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Demography, Politics, and Partisan Polarization in the United States, 1828–2016

Part of the book series: Spatial Demography Book Series ((SPDE,volume 2))

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Abstract

Across academic inquiry and popular political discourse, a consensus has emerged that the U.S. political landscape, since 2000, has become sharply polarized between ‘red’ and ‘blue’ territories. But is this more hype than reality? In this introductory chapter, we provide an overview of literature on partisan and geographic polarization. Democratic and Republican political elites have increasingly become more ideologically homogenous and extreme since the 1990s; the extent the partisan public has followed suit remains in debate. Research on public partisan behavior, however, relies heavily on survey and, increasingly, experimental methodology. Although these methods can yield valuable insight, they are ill suited to examine the spatial and historical dimensions of partisan behavior and change. In contrast, and as outlined in this chapter, we use spatial analysis and a dataset of county-level voting behavior and demographic variables dating to 1828, to place the modern consensus of partisan and geographic polarization in historical context. Across the chapters that follow, an overarching theme emerges—the modern partisan political landscape is not uniquely polarized when one looks at the full run of U.S. history. And the factors that drive partisan conflict today are the same as in the past.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    As marked by the winner of the statewide electors in the electoral college. One state, Maine, awarded its second congressional district elector to Donald Trump, the loser of its statewide contest.

  2. 2.

    Such change may be produced by three realignment dynamics: the conversion of active partisans from one party to the other, the demobilization of previously active voters, or the mobilization of previous non-voters. For further discussion and analysis of these realignment dynamics see Darmofal and Nardulli (2010).

  3. 3.

    For further discussions of the ecological fallacy see Robinson (1950) and King (1997).

  4. 4.

    Multi-level regression with poststratification, however, presents a fruitful approach for estimating subnational quantities of interest from national survey data (see, e.g., Gelman and Little 1997; Park et al. 2004; Lax and Phillips 2012).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Political Science, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, USA

    David Darmofal

  2. Department of Political Science, Colorado State University Pueblo, Pueblo, CO, USA

    Ryan Strickler

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  1. David Darmofal
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Darmofal, D., Strickler, R. (2019). Introduction. In: Demography, Politics, and Partisan Polarization in the United States, 1828–2016. Spatial Demography Book Series, vol 2. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04001-7_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04001-7_1

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