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Why We're Polarized?
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If the minority knows something is going to get passed, they have an incentive to try and influence it. It also enables cross-aisle voting, because they can claim credit for parts of the bill. Ezra Kline wrote a really good book on this.
Some good answers here (and some polarized and stupid ones too). The answer is very complicated and can't be explored easily in a Reddit comment. If you really want to understand the answer to your question I would strongly suggest Ezra Klein's book Why We're Polarized.
Why We're Polarized https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07TRNVTZQ/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_glt_6HE45SRTAQWBZ9C2E544
It's super readable. In a nut shell there are many reasons: historical, racial, social, technological, and psychological. Social media is part of it. Cable news. The sorting of the parties. Our inherent need to belong. Our inherent need to hear only what we want to hear.
Read the book.
We are more polarized than we've been since the civil war. We should all be worried about it. Good question!
If you want the arguments from this article expanded on and backed up more, you should check out Ezra Klein's recent book "Why We're Polarized".
https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B07TRNVTZQ
It's actually right up this sub's alley and quite interesting. Rather than framing it as an addiction like the article is doing, it talks about how politics is more akin to being a sports fan and a fan of a specific team. There's also studies showing outrage/fear is the best motivator for political action, including going out to vote. And troubling stuff like how showing people evidence against their beliefs just reinforces their beliefs more.
I was mulling doing a book report for this sub on it actually, but alas, work.
Well, I'm going to have to update my statistics based on my additional online research. The paper I was thinking of originally was Fernandes (2008). In it, he writes that a "[O]nly a small minority, 27%, of swingers consider themselves liberal." I didn't realize that this was based on a 1985 study (Jenks, 1985), so it was likely out of date when he wrote it*. A more recent study,* <strong>(Jenks, 2014)</strong> reflects a significant shift and puts conservatives and very conservatives at 18% of swingers, but people who identify as liberal or very liberal constitute 46.1% of swingers with moderates being 37%. (If our community follows general trends, the number of moderates is likely to have gone down and the numbers on both sides of moderate increasing proportionally due to well-documented polarization in the US electorate (Klein, 2020).
Hmm. I'm going to emphatically disagree with this assessment. To understand how we got here you need to understand the Southern Strategy and the Dixiecrats.
This book does a really great job of explaining how we got here and where we're likely going:
Highly recommend if you're interested in understanding this topic.
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