A study found that Democrats and Republicans in Congress are ideologically further apart than at any time in the past half-century. Public opinion about its presidents has become more divided along partisan lines than at any time in the history of polls. House districts have grown so staunchly liberal or conservative that only a few dozen will be truly competitive in this fall’s election.
Understand the state of Roe v. Wade
What is Roe v. Wade? Roe v. Wade is a landmark Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion in the United States. The 7-2 ruling was announced on Jan. 22, 1973. Judge Harry A. Blackmun, a humble Midwestern Republican and defender of the right to abortion, wrote the majority opinion.
“Truly, in every area of politics you see evidence of partisan polarization,” said Carroll Doherty, director of political research at the Pew Research Center.
Increasingly, Americans are separating themselves into their own safe spaces — geographically, culturally, ideologically, factually, and metaphorically. Not only do they stick to news channels or social media accounts that reinforce their views, but they also choose to live with and socialize with those who share their views.
In 1960, 4 percent of Democrats and Republicans said they would be unhappy if their children married someone from the other party. According to the Public Religion Research Institute, that number has now grown to 35 percent among Republicans and to 45 percent among Democrats. Over the course of just four years, the Institute for Family Studies found, Republican-Democratic marriages have halved in America. As it was, in 2016 only 9 percent of marriages involved opposing couples; by 2020, that figure had fallen to just 4 percent.
Lilliana Mason, a political scientist at Johns Hopkins University’s SNF Agora Institute, said her research showed Americans also didn’t want to live next door to someone from the other party. “Our reality is changing. The people we surround ourselves with have completely different stories about what’s happening in America,” she said.
Ms. Mason, who published her latest book Friday, “Radical American Partisanship: Mapping Violent Hostility, Its Causes, and the Consequences for Democracy,” written with Nathan P. Kalmoe, said the fragmentation of abortion laws in a post-Roe America would those trends only exacerbate if people wanted to live in states where they agreed with the new laws.
“The fact that we are physically separated from each other allows us to hate each other more,” she said. “It’s easy to dehumanize someone you’ve never met. It encourages the us-versus-them mindset that this big election stake creates – if they win the election, it’s all over.”