Assessing Mass Opinion Polarization in the US Using Relative Distribution Method

Jae Lee ()

Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, 2015, vol. 124, issue 2, 598 pages

Abstract: Through an analysis of the cumulative data of the American National Election Studies between 1984 and 2008, this study presents evidence of growing mass polarization in terms of standard ANES measures of ideological orientation using the public policy issue dimensions. The empirical findings here suggest that the degree of polarization among US citizens increased as the distributional center of measures of political ideology have progressively declined, though the opinion distribution of the later periods do not dramatically exhibit a text-book style polarized distribution (e.g., bimodal distribution). According to the findings, attitudes toward government guarantees have shifted back and forth between more liberal and more conservative positions while public opinion on cultural issues has generally moved more liberal positions over years. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015

Keywords: Mass polarization; ANES; Relative distribution method; Ideology; Ideological orientation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11205-014-0797-1 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:soinre:v:124:y:2015:i:2:p:571-598

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11135

DOI: 10.1007/s11205-014-0797-1

Access Statistics for this article

Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement is currently edited by Filomena Maggino

More articles in Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().