialogue.org/
[11] https://www.unifyamerica.org/unify-challenge
References
Abramowitz, Alan I., and Kyle L. Saunders. 1998. “Ideological Realignment in the US Electorate.” The Journal of Politics 60(3): 634-652.
Bail, Christopher. 2021. Breaking the social Media Prism: How to Make Our Platform Less Polarizing. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Braidwood, Travis, and Jacob Ausderan (2022). “Tracking Changes in Student Perceptions of Professor Favorability and Ideology.” Journal of Political Science Education 18(3): 327-342. DOI: 10.1080/15512169.2022.2077210
Braidwood, Travis, and Jacob Ausderan. 2017. “Professor Favorability and Student Perceptions of Professor Ideology.” PS: Political Science & Politics 50 (02):565–570. DOI: 10.1017/S1049096516003206
Caulfield, Mike. 2017. Web Literacy for Student Fact-Checkers. Pressbooks. Retrieved June 13, 2023 (https://pressbooks.pub/webliteracy).
Garrett, R. Kelly and Robert M. Bond. 2021. Conservatives’ Susceptibility to Political Misperceptions.” Science Advances 7 (23). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abf1234
Gass, Nick. 2016. “Early Exit Polls Suggest GOP Voters Feel Betrayed by Establishment.” Politico, March 15. Retrieved June 13, 2023 (https://www.politico.com/blogs/2016-gop-primary-live-updates-and-results/2016/03/primary-exit-polls-republicans-feel-betrayed-220796).
Goodin, Robert E. 1975. “Cross-Cutting Cleavages and Social Conflict.” British Journal of Political Science, 5(4): 516–519. http://www.jstor.org/stable/193443
Grieco, Elizabeth. 2022. “Americans Main Sources for Political News Vary by Party and Age.” Pew Research, April 1. Retrieved June 13, 2023 (https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/04/01/americans-main-sources-for-political-news-vary-by-party-and-age/).
Lee, Francis. 2021. “Crosscutting Cleavages, Political Institutions, and Democratic Resilience in the United States.” Chapter 4 in Democratic Resilience: Can the United States Withstand Rising Polarization?, ed. Robert Lieberman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI:10.1017/9781108999601.004
McMurtrie, Beth. 2019. “These Professors Help Students See Why Others Think Differently.” Chronicle of Higher Education, September 22. https://www.chronicle.com/article/these-professors-help-students-see-why-others-think-differently/
Observatory on Social Media. 2022. “White Paper: Tracking Public Opinion about Unsupportive Narratives in the 2020 Presidential Election.” Wave 1–Wave 8 reports. Retrieved June 13, 2023 (https://osome.iu.edu/research/white-papers).
Patterson, James. 2023. “Party Polarization in the Nation and the Classroom.” Webinar recording. https://scholar.harvard.edu/thomaspatterson/2020
Pew Research Center. 2015. “Negative Views of Congress Cross Party Lines.” Pewresearch.org, May 21. Retrieved June 13, 2023. (https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2015/05/21/negative-views-of-new-congress-cross-party-lines).
Pew Research Center. 2021. “Behind Biden’s 2020 Victory,” Pewresearch.org, June. Retrieved June 13, 2023 (https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/06/30/behind-bidens-2020-victory/)
Saad, Lydia. 2023. “A Steady Six in 10 Say Global Warming’s Effect Have Begun.” Gallup.com, April 20. Retrieved June 13, 2023 (https://news.gallup.com/poll/474542/steady-six-say-global-warming-effects-begun.aspx)
Salvanto, Anthony. 2022. “Americans increasingly concerned about political violence,” CBS News Polls. September 5. Retrieved June 13, 2023 (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/political-violence-opinion-poll-2022-09-05/).
Schofield, Norman, Gary Miller, & Andrew Martin. 2003. “Critical Elections and Political Realignments in the USA: 1860–2000.” Political Studies 51(2): 217–240. DOI:10.1111/1467-923X.00181-i1
Quattromani, Caitlin and Lauran Arledge. 2017. “How Our Friendship Survives Our Opposing Politics.” TEDxMileHigh, September. Retrieved June 13, 2023 (https://www.ted.com/talks/caitlin_quattromani_and_lauran_arledge_how_our_friendship_survives_our_opposing_politics?language=en).
Elizabeth A. Bennion is Chancellor’s Professor of Political Science at Indiana University South Bend, and she is co-chair of the APSA Section on Civic Engagement.
Published since 2005, The Political Science Educator is the newsletter of the Political Science Education Section of the American Political Science Association. All issues of the The Political Science Educator can be viewed on APSA Connects Civic Education page.
Editors: Colin Brown (Northeastern University), Matt Evans (Northwest Arkansas Community College)
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APSA Educate has republished The Political Science Educator since 2021. Any questions or corrections to how the newsletter appears on Educate should be addressed to educate@apsanet.org
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