Two Psychological Illusions are Fueling Our Differences On the evening of September 11, 2001, hours after the terrorist attacks that left nearly 3,000 people dead, Republican and Democratic senators stood on the steps of the Capitol to participate together in a moment of silence. When that moment of silence came to a close, the senators — who had engaged in plenty of partisan politics days before — spontaneously began to sing “God Bless America.” On…
Comments closedCategory: Polarization
The Pew Research Center put together a fascinating interactive chart showing how the US has become more polarized over time. A couple of points of interest to me… after the graphic. Here’s what I found especially interesting: Twenty years ago, there was enormous overlap between the two main parties in terms of political views. In 1994 23% of Republicans were more liberal than the median Democrat; 17% of Democrats were more conservative than the median Republican. That overlap has shrunk tremendously…
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