Polarization and Classroom Practice, Part III: Fissures Among Elites and the Masses

by Shawn P. Healy, PhD, Democracy Program Director

In the first two posts of this four part series, I profiled the political typologies of educators and examined the promise of controversial issues discussions in classrooms to mitigate political polarization’s long-term, deleterious effects. Today, we’ll examine polarization itself and discuss the extent to which it is a mass or elite-driven phenomenon.

Conventional wisdom suggests that polarization is a mass phenomenon, but there is significant scholarly debate about the extent to which it is merely a byproduct of political elites. The latter is the long-standing claim on political scientist Morris Fiorina, updated in his recent book titled Unstable Majorities.

The parties are certainly more polarized than any time since the turn of the 20th Century, resulting in bi-polar choices for an electorate that isn’t as energized on the ideological margins. Fiorina claims that a long line of Democratic (Gore, Kerry, Obama, and Clinton) and Republican candidates for President (Bush I and II, McCain, and Romney) were reliably center-left and center-right, respectively, and electorate divided itself relatively evenly and predictably as a result. It was far right or left candidates like Barry Goldwater and George McGovern that led to landslide losses to mainstream candidates of the other party.

Trump himself tested traditional ideological alignments, adopting populist positions that were economically right and socially left. This scrambled the Electoral College math and resulted in his improbable victory. As President, Trump has mostly governed as a movement conservative, thus his continued popularity with the large segment of the Republican base.

Beyond presidential elections, the parties have sorted themselves ideologically over the last generation. Rockefeller Republicans and Boll Weevil Democrats have gone the way of the dodo bird. And this sorting overlays geography, with Democrats holding serve in large urban areas, rural America trending Republican by similar, landslide margins, and the formerly rock-ribbed Republican suburbs emerging as purple battlegrounds.

The Pew Research Center has tracked ideological shifts among both political elites and the masses from 1994 through 2017. I encourage you to click through both to see the polarization that has gripped both as those with mixed views shrink and the median member of each party moves to the left or right, respectively. The images below show trends among the electorate as a whole.

Pew uses a series of ten questions to determine ideological positioning, and trend lines demonstrate the polarization of views across a range of issues. This encompasses Americans’ views of government as a force for good; race, immigration, and sexual orientation; the military; and the environment. Even on issues where both parties have become more progressive, the gap between their respective views have widened (see immigration and same-sex marriage).

These are the ideological fissures that the issues we select for classroom instruction, and the students themselves, embody. Polarization is fueled by the political class, but the masses have clearly come along for the ride. These divisions tear the very fabric of our democracy, and educators hold pedagogical tools for repairing and rebuilding our body politic. We’ll conclude this series next week with some preliminary thoughts on how to thread this elusive needle.