Who Fits the Left-Right Divide? Partisan Polarization in the American Electorate

Abstract

How has the American public responded to elite partisan polarization? Using panel data from both the Cooperative Campaign Analysis Project and the American National Election Studies, we explore the partisan consequences of the discrepancy between the one-dimensional structure of elite policy preferences and the two-dimensional structure of citizens’ policy preferences. We find that those citizens with preferences that are consistently liberal or consistently conservative across both economic and social issues have responded to elite polarization with mass polarization. However, we also find that the sizable number of citizens who hold preferences on economic and social issues that do not perfectly match the menu of options provided by elite Republicans and Democrats have not responded to elite polarization; indeed, these citizens are more likely to shift their partisan allegiance in the short-term and less likely to strengthen their party identification in the long term.