kissinger had a concept of a world view. there were very few presidents that have a world view. they seem to pingpong along from crisis to crisis much like a ping-pong table or pinball machine. and they never really have found the ability to focus on what kind of a world do they want to leave behind them. ..

>> lyndon johnson was certainly an imperial president. i think what we see in johnson we start to see the cusp of the end of the imperial presidents in the united states. there have been presidents the acted in three fleet since then. the bush, no doubt about that. but he was the last person i think to understand the use and abuse of power. unfortunately, he abused it in many respects. as did many of the presidents who succeeded him. but he wasn't the last person who understood because of his constant demand of power within the united states he understood much better how to maneuver power overseas. he was less interested in what went on overseas and, unfortunately, his presidency was really defined by his adventure in vietnam which were almost less than in many

respects. he inherited that. he did not making any better, no doubt about that but he did understand the use of power and especially within the united states. he was i think one of the last presidents who did it truly understand that. >> there was one person here i know where to ask me a question about who i thought was my favorite imperial president, is that right? last night. >> i would say modern president passed fdr. >> i've thought a lot about that since i heard you going to ask that question this afternoon. i would have to say the gulf. i have to say charles de gaulle. charles de gaulle was the last real president in this world who had a real understanding of what he wanted to take his country, france, and his reach in the world which was europe and where he wanted it to end up. de gaulle made many mistakes, no question, but he created a system of government in france

that worked relatively well to this day. it was probably formed in his image. it was really formed to the latest french republic was really formed to let de gaulle act as the gulf. and, unfortunately, there has been no real de gaulle since then. i think that is was the opposite side of the political spectrum. nevertheless, i think the call did have an understanding of the kind of world he wanted to leave behind, what he wanted to do to improve the lives of its people. and he did it. remember he had a long history with the french going back to his time during the second world war. and even before that. he was an extraordinary individual. my previous book to this, the fourth world war, i'm wrote with a fellow, and he was the longest-serving head of french intelligence. he was de gaulle's actually young aide at the very end of

world war ii. answered as the head of french intelligence throughout the rest of the de gaulle era all the way down to mitterrand. and he said the call was really the one individual he served through that route did have the sense of what the world should be like and how to shape it. i found his perspective on that quite fascinating. i would have to say the gulf would be my pick, my choice among democratically elected presidents in the modern era. >> yet, just as a side comment. de gaulle saw the world according to de gaulle. but leaving that subject, do you want to comment on the middle east and the supposed air spring where you have all these in real president, saddam hussein, mubarak, assad, et cetera, et

cetera, et cetera. and now you have total havoc. and as a side on the assad scituate, the united states i think is double thinking its support for the islamic rebels because what could possibly replace assad would be perhaps worse than assad. so i will leave it to you. >> that is a very interesting subject. i go back even further. i go back in the late 1970s i was a "new york times" correspondent. i live in belgrade for three years. when tito was very much in power. tito was interesting. he held together really essentially seven disparate countries in one. all of whom hated each other. with two different religions, two different -- three different religions and host of different nationalities and competing interests, all of them would've been at each other's throats if

not for tito. what happened then? we have to take that to the next step. what happened then was after all of the bloodshed and the care and the horse that came after tito, we now the number of countries coming out of there that are really very solidly respectable nations, part of the european union that are doing very well by the people and who have leaders in the countries who really are very much of the people. so there really has been a very positive outcome from the transition period. i like to think in the middle east we're in a kind of transition period. it is likely to be bloodier, more disruptive in many respects, but i like to think that -- i have this theory i have long had and written about it in world policy, journal and a number of other places. i have this theory that a people, if left to their own

devices without any extra forces on them, will ultimately run at the fourth of government that works for them. i like to think that's the path we're taking in the middle east. it's very often a bloody path and very often a very dangerous path and let people get hurt and love people get killed as a result. the end result is very positive. and we have only to look at indochina. who would've ever imagined that after the end of the vietnam war we would have a country that's one of the leading, leadership countries economically, particularly economically, in asia, in the form of vietnam. with two other countries that are relatively peaceful, cambodia and laos. they have managed to find a way of bringing a government the power that works for the people. do you have a follow-up? >> that is true, when you talk about southeast asia, but each of these countries is run by a single party, or as in the case

of cambodia, by a 20 year dictator. so you are back to where you started. you are back to term the and toe back to get leadership type of situation that has brought about some sort of economic change. it's almost the chinese model. >> very close to a chinese market but again the chinese model registry is that living in the right direction? wwe hope. we hope that development will produce a more pluralistic society. with a very interesting conversation in our winter issue. our winter issue deals with china versus india and the competition and the concordance and so one that should be out next week in fact. our conversation in that issue was a noted beijing university economics professor who was fired from his job because he

was preaching democracy. and this is a very interesting fellow. what he says basically is, he does believe that democracy will come to china and to be a very difficult road. and many people may have to be hurt, he himself is one of the victims. but he does believe very strongly the chinese people want a form of democracy that works for china. on the other hand, when asking about democracy in india, he is contemptuous of the. he says it doesn't work for the indian people. the indian people think it probably does work for them but the chinese don't see it that way. they see a country that is dysfunctional, it is filthy, that is a class society still and so on that doesn't, that wouldn't work in the chinese model. and it's true it would not. that's what i'm saying each country if left to th their own will ultimately arrived at hopefully out of democracy or some form of government that functions effectively for that country. i firmly believe that's the case

but it may take a very long time and it may be a very bumpy road to get there. but i may be a bit pollyannaish in that respect, but i'm hopeful still. >> i think it's easy to understand the kind of older definition of an internal president, unit comes with something the founding fathers were debating is george washington became our whatever. my question is to have a kind of come is there since the imperial president, the definition has changed in its modern form? could you maybe lay out what your modern in real president looks like a bit? >> what he looks like? >> if there's a universal, i don't know. >> there probably is no universal in real president. i think it has worked for particular country. i think a person can establish a fee for what he wants in his country, the role in the world and begin to move towards that direction. someone who has a firm grasp of how to use the leaders of power

to make this happen internally and externally. who has probably -- i guess the best way describing it, it's one of these things that's kind of like you know what it looks like when you see it but you can't necessarily describe it. if it works, if you were there any seat and it works, it is certainly an improved residency that works. i cannot for the life of me identify and improve president right now in any western democracy who was doing that very effectively. that's unfortunate. we should have the. i think there was a great hope when president obama came to power in the united states that we did finally have a person who could perhaps implement, create a vision and implement it. the result was that he didn't. i go back to the analogy of the rail to use so much of the capital on one or two specific issues that he was finally discovered, basically the barrel was empty.

even when he came back down to the electorate and want another election, with a full barrel it is again almost empty. i don't know quite how that came about, but it's unfortunate because he came in with the great hopes of the world. i remember, one of my earliest issues, my second issue of world policy journal wing bush came to office with a photograph that we ran of the crowds demonstrating waving american flags to how often you see american flags waved in paris? i ask you, right? this was the arrival of a bomb in power some years later he is just another failed world leader, and that's too bad. it really is. >> you think it's possible in our current policy climate for anybody to put forward a worldview and -- >> that's a good question, and i think a lot has to do with other

issues and changes in the way politics is run these days. it has to do with the way out, has to be the way presidents are chosen. it has to do with the media, especially. i like the analogy when it first came to new york in 1965, there were basically seven television stations. and that was the second most city in the country going well with more was los angeles. there were about six daily newspapers, and that's it. there was no 24 hour news. i went to work at my first job this summer it went on these two top 40, everybody was saying all news all the time? that's insane. but, in fact, he did. it's changed the whole way campaigns are run, residents are chosen, politicians are selected. and it's changed the whole nature of the type of person who wants to be, or is prepared to

campaign for the presidency. and i think in some respects that's too bad. on the other hand, i like the idea of openness. i like the idea of doing everything there is to know about the person who's going to lead us, and that's good. but they didn't that itself may, in fact, detract from his or her ability to lead in the same fashion. >> you kind of mentioned this before, but i was wondering if it came to mind the presidency of woodrow wilson, because he is someone who struck me that had a perspective on the presidency once he got into power. he was a big critic of the executive branch but then realized the restraints of such a position. and i guess i'm kind of wonder, are there any other sorts of currencies of power other than economics or, that can be a sort of way to break through, that can maybe be a more transformative measure for a president or somebody? even as recently as obama being

quoted as saying if you do more outside of washington than inside, what can be done or what factors are factions can really take charge and creating a more transformative role for the presidency, or even the country? >> it's interesting you raise wilson, because i'll tell you a story. was just finishing my book, i had dinner with my friend michael mandelbaum, a professor at johns hopkins. he's an old friend. we go back probably almost 40 years together. michael asked you what i thought of wilson. and i asked him, he's a scholar, i just a journalist and a mine historian, whatever. but i asked him and he said, there are two views of woodrow wilson. absolutely opposite views. some people believe he was an athlete great present to other people believe he was a terrible president to those who believe he was a great president look at

his domestic record. a look at what he managed -- he created the federal reserve. he got women basically the right to vote. a whole host of transformative issues within the united states that he's hardly remember for these days. utter broad he was a disaster. so it depends on which kind of president you want to look at. and i think to some extent we face a summer situation today. presidents are incapable of making revolution changes anymore. wilson found himself incapable of doing that. his big mistake probably for and was going to paris to actually negotiate the treaty of versailles, because he should have left that to colonel house and some of his other aides. he was hammered, he was taken apart, he was at this event by world leaders. but in a sense that's today. presidents have to choose what is the great strength. can't understand what their strength is and what their country once. i would like to see a president

hu really does understand what his strength is and really concentrates on the strength but if his strength is not international, then fine, focus on what's going on in the united states and fix that. if his focus is international, you can find a way to resolve the problems between israel's and palestinians, you could really find a way to do that, that's transformative. whatever else happens in the world or the united states, but no president in recent years has been able to do everything it and most presidents wit would ty come to power think they can do everything. that really is unfortunate because that is innocent a perversion of the imperial presidents. >> isn't also possible for -- is impossible for an imperial president to also be popular president? which the relationship between someone who's making these very decisive move is politically and trying to transform a society that may not necessarily seem very popular at first?

>> i think success creates its own popularity. one of the problems in france, it was totally unsuccessful at solving the problems he was put in office to do. unemployment has barely budged. the economy isn't as she. the french franc -- the euro is going to hell in a handbasket. the country is in terrible shape right now. therefore his popularity is down to the lowest point in any president in the modern era since they began pulling in france back to the 1950s. so how can he possibly accomplish anything? he can't. so again there's this question of if you a cup of something you become popular. regardless of how you get it through. i'm persuaded of that. people of the world, they like success. people want to see a president that is a publishing something and that in turn feeds on itself. so that person in power can

again, can really improve come increased medical. look at the goal. the call came into office. it was a horror show. the government before, a series of governments before basic were changing prime ministers every three or four weeks. he came in to establish a holy concept of the president. he changed the entire nature of the power, created a new republic, and it worked. and the result was he was enormously popular. eventually of course he began to fail. the problems in nigeria, indochina, his popularity began to wane and eventually he retired. he went home. so success really is its own court in many respects i think that's what's most important. is to find something you can really succeed in and build on that. >> to change the topic slightly, do you think, given your past

experience, that liberal democracy is the answer for most of this world? is it truly a form of government that can function in places in asia, in the middle east, et cetera? or is the answer to elect somebody and let that party and person do what's best for the country without much interference of? >> it's difficult. there's no doubt about it. thailand is one classic case in point in a. island is a place i know fairly well. i was "the new york times" bureau chief back in the early '70s right after the end of the wars in indochina. there was a strong king there. he was very much in charge. behind the scenes. there was a succession of prime ministers. prime ministers alternating with military leaders when there was a too. but overall it was the king who

called the shot. thinking is now 86 and he is failing in health. his son is the air that the error appeared. he's not up to the task -- heir. the result is that there's a huge vacuum in thailand right now. and what i would say is that countries where the our power vacuums like that, there will be inevitably disastrous. and i don't know what the answer is but it may be the answer the military has the coming and reassert its control. but it's definite a problem. we have a problem that in pakistan and that's a very dangerous vacuum that we have there. thailand is not a nuclear power. pakistan is. we have to find ways of dealing with countries like that. when there is a power vacuum and make certain they don't get out of hand but i don't know what the answer to that is him honestly, but i do believe that the ultimate answer is not the end of liberal democracy if that's what you're suggesting. okay, good.

>> and any last questions? well -- >> talking about democracy and thinking about egypt, i think i democracy really depends upon the will of the people. we surely could have people screaming and yelling and burning things because of health care or this issue or that issue. we come to terms. but when people elected the president and they said we don't want them anymore, let's get rid of him, it can't work like that. so the people of the country have got to accept the rules, too. >> there's no doubt about that. the problem is of these countries don't, have no tradition of democracy. have no understanding of how you can remove a leader by democratic means, and it works. one of the problems of course is that when a democratic system such as that in egypt is set up

for it set up with benefits one particular aspect of the democracy, in this case, the muslim brotherhood. sogeti system that was inevitably going to bring the muslim brotherhood to power, and that's unfortunate because that disenfranchised part of the country has no interest in had the most brothers and power. and brotherhood principle prior is not improving economy or anything else but it's perpetuating the muslim brotherhood in power. that is unfortunate i don't know how teacher that. except by having -- it's interesting. we did a survey, a study that examined the creation of new constitutions throughout the world. they were more new constitutions created in the year 2012 than in any other previous time in history. i challenge anybody to tell me what model was most commonly used. all right, since nobody is raising their hand, it was

canada's. not the american model. there's not a lot of difference between the canadian constitution and ours. it is more of a parliamentary system, no doubt about that, but the reason people look to candidate was not because of the system of government or anything else. it was what kind of a country is canada? are the kind of a country that we want to model ourselves after? a country that is benign, it doesn't force itself on its neighbors or other powers. it doesn't force its system of government on anybody else. it's been nice country. it's a country where people can live in harmony. that's the kind of country so many people wanted. that's the model of the world. we are no longer the model of the world. it's a sad fact but canada in most respects is now the model for the world in terms of constitutional democracy. we have to change that. we have to find a way to change that. probably a good, strong improved president hu can take charge and

can demonstrate that we are the kind of country do people want any late. that's the kind of country we should be. >> since the united states became a democracy, a lot of other states have become democracies and nobody has taken the american model. exactly right. it's time. not the ideal model really. closest to kunduz israel in the 1990s, and that didn't work out particularly well so they switched it back. fairly quickly. >> wait for the mic of them, please. >> would you prefer the great american infidel president to be a democrat or a republican? >> i'll tell you one thing. i have never registered for a political party in this country. i'm a journalist and i have been my whole life and i don't feel hmos should be for one particular party or another. i will defer that question, thank you very much. i am an independent and i voted for candidates from both parties

and i will continue to vote for what i believe is the best man or woman for the job. >> and with that, the book is a shattered peace, and the price we pay today at the world policy journal. i see the most recent issue. thank you, david andelman, for joining us, and thank you all for coming. >> thank you for having me. [applause] >> [inaudible conversations] >> congress returns to legislative work next week. the senate will meet monday at tpm is a continued debate on extend long-term jobless benefits. and later they will debate the nomination of janet yellen to be the chair of the federal reserve toward replacing ben bernanke.

senators will vote monday at 5:30 p.m. eastern. the house will return tuesday and among the issues awaiting action, federal spending for the remainder of 2014 and raising the federal debt ceiling. you can see live senate coverage here on c-span2. the house as usual on c-span. >> i've been involved in politics for 40 years in one way or another. i've worked on reagan's 76 and 80 campaigns. i work in his administration. the fact is i have never seen so many people quoting and waiting around the course of events and the constitution. many of you 10 years ago, you never gave it a second thought. now i bet it's at the front of your mind. and it is with tens of millions of us. the fact of the matter is, tens of millions of us love this country. we don't want it fundamental transform. so we have to get to as many other people as we can to wake them up, educated bigotry this

an attractive that was on the back. that's the purpose of this book. that's the purpose. i consider it part of the purpose of my radio program as a number of my brothers and sisters in broadcasting which is why we are under attack all the time. these utopian status. >> sunday, best selling author, lawyer, reagan administration official and radio personality mark levin we'll take your calls and questions trampling, live for three hours starting at noon eastern. booktv's "in depth," the first sunday of every month on c-spa c-span2. >> the university of akron recently hosted its seventh state of the parties conference. coming up next a panel at a national party polarization and the changing american electorate. this is about two hours. >> thanks very much, john, and thank you all for having me. i'm very excited about this bill. it's a great topic. i guess my primary job is to keep everybody in the time limits, but i'm sure it might be

difficult. i read all the papers. they are really interesting some looking for to the next couple of hours. we will start with i guess to my immediate left. there are three authors on the paper, edward from indiana university who couldn't be here but we have with us michael ensley of kent state university and mike wagner of the university of wisconsin. so gentlemen, i'll let you take it from there. >> good morning, everybody. we are delighted to have a chance to be here and wan want o thank john green for assembly such a great panel and such an great meeting and thank jennifer doing all that she did to help us get here and help us get back home when we are all done. i guess two of the c-span audience to work out what i just told the days into 21 hour filibuster and talk until the meeting is over. and then in getting both my own partisans on my co-author did anyone else who is plenty of really interesting things to say

with her excellent papers on this panel. our paper is part of an ongoing project that we've been working on dealing with how the way american public opinion is structured reacts the way that elites struck their preferences. and as we can to begin thinking about what we want to talk about today and to think about the state of the political party, the future of political parties, we begin looking at some contemporary takes on parties from "the new york times." so about three years ago in october 2010 tom frieden wrote a column where he wrote quote there's going to be a serious third party candidate in 2012 with a serious political movement behind him or her, one big enough to impact the election's outcome. about a year later he followed, two years later he phoned up and a former u.s. comptroller david

walker might be the kind of independent candidate who could ignite the radical center to victory in 2012. so the lack of president walker aside, on the other side of the times of ideological outcome of the day after the election a column appeared making the argument that we have entered an obama realignment within the next breath of the column that realignment might not last beyond the next presidential election which doesn't make it much of a very durable realignment. what strikes it's about the way these folks are thinking about american political parties is that the expectoration is for major, durable, sustained dramatic a change. the argument that we want to make with respect to the state of the party is that people are looking for that kind of change are going you waiting a while. what we want to do today is try to make thre three empirical pos that come from a theoretical perspective that i would will de in a second to the first point is that self-identified moderates to the extent that

come to stand there in the electorate are in a lot of ways polarized from each other which was a bit difficult for a centrist party to rise and be a viable third party in the united states. the second is that the parties are constrained of the about to make major advances towards voters because a lot of these voters don't perfectly match the preferences of the parties are often. the way they don't match the parties profits it makes it very difficult for the two major parties to kind of outflank each other and try to grab these voters. finally, the argument we want to make is that just focusing on your core supporters that if you can't grab others, focusing on core support is not a strategy that is likely to make either party a durable majority anytime soon. so to make our argument we kind of begin with evidence from others that congressional elites are reliably divided along a single ideological dimension, a

left right dimension. that kind of dominates how elected republicans and democrats cast their votes when they're behaving in congress. but the public we want to argue is not so similarly divided but, in fact, divided along to principal dimensions. one, and economic dimension deal with the way that government spending and regulation is understood, and when dealing with social issues did with questions of moral right and wrong. both of these dimensions have a left right dimension to the but they don't perfectly overlap each other. the consequence here, the fundamental question that we're interested in is what of the consequences in a political system when elites are divided along when to fish and the public is divided along to? increased his published work that we put together in the book were wrapping up we make the argument that the are some folks who have what we call orthodox issue preferences. folks who are either liberal a both economic and social issues

or concerns on both economic and social issues. these are people who behave as though they're divided on a left-right dimension like members of congress. these are the folks we shown in other work that are polarized partisans, stable partisans, they make their vote choice really early. they engage more cynically. they consume partisan media. they don't split their tickets when they vote. but a slightly larger group of voters, they might be liberal on one set of issues and conservative on another set of issues. so folks who are conservative economically but liberally socially might be libertarian. folks who are conservative socially a little economically might be considered populist and those are just honest to goodness in the middle might be considered moderates. we make the aren't meant that the folks who are these heterodox voters participate less, are more unstable into partisanship, swap back and forth or from party to independent, election to election, don't consume partisan

media and split their tickets at a much higher rate when they vote. and so to get a sense of what this looks like, this is the 2012 american national election study. every dog is a person, and on the x. axis, economic issues. the first to let you go the more liberal your economically. to further the right to go the more conservative you are economically. the y-axis is the social dimension. as the liberals and consumers in the lower left hand and upper right hand quadrant of this figure are quite obviously obvie polarized from each other. these are the people who are increasingly becoming divided in the american electorate. these are also the folks are more likely to participate. but a nontrivial side of the voters are libertarian or pipe was in the view and there's also a fair amount of people who will lease with the expressed issue preferences are in the middle.

what's interesting about the populist libertarians and moderates is that they are all systematically likely to call themselves moderate woul would o place in cells on ideological skill. and so if you are very conservative economically and very liberal socially, you are a moderate. if you're just the opposite you are a moderate. that makes it very difficult in our view for a third party candidate to corral both of these groups of voters since they disagree with each other and the polarized from each other in terms of preferences as are liberals and conservatives. we argued to be difficult for a third party to appeal to these voters who were quite different from each other. as different as ideological liberals and conservatives. to get a sense of how this might actually try to operate, we were back in the american national election study to 1992 when ross perot ran as a fairly successful third party candidate getting about 90% of the popular vote

coming in second in maine and utah in the election. looking in our groups, where did the perot support come from? we engage in a logistic analysis that we talk about more in the paper for those were interested in that sort of thing. our figure is providing the predicted probability that a member of each of our ideological groups voted for perot. and so we have conservatives voting, likely around 26 or 27%, liberals and pipe was right at 20%, libertarians over 35%. and moderates a little over 25. perot ran as a pro-choice but no economic regular should have candidate, a libertarian set of issue positions, and not surprisingly the libertarian voters were the most likely to support for roe. on the other hand, for roe was giving these voters decide what these voters decide whether one can jump from a policy perspective and yet the

likelihood that a libertarian would cast a vote for perot's only 35% or even in the group that matched the independent candidate best when the candidate was matching preferences, the likelihood of a vote wasn't so high, speaking to the dominance of the party system in american politics. we think the radical center is one that we shouldn't worry about too much. so then this lease parties with a couple different options. how do we sustain a durable majority over the long haul? you can imagine the parties might say to this is one want to do is try to appeal to folks who were not in our core but have some set of issues where they see things our way. we relied on a formula, a paper from robert axelrod that tries to estimate how much support voters get or a candidate gets from particular kinds of groups, how large the group is, how loyal they are and how much they turn a.

those are the key elements of a former. you, you look at a more in terms of groups of people might think about and demographic census, but we apply the same for the to our ideological groups. this figure shows you the percentage of contribution to the vote total for republicans in this case from 1972-2012. conservatives divide the lion's share of support. since 1992 have really jumped up in about the support that they provide for their voters. so where else can conservatives go, or republicans go that is, to try to increase their share of the rest of electorate to do try to become a durable majority? in the interest of time, the short answer for the short term is libertarians. in the last two elections, they've been a large part of the republican coalition and to republicans advantage of internet at high rate than to populist and moderates. moderates. there's more than an elected and they show up a bit more and there's more like the last

couple of elections to support the republican party. that's the place where a republican to consider votes. this isn't surprising given that even though we have a two-dimensional structure of american public opinion in our view of economic and social issues, the economic issues correlate most highly with people self-reported ideology and also our correlate more high with people's vote choice. and service match liberties on economic issues and so that is perhaps not so surprising. the other thing to note here though is that if consumers have a hard time going after the libertarians, and as you can see by watching the line of them, it's up and down. it's not a consistent group and it's not a very large group, are not always a large percentage of the coalition that is to say. the republicans might think, let's just try to grow our core supporters. the reason we didn't win is we were not conservative enough. we can be more conservative and

grow our core supporters, then maybe we can win an election. but as the analysis we present in the really hard to read table do not quit his show, turnout among conservatives is close to 80%, and in 201286% of the conservative vote went to mitt romney. there's not a lot of room for them to grow. the conservative vote. so the republican party makes the strategic choice just to go after conservatives they are not likely to increase their margins very much. moving along to democrats. the first thing to notice is that liberals make up the largest share of democratic presidential vote choice from 1972-2012. just really quickly, back on the republican side the scale is up to 60% here, the skill is only up to 50% here. so liberals make up a smaller portion of the democrats over all coalition and conservatives

make up for the republicans coalition. which is something that the democrats need to keep in mind. liberals are already like conservatives, a relatively high turnout group. in 2012, 95% voted for barack obama, and so the democrats are not going to be growing their coalition for the last 5%. libertarians we've seen are more likely to identify our vote at least with republican party. and so moderates seem to be the best option for democrats to make the case in the future if they try to appeal to different kinds of voters but in the last couple of elections moderates have been more likely to favor democrats. and if i can find in my notes the exact numbers -- can i do it? in five of the last six elections moderates are given a majority of vote to democrats.

and 2008 and 2012, and the last couple of elections the democrats have done a more successful job of solidifying moderate support where's the same is true for republicans in terms of libertarian voters. but neither of these strategies it either party above 50%, and given the way that the scanner never sort of fluctuate, special with the heterodox groups, the parties should not be that confident they should be able to fly, that is to say, republicans try to appeal to libertarians economic issues and pipe was on social issues. that's a very difficult argument to do, especially when 80, 80% voter turnout 80% vote for conservatives. if you are abandoning some of the policy positions of your core group, you are risking alienating some of those folks. the parties are in a deposition. do they go after these heterodox

voters and canadian so in a systematic way? probably not to make a majority, but if they don't, they can't just rely on the own core supporters to make a durable majority in the future. so our conclusion here is that we find the state of the parties are highly polarized at the elite level, polarized under some conditions at a mass level and that leaves parties in of the kind of drift in a small sea of uncertainty for the future. and this is a good point to stop. >> okay, alan. >> i'm waiting for the -- there we go. i want to thank john and the institute again and the staff here for organizing this meeting and for inviting us a big thank you all for coming. and i'm going to talk today about a phenomenon i found very

interesting, at least in american electoral politics, that's polarization, that particularly in this case what i call the american electorate. i will start off with stylized facts. i don't know what a stylized fact is, but my junior colleagues always talking about it. i want to sound current in the field. i'm going to refer do that. actually i'm going to talk about something that i think is really happening in american politics. i guess that would fall under the heading of stylized sex. there's been an increase in person position and conflict among political elites in the united states over the last 30 or 40 years. i don't think i need to work really hard to convince you that that's the case. just in case your senior think i'm not so sure about that, a few things we have seen that show that this trend is happening at the elite level i think are going -- growing

ideological divide. the decline of comity, the possibility by members of each party towards members of the opposing party, the kind of language that is used both on the floor but also when our political leaders talked in just about any forum these days. and the growing frequency and intensity of these confrontations over the budget, that senate and presidential apartments that have been going on most recently with a government shutdown and debt ceiling crisis that we had last month. so lots of evidence of that but the question is what about the public? certainly there's some evidence of growing intensity of partisan preferences and partisan conflict, among some segment of the boat. the kinds of people who show up

for tea party demonstrations, comparing barack obama to osama bin laden. but by the way, the comparisons of president with osama bin laden actually didn't start with obama. it was -- we saw this when bush was in the white house as well. the comparisons with hitler is not just obama but bush was compared with hitler. when i present the picture on the right to some my democratic friends and cliques of course the responses yet, but that's true. [laughter] but the question is how represented or typical of these folks, they are not, people turning out endangered, but what we like to know is has been an increase in partisan polarization in the american public? how and to what extent are americans divided by party? and if so, what explains the party divide in the american

public? we've seen a couple of different answers in the literature of political science. one is basically that the republic is not more divided. that partisan polarization has not really increased significantly, that this is an elite phenomenon. the other kind of interesting approach your answer that's been offered recently by some scholars is that there's been an increase in polarization, people feeling about the parties have become more divided but that doesn't necessary mean the republicans more divided along ideological lines. the way the elites are. so i want to take a look at that as well. spoiler alert, i'm going to now tell you what my finds are going to be. so if you don't want to be surprised later, you will have to closure eyes and cover your ears. everybody warned. what i'm going to argue here

today is that there has been substantial increase in polarization in the american electorate. one interesting aspect is the almost all of that is due to increasingly negative opinions by partisans of the opposing party. this rise in polarization can be explained large by increase in policy and ideological polarization. these two types of poor vision are very closely, very closely connected with each other. they are not two different things. so here's a puzzle. on the one hand, -- visually -- if we look at party identification and tracking over time and measuring the strength of party id, so this is create a scale, go back to the 1970s, it's pretty stable. we don't see much evidence of party identification itself is becoming stronger in the

american electorate. on the other hand, party loyalty is increasing. but even though it's not based on we're seeing more policy loyalty in voting but that seems to conflict with the finding of party identification second stronger but we see a big increase in loyalty and voting. 1972 was an amazing you because over 40% of democrats voted for nixon in 1972. and probably in the real world as well. but the recent data are really quite striking. in 2012, i tie the all time record. in 2012, i'm using only the face-to-face interviews. in this presentation but i excluded the internet today's proportion. if you use that, it's even higher. but for some reason, there's some differences between the results into two components.

very high level of party loyalty in voting in 2012 if we also see a big decline in ticket splitting since the 1970s and in 2012 we have the lowest rates of ticket splitting in history, and history which, of course, means since beginning of the american national election cycle. but very low ticket splitting there. so a lot of split ticket voting going on. what's going on? how can we solve this puzzle? i'm going to suggest do that one answer may be from looking at his other measure of the strength of party ties and electorate and that is effective polarization. the difference, if you look at that we see over the last 30 plus years there's been a pretty big increase in the divide between the parties and the average difference between the weighting of the two parties on the scale. and as was mentioned earlier,

that's almost entirely due to more negative ratings of the opposing party if you look at partisans including mean partisanship find that they tried this over time, the average rating of their own party has been pretty stable. around 70 degrees on the scale. we give the other party a more and more negative rating. that's why that divide is opening up. and just to show that this does make a big difference in the distribution on that different skill. so this is what the ditch vision look like in 1970. i've collapsed the scale. you can see that there were an awful lot of people right in the middle in 1978 who rated the two parties equally. and not remaining is strongly preferred one party or the other. minus five f. plus five means you've read one part at least 50 degrees higher than the other party on the scale.

so this is what 2012 looks like. you can see a pretty big change since thanks to an eight-2012. a lot fewer voters now in the middle. a lot more heavily stronger for one party to the other. the rate one party much higher than the other. and another thing we find is that this divide as you go up the scale in terms of political engagement, in this case i'm the measuring it by the campaign involvement, do nothing, voting, something beyond voting, about half of the electorate are at two and three by the way. easy the more involved people are, the more divided their evaluation is of the party pics of the people who really are involved in politics who care about politics into the most really, really liked one party a lot better than the other party. or david marr actively disliked one party more than the other party. and partisan affects matters but if you do an analysis with party

identification and the party affects scale which is the difference, you find that, this is for total, it has its substantial effect over above party identification but it has a stronger effect than party identification. even though both party identification is a very strong sector. that's true for every single election. it's gotten stronger over time. why is this happening? as one of my students at emory wanted to know. so i'm going to argue that this growing aspect of polarization as large a result of growing ideological polarization. pars in government moving apart but also party and electorate moving apart. and the result of stronger ideological preferences. this is what we find when we measure ideological distance from the parties but is based on just self placement on the insurgents killed along with placement of the parties on the liberal conservative scale. what you find is that there's

something very parallel to what we saw, the average distance between voters in their own party and again including independence with partisan come conflict i got the vast majority of the electorate here, voters about the same distance as was but they're much further away than the opposing party. further and further away from the opposing party and so that you can see that affect, the percentage of voters who have a very strong ideological preference, three or more units over a maximum of six on that scale has been going up over time and the percentage who have no preference between the parties were very weak preference has been going down over time. so stronger ideological preferences. and by the way, visitors to relationship between ideological self placement -- this isn't a matter of saying projection, like i was busy my party us closer than the other party. it's very strong related to where you put yourself on the

ideological scope of the correlation in 2012 is .86 which is about as strong as you can get between two different items in a survey. so over time what we're seeing is the mean ideological distance is increasing as is the thermometer difference. so the trends seem to be moving together, and in addition overtime we are seeing that the thermometer different scale is increasing corley with ideological but also with policy preferences. i would mention by the way the social issues and economic issues are increasingly correlated over time. they are more correlated over time than they were -- [inaudible] but they are more correlated over time than they were, and the more active people are, the more they are correlated. and so this is relationship between relative ideological distance and scaling thermometer difference in 2012 and get busy there's a very, very strong wish get there.

the coalition is .8. how you feel about the party is very much a function of your relative ideological distance from the party. when we do a multiple regression analysis with the thermometer difference as the very well, and a whole bunch of predictors, by far the strongest predictor is relative ideological distance from the two parties. it kind of overwhelmed everything is because of the significant predicted but that's by far the strongest predictor. if you break the electorate in 2012 down to those of no ideological preference come if you don't prefer either party in terms of ideology, this is what you are thermometer tester looks like. you're in the middle for the most part. if you have a preference of three plus, this is what you look like. this is a much larger group than this by the way.

this is a small group of voters, about 15% of voters to place themselves equally distant from the two parties on the ideological scale. and this shows how they cannot on that party aspect scale. they are in the middle. they look like the voters in 1978 actually. this is a much larger group, almost half the electorate in 2012 are rated one party at least three units closer than the other in ideology. and i would call that polarization. so conclusions on that, you do, parties have been moving apart, democrats moving to the left of republicans to the right. the voters as well as the elites, and it's that growing divide between the parties that largely explains this growing aspect of polarization. and the consequences -- affective polarization. the consequences are getting increasing party loyalty, decline in ticket splitting.

because of this growing divide between the parties. mainly because the opposing party and its candidates are becoming increasing unacceptable alternatives. it's not that we love our own party more than we did. we feel over all about the same, but we really dislike the other parties. and the implication from one application of this i think is that attacking the opposing party and its candidates may be the most effective way of energizing one's supporters and attracting donations and turning out the vote. thinking about the 2012 campaign, we had one of the most negative campaigns in history in 2012. if you look at the content of the political advertising in 2012, it was much more negative over all than even in 2008 or earlier elections. and i think to a large extent this reflects this shift that we have seen, this trend towards increasing negative perceptions and evaluations of the opposing party within the american electorate.

and so i think we can probably expect to see more of the same in the future. so those of you who live in ohio, expect to see more of those attack ads in 2012. .. >> you have to walk fast, dress in black and don't look people in the eyes. i have about 28 slides i need to go through here, so i need to talk fast. i need to move through them

fairly rapidly, and i can make the usual liberal apologies for our results. i was fortunate to do this paper with edward at witting burg university. ed and i have been work working together over the years, and we were assisted by casey fisher of kent state university. the purpose of the paper is to explore how the american voter is changing and how the american party system itself is changing. we agree with russell dalton and his book, the apartisan american, that voters are less attached to the parties than before. we also agree with my friend and colleague, alan abramowitz and his book, that those who are attached are more polarized and sorted. what's responsible for these trends? well, we attribute both trends

to rising educational levels and the growth of internation and interest in public affairs. we also attribute them to the direct primaries and the dominance of idealogues in these primaries. we also credit the demographic change in the racial, ethnic and religious makeup of the electorate. we also attribute some of the impact to the growing salience of socialites in american politics. and finally, we feel that the politics of ethnic nepotism also has a role. how has the american voter changed? well, first of all, the american voter has become more racially and ethically diverse. secondly, the american voter is more ideological. and more cognitivity oriented. -- cognitively oriented and more inclined to identify with the parties on the basis of their racial, ethnic and religious

identities. certainly, the american voter is more issue-oriented, and so i think these are all important changes in the american voter. what i want to do now is i want to sort of highlight these changes the support or evidence we found to support these claims. here is a look at the changing racial and ethnic makeup of the united states in 1960. almost 89% of america was white. by 2010 it had declined to about 64% with a increase in the proportion of african-americans, asian-americans and, more important, latino-americans. to track this growing racial and ethnic fragmentation of the electorate, we computed an index of fragmentation, and this just plots the changes over time for

respondents in the american national elections studies. also what we did then is we stratified, we stratified this index by respondents who lived in racially and ethnicically diverse counties versus those who fell somewhere in between. this is a breakdown of party identification by race and ethnicity, and what you can see is that in 1956 both parties were mostly dependent upon white americans for their support. but by -- what you also see here is the democratic party has, essentially, been the majority party over in this time period this terms of the proportion of people who identify themselves as democrats. republicans have been consistently the minority party. but by with 2008 now what you see here is the distribution has dramatically changed for the

democrats, a little above 37.8% are white, 36.8% are black,21.9% are latino. to explore this further, we took the ethnicity question out of american national elections studies. the good people up in michigan started looking at ethnicity in 1972, it took the census people until 1980. but, basically, since there aren't many changes in terms of how different ethnic groups line up with the parties, we have combined the data from the 1972 survey through the 2008 surveys. of course, this is a work in progress, and we have to update all the results for 2010 to 2012. we just didn't have time. but what yo see there -- you see there is that, well, main line here, main line are those americans whose forebearers trace their ancestries to the british isles and to northern

europe, american -- those are responsibilities who say when -- responsibilities when asked other than being american what other ethnic group do you identify with and they say american, it's about 25 surveys. white ethnics are those who trace their ancestries to central, eastern and southern europe. greater middle east, this is a coin termed by the w. bush administration, basically -- these are basically muslim countries in north africa and the middle east. the other categories are self-explanatory, but what is noteworthy here, what is noteworthy here is that the only group, the only group that can be counted on by the republicans only by a small plurality are main line voters, main line voters. and perhaps asian-american voters. all the other groups are trending heavily toward the

democratic party. including the new immigrant groups. this shows the effect of different social identities on the presidential vote, and what is striking about that figure, unfortunately i have it in yellow, there's a sharp increase in the impact of racial identities on the presidential vote. religious identities seem to be waning in influence, but social class identities, i think we plot there percentile family income, this effect is increasing. maybe because of the coalescence between racial identities and family income. here we take a look at the effect of racial context on voting in presidential elections, and we find that respondents who are in racially-diverse counties, the

whites who live in very racially-diverse counties, are much more likely to vote republican than whites who live in relatively homogeneous counties. whites who live in very racially-diverse counties are more likely to identify with the republican party than people who live in relatively homogeneous counties. so racial context, we feel, is a factor that activates racial and ethnic identities. this graph is here because of a dispute between my good friend alan and russell dalton about whether independents have been growing or not. if you measure independents by the general question generally speaking do you consider yourself to be a republican, democrat or something else, the proportion has been increasing from about 25% in 1952 to about 40% in 2008. but if you look at pure independents -- and i agree with alan on this matter, i think it's better to look at pure

independents -- we see that, yes, there has been growing independents up this about the 1980s, but after that it's been declining. we feel it's been declining because of political polarization and partisan sorting. this looks at the effect of ideology in issues on the presidential vote, and what you can see there is the effect of ideology has been increasing over time. and what you see there with economic dissatisfaction is that economic dissatisfaction is a factor that always hurts the party in power. it helps the party out of power. mobilization. this is a fairly interesting table here on mobilization. more and more americans now are being contacted by the parties and by the presidential candidates and their organizations. and what you also see there is this is having an impact on turnout.

there's a increasing proportion of people who are impacted who turned out to vote. so how has the party system changed? how has the party system changed? well, we argue in our paper that the, there's more electoral volatility than before. secondly, we see the emergence of the red and blue state dichotomy with the creation of safe states for the democratic party and relatively safe states for the republican party. we also see lower public approval for both parties in government. let's look at the evidence. this is a plot of electoral vote volatility by party and year, and you can see an increasing volatility in the presidential vote with the lyndon johnson landslide, the richard nixon landslide and the ronald reagan landslide of. but after that you see declining

volatility which we attribute to increasing political polarization and partisan sorting. michael, if you could maybe activate that. imagine yourself here at the cuyahoga county fair, you're at the shell game booth and what do you see? where is it? what's happening? what we feel is happening is that the electoral vote distribution over the election years from 1960 to the present, to 2008, that the, that there's been a greater dispersion of the electoral vote. this coincides with the parties counting on certain states to deliver electoral votes for winning the presidency. if you take, if you take as a measure of this aspersion the standard deviation and you correlate it with time, you come up with a correlation of about

.44 which is a moderately strong correlation. when you look at the effects of polarization, they're not good in terms of public approval of executive and legislative performance. the only time that a presidential -- a newly-elected president seems to get over 50% is during the honeymoon. but even president obama's now, his approval rating's fallen to 45% with the 51% disapproval rating. congressional approval has fallen to an all-time low, about 8, 85% disapprove. and i've tracked this question about the country headed in the right versus wrong direction for years now, if not decades. americans feel that we're headed in the wrong direction. other changes in the party system, i don't have time to go through these changes. these are discussed elsewhere, and i think they'll be brought up at other panels that have

been scheduled for this conference. what i'd like to do is i'd like to get what's behind these changes. certainly, the increase in direct primaries and their dominance by conservative idealogues in the republican party and liberal idealogues this the democratic party -- in the democratic party, what ed and i feel also is that the changes can be attributed to our growing diversity this income inequality -- in income inequality and, perhaps, the competition. first of all, let's look at the racial fragmentation on political sorting. here we have plotted the day, taking census data and using alan's measure of partisan sorting. which is the mean difference in ideological positions between republicans and democrats. and what you note there is a very strong correlation of about .8. you find much the same ting with inequal -- thing with inequality

on partisan sorting. again, a correlation, a very strong one, of about .8. when you look at the effects of fragmentation on political polarization, slightly shawler correlation -- smaller correlation but still a very strong one. and the same thing holds true now when you look at the effects of income inequality on political poe or lahrization. polarization. this, the other factor, what else is possibly responsible? well, political science is relatively -- there's a dearth of good theories in political science. john alford and john-in by argue that billism and rational actor theory really aren't theories themselves, so what might explain this? social colings martin marjer has argued that in any ethnicically purl society, there's ethnic competition. a political scientist from

finland who studied politics argues it's because of ethnic nepotism. he argues that ethnic nepotism is a universal human trait, that we all tend to favor members of our own racial and ethnic group. so our argument here is that ethnic nepotism occurs after competition which then leads to social inequality, cultural conflict, social sorting, political sorting and finally, partisan sorting. this shows that sorting has been going on since the founding period. this basically e shows my plot of america's changing regional subcultures, and each of these subcultures can be link today a major -- links to a major settler or immigrant wave. finally, conclusions and implications. the jury's still out, but tentatively we anticipate continued levels of immigration which will make the u.s. more diverse, more polarized and more sorted. what we also see is the growing

influence of racial and ethnic differences on party identifications and voting in presidential elections. we see the continued marginalization of the republican party as the country changes demographically and finally, we see continuing political instability. thank you. >> okay. thank you, joel. okay, next, david kimball and eric -- [inaudible] of university of missouri, st. louis. >> thank you very much, linda. and thank you to john and janet and the folks at university of akron for inviting us here. it's great pleasure to be part of this conference and this panel. let me acknowledge my co-partisans here eric forest and bryce summary who worked on this with me even though i'm the one doing the talking here. [laughter] okay. the papers on this panel tend to emphasize the dark side of polarization, so i'm just going to start with something a little

more positive even though this isn't in our paper. this shows, joel referred to this and alan's written about this in the past, but this shows three indicators over the last several decades, the percentage of people who say they care about who wins the presidential election. the percentage of people who say they see important differences between the two major parties and more pointedly, the percentage of people who correctly respond that the republican party is the more conservative political party. and if you look since the 1970s and '80s, all three of these indicators have increased pretty significantly to the 2012 cycle where tear at or near their -- where they're at or near tear high point. so i think this may be some evidence that the elite polarization in the united states has coincided, maybe helped produce a more engaged electorate. so that's the bright side. turning to the dark side -- [laughter] we examine a lot of the same

data as in alan's paper, the they are thermometer ratings of the two major parties, so this sort of reprises a figure from his, from his presentation. the main movement over the last few decades has been a decline in ratings for the opposite party, and so we're interested particularly in this gap between the rating from one's own party minus the rating for the opposite party. and there's quite a bit of variation across individuals in this, and there's this grab that's grown over time. -- gap that's grown over time. so those are the two things we want to try and explain. and our general argument is that there are many roots of this, many sources of this, one having to do with strength of party identity and elite polarization, another having to do with core values, another having to do with group-based attitudes, also

individual predispositions and to a lesser extent the rise of partisan media. so goes through each of those -- go through each of those in turn. and i'll start by offering a -- joel mentioned increasing salience of partisanship over the past few decades in the u.s., and we offer a somewhat different answer to alan's puzzle about why strength of partisanship has held steady over the past few decades, why has party loyalty and polarization transpired. we think part of the explanation is, yes, strength of partisanship has remained steady, but because of the growing elite polarization, partisan identity has been activated more frequently and more intensely in recent years than in the past. that there are a series of studies that show when people are -- view elite polarization or when they merely are informed

that on a particular issue, disagreement at the level of politicians' divides along party lines, they engage in a series of biases. this is called motivated reasoning. that we interpret events and seek out information, ways to make our own party look good and make the other party look bad. so that when people are exposed to elite level polarization, they tend to rely more on party cues rather than the substance of the issue at hand and forming their own opinions. they tend to be more certain, more confident about their own opinions on those issues, and they tend to dislike the opposite party more. so i think part of it is that the elite polarization has increased the salience of party identification even as the strength of party identification has remained the same. so the chart here shows that gap in the thermometer ratings and strong partisans are leading the way. in particular, the gap between strong partisans and weak

partisans and independent leaders has gone from about 20 points or 20 degrees early in the series to about 25-30 points in the latest cycle. the, we also looked at, um, core values as another source of this affect of polarization, and i think here this dovetails more with the ideological polarization that alan was talking about. the, so we look at three -- the next few tables are data from the 2012 survey, and what we did in each of these cases for each of the attitudes that i'll describe, we controlled for strength of partisanship and ideology and a few other things, and then we looked what happens when you move from relatively low values to relatively high values on even of these -- each of these attitudes, how does that poe hardization move up or down on average?

one core value is egalitarianism which is a belief in equal opportunity, belief that people should be treated fairly regardless of who they are. a liberal value. and we see that for democrats those who are high in egalitarianism, it's about 16 degrees more than democrats who are more on egalitarianism. for republicans, egalitarianism being a liberal value cross-pressures them because it doesn't core respond to their partisanship, and so it tends to lessen the affect of polarization. limited government, moral traditionalism are more conservative values, limited government dealing with how big a role government should play in providing a social safety net. moral traditionalism dealing with orthodox versus progressive views about moral standards and family values. those factors tend to polarize republicans and reduce it among

democrats. one important thing here is that each of these core values have become more closely associated with party identification and ideology over the last few decades, and so they've contributed to the growing dislike for the opposite party. we also look at a couple of group-based attitudes dealing with race and the role of women in societies. racial resentment has been a common measure in the anes surveys that deals, measures the belief that lack of work ethic accounts for the inequalities between black and white americans. that's another attitude that's become more closely associated with partisanship and ideology and acts in a similar fashion to core values that for republicans racial resentment become more polarized, democrats less so.

so you've got the cross-pressure going on there. we also examined modern sexism scale which measures the degree to which people think discrimination against women is still occurring and needs to be rectified. that's sort of the high end of the scale, low end would be people who don't think discrimination against women is a problem and who are more resistant to the changing modern roles, 1kwre7er roles in society -- gender roles this society. that one, higher values polarize democrats, lesserrer effect among -- lesser effect among republicans. we also examined a couple of predispositions, what you might think of as maybe traits or world views. and there are measures of these in the survey as well. the need to evaluate is a psychological measure that basically indicates how judgmental one is or one's propensity to rate something as a good thing or a ba ting sort

of like on cnn you're invited to do. and so if you have more of a propensity to want to judge things, you may have more propensity to -- [inaudible] between your party now because we find for both democrats, republicans being higher on the need to evaluate scale polarizes them. on the ceiling thermometer ratings of the parties. we also examine the authoritarian world view which deals with whether you value conformity and order on the one hand versus personal freedom and create it on the other hand. it's measured through questions about child-rearing priorities like whether it's more important for children to be independent or to respect their elders, whether it's more important for them to be obedient or self-reliant. there's been some work on this in american politics. mark hetherington's written a week about polarization, and -- a book about polarization, and

he provides some evidence for that. we think that's not quite the whole story. the key part about this authoritarian world view is that people high in authoritarianism like value, order, conformity, they tend to see the world in black and white terms, they're more likely to make distinctions between their in group, their in party, or the out group or opposite party that's opposed to their views. so we think people high in authoritarianism whether democrats or republicans are more likely to denigrate the opposite party, and we find some evidence for that among both democrats and republicans. the key thing here is these are predispositions, i don't think there's much evidence they've changed over time. this doesn't account for the growing affectation over time where is i think group-based attitudes line up more with party and ideology over time. the final factor we looked at is media exposure, in particular

the rise of the partisan media over the last 10-15 or years, i guess. the survey includes a bunch of new items asking people whether they regularly consume a whole host of tv programs, talk radio, newspapers, web sites. i think there were 9 of them that we -- 19 of them that we identified as conservative sources, 19 we identified as liberal. and then we also have this general news exposure item based on questions about how frequently do you follow the news on tv, on radio, newspapers, so forth. these have a lesser effect. the one is key media exposure among republicans has a polarizing effect sort of on par with some of the previous items that we've looked at. i think one key thing to keep in mind here is that exposure to partisan media, at least according to these survey measures, is very, very low. the typical republican voter is not a regular consumer of any of

the 19 conservative media sources in the survey. typical democratic voterrer is not a regular consumer of any of the 19 liberal media sources that we coded. so the rise of partisan media may not be as much of a contributor to the growing affect of polarization that we've looked at. real quickly, we considered some of the consequences for this growing affect of polarization in sort of more current politics. we looked at some data from the 2010 evaluations of government society study that anes did in october of 2010. we looked at attitudes toward the tea party and support for the tea party, and we found -- in looking at support for the tea party, we found the strongest predicter of tea party support is, basically, how much you dislike democrats controlling for some other things that some other studies have looked at. and to, you know, one way to understand the tea party is tea

partiers tend to be folks who dislike democrats the most. and the fact that dislike of the opposite party has grown substantially over the last few decades means there's more opportunity, more of a market for the tea party today than there was maybe 20 years ago. there may be a market for a tea party-like organization on the democratic side as well. obviously, the negative terrorist is although unnecessary, sufficient for that type of movement to take root. we also looked at a question that asked people, an open-ended question that asked what the tea party stands for, and that's a quick thing i'll say is that democrats and tea party supporters tended to offer more substantive demonstrations, democrats and nonsupporters tended to mention, basically, their general image and a long list of adjectives and descriptive nouns that didn't

have any policy contact but were largely negative. [laughter] the survey in october of 2010 also had some questions about how do you feel about the direction of the -- how angry do you feel about the way things are going in the country, how afraid you feel be, how worried, how outraged. we created a measure of sort of, you know, emotion about the direction of the country. and we found the biggest predicter of that item was how much do you dislike the democrats. in october of 2010 you still had president obama in the white house and democratic majorities in the house and senate so that when a party finds itself in the opposition across the board at the national government, there's this well of negativity that can be anger and fear that can be mobilized. all right. to summarize real quick, so as alan already mentioned, there's this growing demonization of the

opposite party taking place among the mass public. we think there are many roots, many sources for this development and for the reasons why people are increasingly likely to hold negative feelings about the opposite party. this growth in negativity means there's this growing reserve of fear and anger and distrust among the public, that the ted cruzs and alan graysons of the world can mine for political profit. i was talking to sean last night about his paper later today about partisan warriors in congress, and i think at the mass level the people those warriors may be speaking to and responding to are the folks that may like the opposite party the most. the downside is that if politicians are taking their signals from that segment of the public which says we don't like the opposite party, we don't want you to compromise with them

at all, that, you know, contributes to the crisis over the government shutdown, the debt limit last month and these type of governing crises are likely to occur in the near future as long as these high rates of negative attitudes toward the opposite party persist. >> great. thank you very much. let's see, should i take the hand a-held mic? -- hand-held mic? i'm going to launch the questions with some of my own or one of my own. i don't want to hog the microphone here. and i, i guess you have this conference every four years right after the election, so i'm boeing to guess that new jersey and virginia get a lot of analysis at this conference every four years. but be i hope this isn't too far off topic. business a political reporter, i'm very -- as a political reporter, i'm very interested in your take on what happened just two days ago. in new jersey you had governor christie shattering the gop gender gap in a solid blue state. he won 57% of the women vote, he

won a third of democrats and a majority of latinos and nearly half of union voters. so i'm wondering if his victory shows the republicans a way out of the trend toward partisan polarization, or is his model just tied to him personally and not widely duplicated either nationally or in other states? and anybody who wants to try their hand at that one. >> well, i'll jump into that. i'll make a bold prediction right now which is that chris christie will not be the republican nominee in 2016. you know, i mean, i wouldn't say it's impossible, but i think it would take ab unusual set -- an unusual set of circumstances where you had a very divided field and weak field of candidates to his right that were splitting the vote. although we've seen that sort of scenario.

in 2016 -- and to be fair, christie is not, this some ways, another giuliani. in some ways like rudy giuliani in terms of his appeal. and giuliani, remember, was the front runner for the republican presidential nomination in 2007. but given where the republican party is right now and having to run the gauntlet of those republican primaries in 2016, i, you know, first of all, he's going to have to position himself -- reposition himself just as john mccain and mitt romney did. and secondly, i don't think he's going to be able to do it sufficiently or successfully enough. but, i mean, it's hard to predict what's going to happen -- >> i would say that chris christie has more drive than giuliani did. giuliani -- >> yeah. >> -- ran but then didn't really give it his all, it seemed to me. >> well, but he was sort of boxed in. he chose to skip iowa which sort

of made sense, but then he also skipped new hampshire which doesn't make sense and bet it all on florida. mccain couldn't have run a much worse campaign than giuliani did, but on the other hand, the relin party, if anything, the base is even more conservative now. the tea party wasn't there yet. now it is. and the base has gotten more conservative. and so, you know, i think he's going to have a lot of trouble duplicating that success. >> okay. does anybody else want to chime in? >> i'll try. i think there are two problems with giuliani -- excuse me, with chris christie's candidacy. one is that ideologically i don't think he's going to be acceptable to the conservatives in the republican party who dominate in the primary. i think a is second problem he faces is that he doesn't seem to epitomize symbolically, you know, what americans are looking for like barack obama or michelle obama, they both look

physically fit, and i would say that's one thing he should work on. [laughter] >> you grump. >> just to be a slight devil's advocate, i'm not calling christie 2016, but the way that i would say he's different than giuliani that's important is that he's pro-life. and so he matches -- if i said to you an anti-union, pro-life economic conservative is going to run for president and he won a blue state, you'd say that's great, that's chris kristy. so to the -- chris: i the. so his issue preferences are largely there, and it's kind of public, you know, being kind to the president when the president comes after a hurricane that he's getting trouble from people on the far right for. and i'm not sure that kind of stuff is as durably negative toward him. in terms of his fitness, there is research that suggests people are actually more positive about larger people than fitter people. [laughter] so i'm not so sure he should be -- he should be eating more

and dieting less. [laughter] >> yikes. >> he does have to survive. >> yeah, right. >> david, did you want to comment? >> yeah, real quickly. i'd say that christie's -- i mean, not to take too much from christie's re-election. the democrats sat this one out -- >> right. >> donors, operatives. he hasn't had serious partisan fire directed at him yet which will happen if he becomes presidential nominee, and we'll see how -- >> that's why -- [inaudible] >> one follow up and then i'll open it up to the audience. of but cucinelli lost. did that -- [inaudible] warning side to the republican party that you can't put up a tea party-oriented candidate? >> not to the tea party people. [laughter] they're, i mean, you've been reading their comments this the last couple days, and be they're almost all along the lines of we were sold out by the establishment and cucinelli could have won. >> right. >> you know, given the close margin there.

so, no, they're not going to -- >> there's no learning from that? >> i don't think so. >> joel? >> i think the republicans these to learn how to woo and recruit the libertarians because -- [inaudible] got 3% of the vote -- 7% of the vote. there was only about a 55,000 vote margin. >> actually, i don't think that's true. if you look at the vote, the preelection polls and the exit polls showed that it was a protest vote averagely and that the -- largely and that the vote would have split almost evenly between mcauliffe and cucinelli. i don't think in this case that was so much of an ideological vote as it was -- it was young people and independents, basically voters who didn't like either mcauliffe or cucinelli, which was a large group. >> right, right. >> he had a large potential pool of people to appeal to there. >> okay. well, now i'd like to -- okay, a hand is already up. i'd like you the give us your

name and your affiliation before your question. thanks. >> i'm bill connolly from washington university. first of all, thank you very much for an interesting panel. [inaudible] directed for dave and alan. because you both alluded to the issue, you talked about the growing intensity and the effective poe aroundization -- polarization and the negative image of the opposite party. and i'm wondering to what extent -- and i'd welcome the entire panel addressing the issue -- this is a function of the changing media environment, the greater decentralization, fragmentation of the media and the capacity for us to cocoon or cul-de-sac in our own comfort zone with particular media outlets. david, you began to touch on that. i'd be entered in the panel greatsing that at greater --

greasing that at greater -- dressing that at -- addressing that at greater length. >> i mean, i think you raise a good point. i don't think our measures quite get at what you're talking about which is more social networks and maybe people who discuss politics which some other folks here i know studies. i mean, i think it's worth analyzing. i don't know that we have the evidence to answer your question very well. >> okay. right here. right. right here. >> dave mcel by from byu. you looked at negative feelings on the thermometer towards the parties. i'm wondering if you get the same reaction towards the candidates and, if so, why would you pick parties rather than candidates as the major marker here? and then for david, on the one slide where you looked at

negative feelings over time, it looked like the negativity was more pronounce thed towards republicans, towards the republican party than the democratic party. i want to make sure i didn't misread that slide. and if so, why have negative feelings grown much great or towards the republicans? >> so the answer is that it shows the same trend. if you look at the candidate affect measures over time, they're a little more variable -- >> [inaudible] >> because this is the state of the parties conference. [laughter] no, i mean, more seriously, the parties are the kind of longer-term, you know, continue from election to election. so that's why i was looking for these sort of long-term trends. and you do get more fluctuation from election to election when you look at candidate affect. some of that is candidate-specific. although, of course, it's strongly correlated with

partisan affect. so -- and the overall trend is definitely in the same direction. >> we looked at the presidential thermometer ratings, too, and found similar trends as alan mentioned. we also looked at there's some questions in the surveys that ask how angry does the democratic candidate make you, and those have trended up as well over time with 2012 being the record anger and fear cycle. the, your other question, we found the same pattern of declining thermometer ratings for democrats rating the republican party and republicans rating the democratic party. on average, the democratic ratings of the republican party are a point or so lower on average than republicans' ratings on democrat, but the differences are pretty small. >> [inaudible]

>> yeah. >> okay. up top? >> thanks. thank you very much. this one is for joel. >> sorry, could you identify yourself? >> oh, my name is ian, i'm a graduate student with the -- [inaudible] at the university of akron's business institute. >> great. thank you. >> you talked about -- this is about polarization, after all. so when you showed your information on the asian population, they seemed to trend 42, 43 to the republicans and the democrats, and that was absolutely amazing to me. in your study of that, what drove the asian population to the republicans 42%, and what drove the 43% to the democrats? how is that so different when it seems like they live in areas that are quite homogeneous. >> excellent question. i have a colleague who's asian-american, he lives in an upper middle class, upper class suburb on the east side. if you look at census

statistics, you find that asian-americans are the most educated racial group in america. they have the highest levels of education. they also have the highest levels of income. about $15,000 or more above the income for whites families, okay? -- white families, okay in this i think that's a major factor. where you stand depends upon where you sit, and i think asian-americans sit very comfortably because they work hard, and they are successful. >> was your data, though, as i recall when you presented it, you had combined data over a long period of time in that table. and i think that could be misleading in the sense that i think if you looked at more recent data, i mean, we know what happened in the 2012 lengths and i think this was 2000 and 2008 as well, the asian vote went heavily democratic. and so i think -- and also some of those other groups, i think,

have shifted over time. the americans, you know, there's been some research recently, people have looked at this group of people who say i'm just american, and they were increasingly republican. and they found them in places like appalachia and large concentrations. so that's a group that i think is trending in the opposition direction. >> i think that's a valid point, alan. i couldn't present these in just one slide. i didn't have time, but that's something i think we these to explore, is to look at changes over time. we didn't see any significant ones initially, but as alan points out, you know, everything's in flux. >> right. over here. >> i'm sean --

[inaudible] from the university of texas, and i wanted to have a comment and a question for the first paper, the ignored paper up until now in the comment section. and my comment is i thought it was ingenious of you to show that one chart, the two-dimension chart. i thought that really compellingly presents who's participating in the partisan debate and then who's not participating. and i wondered if you could just speak a little bit to my question, a little bit of the cause and effect of that, right? so we know there are voting loss because the parties aren't speaking to them in a consistent way that they could engage the debate? if you could talk about the fact of their participation in the process. >> well, i think we are responding to the choices that we are given. so i think you particularly see this among the group that we've sort of labeled as populist. i don't think you seeing much sort of candidates that represent them consistently. of all the groups we've looked

at, they tend to be the ones to participate the last in. so i think they'd certainly look at the two choices they're presented with, and they don't get excited about it and, yes, they're less likely to turn out as a result. libertarians are a little bit different. they tend to turn out more, all else equal. but it's the populists and moderates who turn away, and i think they are being turned off by the two choices. >> i'm tianne oakley, i'm just a grassroots democrat activist. i know you all studies the past, but i'm more interested in knowing what your gut peel things are about the future -- feelings are about the future. are we going to get more partisan? is some event going to happen to break this all up? i know the demographics say the democrats are going to win more votes unless something else happens. and i'm not directing this to any, to anyone who wants to comment on that.

>> i'd like to say within the context of our paper, what we find, we had some evidence, for example, looking at hispanics and given all the attention they've received lately, and what we find is they look like the rest of the american public with respect to these two dimensions. so it's not as if the democrats can say, well, we're going to grab the his pan igs. the hispanics have a lot of diversity with respect to many issues. certainly, there are issues like core immigration that matter to that group, but overall it's not something that the democratic party can just go to sort of -- do to sort of grab all the hispanics. i think people with missing a lot of the diversity within those groups. >> well, i have to partially disagree with that. if you look at hispanics, they're predominantly, you know, lower income group. there are, you know, there's certainly diversity, but in terms of their attitudes toward those government questions, government activism, health care, things like that, they're

a predominantly liberal group. now, they're more diverse on social issues, but they don't vote mainly based on social issues. so there's no question that they tend to be on the progressive side on the economic issues, and that's the way they're voting. and especially with the republican party moving further to the right. you know, the problem the republican party is saying how can we appeals to voters? maybe if we support immigration. but that's only one after of their problems, and the party's been moving in the opposite direction if it really wants to appeal to these non-white voters, not just the african-americans, but hispanics who are definitely on the, you know, come down on the liberal side. his pan ins not as much as african-americans, but still they are definitely on that progressive side on those economic issues. >> yeah. i would just quickly add we ended up not including the hispanic data in this paper, but i have it in the slide show if it's possible to get it back up. if it isn't, that's fine. alan's kind of intuition and

evidence is quite right, at least compares to ours very similarly in that the hispanic voters in the oversample of the anes in 2012 are to the left economically and slightly conservative socially. but as mike said, they also are quite heterogenerallous, but there's a little bit of a density in this kind of populist area. and as we looked at the 2008 and 2012 american national elections study and just asked how many hispanics or what percentage, you know, fall into each of our five categories, the liberals were the largest group if 2008, but the moderates were in 2012. and the liberal policy preferences dropped, i think, 11% from 2008 to 2012. but most of that went to moderates and not to conservatives or libertarians. and so i think, you know, it's a complicated picture that perhaps slightly advantages the democrats, and if you put in the word immigration, it probably

advantage them a bit more -- advantages them a bit more. >> wanted to comment, i agree with all of the panelists is and particularly alan. i don't think that hispanic voters are on the horizon for the republicans mainly for the reasons he stated. there's an interesting book written some years ago by two journalists, thomas and mary edsel, "en -- chain reaction." and what they argue is, basically, democratic groups are democratic because they depend more upon government and government services, and they, therefore, tend to be liberals. liberals want more government. or and the republicans are those who are less dependent on government and, therefore, see government as a vehicle of taking away their hard earned money. mitt romney made the unfortunate comparison of the 53 versus 47, but a i think there are many republicans who see themselves the cash cows for the democrats. and so i don't see them going

along. >> that is definitely true in terms of the way they think of themselves, but the interesting thing is that income itself is not a very good predicter of the vote. it's not -- you have these affluent republicans and so, therefore, they're concerned that the low income democrats are going to take -- because, you know, once you control for race, the relationship between family income and presidential vote in 2012 is about .05. something like that. among whites it's really almost nonexistent. you know, except at the very low end you get, you know, a slightly higher democratic vote. at the very, very high end, you know, you can only go to 250,000 and higher in the anes data. they're a little more republican, but not all that much. for example, religiosity, frequency of church attendance way outweigh the impact of income.

way outweigh it. low income religious white votes heavily republican and high income secular vote much more democratic. >> hi, i'm dan shay of colby college. if the panel -- this is also about the future. if polarization is being driven by attitudes towards the other party, a growing, dare we say, disdain for the other side, do you think that that'll eventually have an impact on housing patterns? that is to say i'd like you to weigh in on the sorting argument. you know, i don't want to live with them. do you think that'll -- i know this is a bit off topic, but the impact that this could have, the disdain for the other side and sorting. >> well, if you -- >> bill bishop says it already is. >> the bishop saga. >> yeah. his findings suggest that's already happening to some extent

at least. people are sorting themselves geographically for a variety of reasons, and some of that probably has to do with, you know, values and lifestyles, choices, other things that are correlated with party and ideology. but some of it may be explicitly political. i don't want to live in an area that's predominantly republican if i'm a democrat and just opposite be the i'm a republican. i think some of that is happening, certainly. >> i think i would take maybe not quite as negative a view as alan. i think, you know, there's some evidence of this geographic sorting, but i think people are choosing where to live based on other lifestyle choices that happen to coincide with partisanship, nonpartisanshipping with the main driving force there. i think it's also easier, this gets to bill's question of social media and what not. people may have high disdain for

the orr party, but they can certainly keep it to themselves if they want or just keep it to their own networks of friends and fellow partisans if they so choose. >> again, it's an excellent question. i see, i see partisan sorting as an extension, as you, as you know, of the kinds of sorting that bishop talks about in his book, "the big sort." and i think, i think it has to do with the translation of cultural identifications into political identifications, cultural scholars suggest three causal links. one is how we feel toward different groups in american society, whether we feel positively or negatively toward them. and i did an article some years ago showing how positive and negative reference groups influenced the outcome of the 1988 presidential elections.

another factor, as alan has alluded to, is religious belief systems. and finally, from a evolutionary or sociological or anthropological standpoint, there is a struggle for cultural dominance in america between those groups who are contending for the dominance of their preferred values in -- and ways of life. >> i just would quickly, i think, echo maybe david's point about just being hesitant about a correlation meaning causation in terms of this relationship. and also i think it's just sort of an interesting theoretical question. is it how people think about congress? they hate congress but love their congressperson. cothey hate democrats, but the democratic neighbor's okay? i tend to wonder if there's a differentiation between how people see the parties versus how they see their neighbors. whether you like old homes and new homes, all that kind of stuff. >> i mean, i think there's

something to that, but at the same time it's probably more of a factor this terms of -- i mean, self-selection's having a bigger impact on kind of who people interact with. who they talk to about politics especially. and so if you have friends and neighbors and co-workers who support the other party, you may still be friends and, you know, you're kind of stuck with being neighbors and co-worker unless you move, change your job, but you don't talk about politics with them anymore. and you -- people increasingly, i think, use social media to interact with other people who share their, especially people who care about politics. the more you care about politics and are involved in it, the more that's true. >> yeah. i see charles franklin sitting over there, and the surveys he did in wisconsin before the recall included a question of did you stop talking to somebody because of their views on the recall. and, you know, there's a fair portion of people, i wanted to say 20% if i -- >> one-third: >> one-third who just stopped talking to folks about politics in that highly contentious

particular episode where i work. >> [inaudible] >> ron rap a port, william and mary. bishop had, i thought, a really interesting point on this which was of the oecd countries, americans were the most likely to talk about politics. they were the least likely to talk about politics with people with whom they disagreed. just to give bill bishop -- i mean, and that's eight years ago or whenever he wrote the book. anyway -- >> yeah. >> ron, as usual, jumped aof me while -- ahead of me while still sitting down. [laughter] i'm from ohio state university, and i wanted to make one comment and then ask a question really directed at joel. the comment is that we've done national surveys this 1992, 2004 and again in 2012 in this

country and in 20 other countries around the world asking about discussion networks. and americans are the ones most likely to talk only to people they agree with, and that's increased over time. and americans, by the way, are more polarized than people in any of these other societies along the lines that the panel has, i think very nicely, commented on. now my question to joel, i was very interested, joel, in your result that whites who live this the most diverse counties are the most likely to vote republican or to be republicans. and as i think about that, i can see that fitting into the south quite well. some of the most diverse counties this the country, of course, are these black belt counties from the rural south and maybe the suburban south. does it hold in the north as well? because i think of places, well, you know, you think of the new york city elections, a very diverse county or series of counties, actually, and yet

whites were overwhelmingly voting democratic there and probably did for president as well. so does it extend beyond the south, or is it the south that's really driving that? and then maybe a broader point to make is that one of the things i think we're seeing here is the southernization of the republican party. ..