Why We're Polarized

By 2000, the percentage of truly undecided voters had shrunk to 7%. Prior to that election, presidential candidates courted independent voters with moderate positions and attempted to persuade them. After that election, a strategy of party mobilization, in which candidates attempted to excite their base, made more sense. Such a strategy worked for George W. Bush in 2004. In 2008, Obama’s candidacy similarly mobilized Democratic constituencies. As the political parties have become increasingly sorted, it is harder for people to stay undecided, and thus polarizing strategies contribute to a further polarization of the electorate.

Until the 1970s, party officials controlled presidential nominations. That system was then replaced with primaries and caucuses, where the party rank-and-file choose nominees. The new system weakened political parties and simultaneously strengthened partisanship. To win, candidates must appeal to an “intense minority of party supporters who turn out to vote” (178). Klein notes that it would have been inconceivable for either Trump or Bernie Sanders to have had any chance of winning the nomination of a major party in the old system. Now, the American system is more vulnerable to extremists and demagogues. Likewise, members of Congress, particularly in safe seats or those where their party has a huge advantage, fear primary challengers and are thus given incentive to stay in the far extremes of their party.

New methods of fundraising additionally contribute to polarization. Klein cites the example of Congressman Joe Wilson, who called President Obama a liar in the middle of Obama’s State of the Union address. While widely condemned by Republican elites, Wilson raised a lot of money from ideological small donors. In those states with no restrictions on large donors, there tends to be less polarization in state legislatures because such donors seek moderate candidates. If candidates have to raise money in small amounts, they appeal to the partisans. To get donations from small donors, which are now an integral part of national fundraising, candidates need to get noticed, typically by being extreme or confrontational. Furthermore, small donors are likely to give to candidates running against candidates they hate. Klein notes that Trump and Sanders did extremely well with fundraising from small donors.

As the political media have become more nationalized, people’s donations gravitate to those races. Given the identity model of political engagement, it is logical to donate money as a form of self-expression about identity and about rejection of others. Doing so would make no sense if people were engaged on the basis of material interests, as state and local policies impact those interests significantly more. This dynamic gives candidates incentive to nationalize themselves and their campaigns. Klein explains that big-dollar donations, which are corrupting, coexist with small donations, which are polarizing. On the micro-level, corporate donors and the rich get obscure bills and provisions passed in their interest, while partisans dominate confrontational and salient bills. In the Trump administration, there was an alliance between these types of transactional and ideological politics.

In 2016, Trump successfully executed a hostile takeover of the Republican Party by mobilizing an alienated minority in a crowded field of candidates. In past elections, a party would pay a political price for nominating an extremist, with independent voters gravitating to the other party. With polarization, the Republicans paid no such price: “As party affiliation becomes more important, individual candidate traits lose their power” (194). Any candidate who wins a major party nomination has a good chance to become president and can count on the support of partisans. Klein argues that this creates a “flaw in our electoral software” (196), opening the country up to threats from extremists and demagogues.