Tag Archives: political polarization

The Vaccination/Infection/Political Divergence Where I Am  In Virginia, cities and counties are separate, not one containing the other as in most of the US. So I live in the City of Harrisonburg, population about 53,000, which is surrounded by Rockingham County, population about 82,000, both in the Shenandoah Valley about 120 miles southwest of Washington. In the past Harrisonburg, which contains James Madison University, tended to politically...

No, liberals are not to blame for political polarization Over the long weekend, Kevin Drum picked a fight by saying that you should “blame liberals” for culture wars, arguing that liberals have shifted their positions much more over the past two decades than conservatives. This has provoked some strong counter-arguments, but what has struck me – as usual – is how little people have actually looked at the data. When you do so, there are at least...

The internet has received a substantial amount of blame for the recent increase in political polarisation. Using US data, this column argues that, in fact, the internet has played no significant role in a generally increasing trend of political polarisation that goes back at least to the 1970s. The results highlight the importance of looking beyond convenient narrative explanations, and the need for a deeper understanding of the drivers of political sentiment. Although unmentioned, an...