Civic trend not looking good: The perpetuation of polarization probably won’t end well.

 

Americans are increasingly grouping into communities with shared political view.  An additional flaw in an already dysfunctional Constitutional system.  Particularly to the democratic principle we depend on for elections and passing laws that could improve any of the seven intentions in our Constitution’s preamble.

Political party voters are now more geographically grouped within states than at any point since the Civil War.  Nearly 80 percent of Americans now live in a state where a single party controls both the governorship and the legislature. Plus stinging partisan divides within them. According to the Cook Political Report over 80 percent of our nation’s 435 congressional districts will be noncompetitive in 2024.  In 1999 it was 58 percent.  Gerrymandering explains some of this, but it’s mostly because the electorate has become more homogeneous in numerous districts.

It is the growing cognitive repulsion of another person’s partisan views on hot button issues fixed into new state laws like firearms abortion, firearms, Covid restrictions, or LGBTQ rights but not necessarily for political reasons alone.  A Census survey uncovered 84 percent of Americans moved in 2022 for jobs, housing, or family.  Some sorting happens anyway because most pocketbook concerns overlap with political ones. Like moving to low-tax and lower-cost red states.   Plus, some long-term changes within the two parties and their constituencies.

Over recent decades, the urban/rural political party’s divide expanded into a chasm.  In the 2020 election, Biden won 91 percent of the country’s most populous counties.  Trump took more than 2,500 of the remaining 3,000 counties. Increasingly, Democrats are higher-educated city dwellers working in white-collar jobs, whereas more of the rural white working class has trended Republican.

This trend toward our priority of feeling comfortable living among people with similar beliefs and backgrounds is a trouble mental trend that cannot be good for our nation’s political health as like-minded people tend to become more extreme over time.  Such clumping can reinforce the sense that people outside the bubble are the enemy.    In a 2022 Pew survey, majorities of Democrats and Republicans said they viewed members of the other party as more “immoral” and “dishonest.” In 2016 less than half in each party said the same.

This results in fewer voters in the middle offering lawmakers less incentive to reach across the aisle to compromise.  It’s hard to imagine how this trend can be slowed or reversed.  Too many minds now believe their political party is their personal identity...and then feel personally threatened.

Gun sales have been going up while violent crimes are going down.  Our cognitive divisions could become increasingly lethal.  This is not uncharted territory.  Some pundits have feared a second civil war far different than our first.  Meanwhile some extremist groups have been hoping for this while others have been planning for it.  Without effective undoing of this civic trend, things will eventually end very very badly.