« Program in Survey Research | Main | Political Behavior (the journal) »

24 September 2005

What's the matter with Cambridge?

Yesterday’s PPBW workshop featured Steve Ansolabehere discussing the supposed culture war between “red� and “blue� America (paper in pdf format here). Ansolabehere argues that the vision of a deeply divided nation is misguided – electoral divisions between states or counties have diminished over time, not grown; there’s little sign of deep polarization in the distribution of policy preferences among the public (with the possible exception of abortion); and voters appear to weigh economic preferences more than moral issues when casting their vote.

The meatiness of the paper (and the fact that everyone loves arguing about the state of the nation) led to much discussion. Of particular interest was Ansolabehere’s findings that low-income voters were cross-pressured in terms of issue preferences: on average holding more liberal economic views, but more conservative social views (raising the Marxian question of whether the working class are duped into voting against their own interests. The answer according to the paper? Possibly, but not by religion, which failed to account for much of the variance in political divisions). On the flip-side, high-income voters appear to be equally cross-pressured by their conservative economic views and liberal social views. The people’s republic of Cambridge, Massachusetts votes as much against its own class interests as rural Kansas.

Of course, key to all these findings is how we define an “economic� or “social� issue. The answer from the room seemed to be that we’d know one when we saw one – and that we’d recognize problems with other people’s definitions just as quickly. Some issues don’t map onto either dimension neatly (crime, for example). Yet others are ignored by the “culture war� arguments that Steve and his colleagues want to critique yet have arguably polarized politics and the parties just as much (such as civil rights and racial issues). And other issues which at first glance fit neatly onto one of the two dimensions may implicitly ask respondents’ preferences about other issues (questions about equality, used to assess respondents’ economic preferences, may well be tapping views about race).

There’s also the question of what’s going on at the elite level. Fiorina’s recent book accounts for the apparent culture war by pointing to elite polarization. Candidates at election time routinely attack each other on these social issues – and the rhetoric certainly doesn’t stop after November. Yet this disconnect between masses and elites is puzzling (especially given that as political scientists we often assume some form of “trickle down� in attitudes from politicians to publics). Campaigns and parties oppose each other on social issues while ordinary Americans (at least according to Ansolabehere) cast their vote more on the basis of economic issues. For those of us who worry about representation, legitimacy and accountability, this seems to raise a puzzling set of questions. Are voters making their choice based on a set of issues that candidates do not campaign on? Are politicians winning votes because of one set of issues but campaigning - and perhaps governing - on another?

Posted by Phil Jones at September 24, 2005 10:40 AM