"People's Polarized Opinions" by Joseph C.

In today’s culture people are more polarized in political views.  In recent years Republicans have become much more conservitive and Democrats have become much more liberal which is causing an increase in tension among these two groups. The graphs below show how the beliefs of Republicans and Democrats have become much more polarized.  The graphs shown below compare the political ideologies of a group of 10,000 adults in 1994 and 2014.  In the span of twenty years the percent of people who report having consistently conservitive or consistently liberal has more than doubled.

  

The map below shows that over the years individual counties are much more likely to be won in a landslide now than in the nineties.  People in individual areas or becoming much more homogeneous in their ideologies, they are surrounding themselves with people who share our opinions and shun those who do not.  This problem has grown over the years so now half of all voters live in landslide counties.  A landslide county is a county where one political party wins by over 20 percentage points.    This causes people to not become exposed to other beliefs, if everyone around me believes this way surely it is the correct opinion and everyone else is a danger to the system.

The media is also becoming more one-sided, almost half of the people who are consistently conservitive and nearly a third of the consistently Liberal population mostly or always see political posts that side with their own.  Nearly half of the consistently conservitive population has reported that they get most of their political news from one place, Fox News, while Liberals are CNN, MSNBC and NPR.  People are seeing people that agree to their own side and they do not interact with as many people with opposing ideologies which is making them much more likely to believe that anyone who believes otherwise is plain wrong.

It is human nature to view one’s own side as the right one no matter what, for example in sports fans often never say that their team is playing unfair it is always the other team just making up excuses.  Politics has become similar to that sports team, people are saying, “there is no way that my side is wrong” and blindly following one side without thinking about the validity of the other side claims. 

People are even ending friendships just because they have differing political views, 31% of consistent conservatives and 41% consistent liberals have reported blocking someone on social media or even ended a friendship because they have different political beliefs

The real question for all of this is, why does this matter?  This is important because as the figure below shows people are resorting to an “us versus them” mentality making them intolerant to the other side’s claims.  The graph below shows that more Republicans believe that Democrats are a danger to the country, and vice versa.   In today’s world we should not be arguing amongst ourselves over what seems insignificant in the grand scheme of things.

Works Cited

Aisch, Gregor, et al. “How Large Is the Divide Between Red and Blue America?” The New York Times, The New York Times, 4 Nov. 2016, www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/04/us/politics/growing-divide-between-red-and-blue-america.html.

Zacchia, Camillo. “Tribalism Remains Mankind's Most Dangerous Instinct.” HuffPost Canada, HuffPost Canada, 21 Dec. 2016, www.huffingtonpost.ca/camillo-zacchia-phd/identity-politics_b_13744352.html.

“Political Polarization in the American Public.” Pew Research Center, Washington, D.C. June 12, 2014 https://www.people-press.org/2014/06/12/political-polarization-in-the-american-public/

“Political Polarization & Media Habits.” Pew Research Center, Washington, D.C. October 21, 2014 https://www.journalism.org/2014/10/21/political-polarization-media-habits/