CHAPTER 10: Group Polarization of Public Attitudes II: Class & Religiosity Polarization

In Chapters 5, 6, 7, and 8, I established that significant political polarization has occurred at the level of the mass public over the last three decades in the dimensions of political conflict in American society. In Chapter 9 I examined partisan polarization, an important phenomenon in American politics. Using the group polarization measure I have developed, I examined the grouped party identifiers and found that the parties have become increasingly ideologically coherent and polarized on social issues, like abortion. While the previous analyses have examined polarization globally, at the level of the mass electorate, it is important to examine polarization from the perspective of the social and political groups that compose the mass public and structure the partisan and political competition. Though polarization is likely operative at the primary (kin) group level, political polarization is most relevant to the competition and conflict between secondary groups (peer groups, interest groups, demographic groups, etc.), as it is these groups that both serve to inform and motivate individual citizens to become politically active and to which formal political organizations (i.e. political parties) structure their appeals of allegiance in exchange for policy concessions.

Social groups are foundational human associations upon which societies are built and changes in the political activity and partisan affiliation of groups is a fundamental force for change in our partisan and electoral systems, the issue environment of the public policy agenda, and the conflict within society irrespective of whether that influence serves pluralist ideals. A full group-based analysis would involve examining all or most all of the relevant social groups that compose the party coalitions and the constituents of elected officials. The complete group-based assessment is beyond the scope of this study; however I will look at two groups specifically relevant to the debate over polarization in American politics: class and religiosity. I will examine political polarization in two distinct but related dimensions (partisanship and ideology) with respect to two these major social groupings using the following classifications: levels of income, and levels of religiosity.

Partisanship is the most significant vehicle for political conflict in American society and thus polarization of groups along a partisan dimension reflects 1) the degree to which these groups have become ‘politicized’ and thus have become active participants in partisan politics 2) the degree to which party elites must be responsive to the issue and policy concerns of the groups that have increasingly identified with their side of the partisan divide.

The larger ideological dimension is, as I noted in Chapter 9, a useful proxy for the political issue space as well as a dimension on which we have reliable data for the breadth of the time series. Dispersion of the classes on ideology would suggest a shift in the politics of citizens with differing social and economic status. Particularly if the poor have become more conservative since the 1970’s it may indicate a successful appeal to that demographic in non-economic dimensions (i.e. the social issue dimension). Furthermore, if the religious and secular citizens have become ideologically divergent, it suggests an increasing role for religiosity in politics and a new source of social conflict, just as Hunter posited in his original take on the culture wars. In order to study political polarization and the culture wars the relationship between social groupings and ideology must be at the forefront of the empirical analysis.

The evidence presented here on group polarization speaks to two fundamental questions on political polarization: 1) Has the poor in America been influenced by the emerging culture war and consequently associated themselves increasingly with the Right and the Republican Party, as Thomas Frank argues? Have the poor been duped into taking the Culture War opiate? 2) Is religion playing a larger role in American politics? Is your propensity to attend church a better predictor of your political beliefs today than a few decades ago?

Class is a relevant social characteristic both as a source of social identification and association in the American public, and thus of intrinsic importance in political competition, and as a potential source of political and partisan polarization. Class structures the political and partisan inclinations of the public. Issues related to income levels and social class define and distinguish the political parties and are a major source of political conflict in most if not all economically advanced societies. Furthermore, class is of particular relevance to the culture war. For those who believe that class is the be-all and end-all of electoral choice and partisan affiliation, social issues represent a confounding and even immoral basis for structuring partisan competition. Beyond the normative affront some take to the possibility of social issues trumping class in partisan and political choices by the mass public, there is the question of whether it does. There is an empirical question: have social issues increasingly trumped class for voters and partisan identifiers? If they have, then given the widely accepted division on social issues among partisan and political elites, we would expect the classes to respond accordingly. If poor and blue collar, working class voters have prioritized social issues above and beyond their economic concerns, then this should reflect in the relative average partisan identifications for these classifications.

Finally, I consider the fundamental empirical question that goes directly t o the existence of the culture war itself as Hunter originally envisioned it. Hunter’s formulation of the culture wars suggested a growing schism between religious citizens and secular citizens in American society. Given the uncompromising nature of divisions on moral questions like abortion and gay rights, this growing division, reflected in our elected institutions, would lead to increasing conflict: a culture war. Just as with the class-related polarization issues, Hunter’s thesis presents a specific empirical question that requires further examination and explication: is there an increasing partisan and/or ideological divide between the religious members of the mass public and the secular identifiers? Has growth in the size and political coherence of either side of the divide contributed to political conflict? I test these questions directly by grouping the mass public in terms of religiosity in order to assess the trends in the polarization (or depolarization) of the religious versus the secular on the ideological and partisan dimensions.

Using the group polarization measure I developed in Chapter 3 and defined for empirical analysis in Chapter 4 (both weighted and unweighted group polarization), I will attempt to answer these questions on political polarization by assessing whether these groups have ‘polarized’ on partisan and ideological dimensions over the course of the past three decades. Have the poor shifted towards the Republican Party given the increasing social conservatism of Republican political elites and activists despite the apparent incongruence in economic policy between the poor and the Republicans? In other words, have the poor been ‘duped’ into becoming Republicans because culture trumps economics for these voters? Have the religious and non-religious groups increasingly defined themselves in terms of the political dimension and thus increasingly identified with one party over the other? Have the faithful diverged from seculars on partisanship and ideology? A systematic assessment of the aggregation of attitudes in these groupings and along these important political dimensions represents a substantively important step towards a greater understanding of political polarization in the United States.

Data

As mentioned above, there are two ‘types’ of variables used in this analysis. The first type is a group-identification variable: an ordinal classification of the population along some relevant dimension. The three group identification variables in this analysis are party identification, income levels, and religiosity. The party ID variable used for classification is a three-category variable that collapses strong partisans, weak partisan identifiers, and independent leaners all into an aggregate ‘party’ category. So, for example, “Republicans” in this variable are respondents who either identified themselves as strong Republicans, weak Republicans, or Independents who lean towards the Republican Party. The income the classification variable uses the five income categories created for the ANES time series.⁷¹ The religiosity group identification variable sorts respondents by their church attendance. This is a rough measure of the respondent’s dedication to his or her religion. The religiosity measure used here collapses the top two and bottom two attendance categories to create a four category measure of religiosity. On the top end, respondents who said they attended church every week or nearly every week were included in the same category. At the bottom of the church attendance scale, respondents who reported they never attend church (but do not claim to be atheist or agnostic) were combined with respondents who said they were either atheists or agnostics.

The two political dimension variables are party identification and ideology. The party identification variable in this chapter is used as a proxy for partisanship as a political dimension, and it is not the same one used for the partisan group classifications in Chapter 9 (which defines partisanship using three categories: Republican, Independent, and Democrat). This party identification variable is a five category variable with the weak partisan identifiers and independent-leaners collapsed into the same category. Strong partisans and independents are classified in separate categories.⁷²

Data Presentation Organization

The organization of the data presentation in this chapter is the same as that in Chapter 9. I first present a decomposition table which reports the total group polarization score for the grouping variable on the ideological or partisan dimension in addition to each categorical component of that group polarization score. For example, the decomposition table of class on the partisan dimension reports the total class polarization on partisanship as well as the component scores for each class category. For each decomposition table there is a regression table reporting the trends in polarization for total group polarization and the component category group polarization. The second type of table is a contribution table. I report two contribution tables for each dimensional analysis. The first table reports the percent contribution and the mean deviation of that contribution on the weighted group polarization score—the group squared distances weighted by the size of the group. The second table reports the percent contribution and the mean deviation for the unweighted group polarization score. For each set of contribution tables there is a regression table that reports trend models in the mean deviation for the percent contribution of each of the categories to the total group polarization score (both weighted and unweighted). I use data pictures to illustrate interesting and significant trends and relationships in group polarization.

Are Social Issues the Opiate of the Working Class?

In What’s the Matter With Kansas?, Thomas Franks argues that the working class of America have been duped into supporting t he Republican party due to its conservative social issue positions (which, in fact, are just a convenient electoral ploy in order to pursue a conservative economic agenda at odds with working class interests). “The hallmark of backlash conservatism is that it approaches politics not as a defender of the existing order or as a genteel aristocrat but as an average working person offended by the arrogant impositions of the (liberal) upper class.” Franks believes that the Democrats have failed to earn working class support both as a function of the clever ‘framing’ of elections by Republicans as referendums on social issues and family values and as a consequence of the Democratic Party’s failure to emphasize economic liberalism (and thus appeal directly to the poor and working class interests). As the Franks quote at the beginning of the chapter indicates, Franks argues that growing working class conservatism has lead to working class defections on social issues and cost the Democratic Party elections. Franks tells a gripping tale backed with anecdotes and narrative…but has Franks built it on sand?

Table 10.1 reports the group polarization for the income classes and the decomposition of GP by each income class category from 1970 to 2004. It should be apparent from just a cursory examination of this table that little polarization has occurred. The polarization of the Poor was 0.094 in 1970. It was 0.103 in 2004. The only consistent trend apparent is a relatively slight increase in the polarization of the richest of income classes on party identification. The poor, on the other hand, are just as polarized in 1970 (0.09) as they were in 2000 (0.09). There is very little difference between the polarization for the ‘working’ class category in 1970 (0.12) and that in 2000 (0.15), which is also the peak in group polarization for the “poor” category. For the lower middle class category, we see the same pattern of group polarization that we did with the working class. There is a slight increase in group polarization in the later years (peaking in 1996 with a 0.43) but there is very little evidence of substantial polarization over the times series. There’s even less polarization for the upper middle class (0.32 peak in 1994). Figure 10.1 shows the flat trend line for income group polarization on partisanship. But for the slight increase in polarization in the mid-nineties where it briefly tops a polarization score of 1, the average distance between income groups in terms of their partisan affiliation is essentially constant. The poor and working class party identification in the 1970’s is virtually indistinguishable from that of any other decade in the analysis. Though some of the larger polarization scores occur in the later years for the lower and upper middle class, the polarization trend for these categories is slight. Looking to the polarization on income as a class variable, the polarization peak occurs in 1996 (1.125) while the low was in 1972 (0.154). So there is some increase in polarization among the income classes. But this increase is negligible substantively speaking.