Wednesday 22 November 2017

The partisan divide in America is widening

AS MILLIONS of Americans travelled home for Thanksgiving this week advice columns were filled with the perennial—but increasingly fraught—question of what to talk about at the dinner table. ("When your liberal aunt shows up at Thanksgiving in Trump country" ran one headline in the Washington Post). In recent years generational and partisan attitudes towards a range of political issues have diverged, with political-party stalwarts holding increasingly negative views of the followers of the party they oppose. Yet at the same time, there is some hope to be drawn from growing agreement on a range of social issues.

Polls suggest that on a number of measures the partisan divide is wider than ever. Surveys by Pew Research Center, for example, report that in 1994 there was a 20-point disparity in the percentage of Republicans and Democrats who thought government should do more to help the needy; by 2017 that had increased to 47 percentage points. That reflects divergence in views about the fairness of the economic system—with...Continue reading

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