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Politics
posted by janrinok on Monday January 27 2020, @05:46PM   Printer-friendly

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Political polarization among Americans has grown rapidly in the last 40 years—more than in Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia or Germany—a phenomenon possibly due to increased racial division, the rise of partisan cable news and changes in the composition of the Democratic and Republican parties.

That's according to new research co-authored by Jesse Shapiro, a professor of political economy at Brown University. The study, conducted alongside Stanford University economists Levi Boxell and Matthew Gentzkow, was released on Monday, Jan. 20, as a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper.

In the study, Shapiro and colleagues present the first ever multi-nation evidence on long-term trends in "affective polarization"—a phenomenon in which citizens feel more negatively toward other political parties than toward their own. They found that in the U.S., affective polarization has increased more dramatically since the late 1970s than in the eight other countries they examined—the U.K., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Switzerland, Norway and Sweden.

"A lot of analysis on polarization is focused on the U.S., so we thought it could be interesting to put the U.S. in context and see whether it is part of a global trend or whether it looks more exceptional," Shapiro said. "We found that the trend in the U.S. is indeed exceptional."

Using data from four decades of public opinion surveys conducted in the nine countries, the researchers used a so-called "feeling thermometer" to rate attitudes on a scale from 0 to 100, where 0 reflected no negative feelings toward other parties. They found that in 1978, the average American rated the members of their own political party 27 points higher than members of the other major party. By 2016, Americans were rating their own party 45.9 points higher than the other party, on average. In other words, negative feelings toward members of the other party compared to one's own party increased by an average of 4.8 points per decade.

The researchers found that polarization had also risen in Canada, New Zealand and Switzerland in the last 40 years, but to a lesser extent. In the U.K., Australia, Germany, Norway and Sweden, polarization decreased.

More information: Levi Boxell et al, Cross-Country Trends in Affective Polarization, (2020). DOI: 10.3386/w26669


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  • (Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Tuesday January 28 2020, @10:06PM

    by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Tuesday January 28 2020, @10:06PM (#950267) Journal
    No, only those who did it and lied about it, and condemn others for doing the same. It's a very specific group - anti-abortionists who have procured abortions for themselves or a family member. If someone got an abortion in the past or aided someone to, and still condemns others today, they are lying hypocrites. If they got or procured an abortion in the past and are now not against abortion, they are not lying hypocrites. It's only the hypocrites, who continue to deny others what they in secret had themselves, who merit being called out.

    You totally missed the point. There are two different groups, and only one are hypocrites. As for calling me a whore, I've been called far worse, and no, I've never been a sex worker. Though one of my sisters did say I dressed like a prostitute because I had the top 3 buttons of my top open in 90 degree weather. Or maybe it was the 2" hoop earrings? Probably both. My reaction? "Works for me." When it's 90 degrees in the shade I'm going to dress for the weather. Top and skirt. Maybe a sun hat. Sandals or barefoot in the grass beside the sidewalk.

    Hardly makes me a whore. But it also doesn't invalidate that many transsexuals engage in the sex trade. Two different groups - those who do and those who don't. Same as anti-abortionists who have procured abortions, and those who haven't. Only the first group are self-entitled hypocrites.

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