Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

Have Americans’ Attitudes Become More Polarized? – an Update

Contents:

Author Info

  • John H. Evans

    (University of California, San Diego)

Registered author(s):

    Abstract

    Objective: I update the analysis of attitudinal polarization originally presented in DiMaggio, Evans and Bryson (DEB) (1996) by using newly available years of survey data. Method: Like DEB, I derive aggregate distributional parameters for social groups in each year of the surveys, and then regress the year of the surveys on each parameter. Results: As in DEB’s original paper, there is little evidence of general polarization in attitudes between the early 1970s and today. However, while DEB found some evidence that polarization in the public may be the result of polarization in our political system, with the additional years of data this conclusion is inescapable. Conclusions: While political scientists have recently found polarization among our elected officials on economic issues, it seems clear that members of the public who are involved with politics are becoming polarized on moral issues. Political scientists should follow up on this research to see not only if elected officials are polarized on these issues, but the causal direction of the link between officials and the public.

    Download Info

    If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
    File URL: http://www.princeton.edu/~artspol/workpap/WP24%20-%20Evans.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    Bibliographic Info

    Paper provided by Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies. in its series Working Papers with number 40.

    as in new window
    Length:
    Date of creation: May 2002
    Date of revision:
    Handle: RePEc:pri:cpanda:40

    Contact details of provider:
    Postal: Robertson Hall, Princeton, NJ 08544-1013
    Phone: (609) 258-4800
    Web page: http://www.princeton.edu/~artspol/index.html
    More information through EDIRC

    Related research

    Keywords:

    Find related papers by JEL classification:

    References

    No references listed on IDEAS
    You can help add them by filling out this form.

    Citations

    Blog mentions

    As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
    1. How Many Americas?
      by Mark Thoma in Economist's View on 2008-06-18 07:15:00
    2. Nixonland: One, Two, or Many Americas?
      by Lane Kenworthy in Consider the Evidence on 2008-06-18 03:37:02

    Lists

    This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pri:cpanda:40

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (David Long).

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

    If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.