Causes of Ideological Polarization in the US

Political scientists call those voters, who find themselves in the social group with opposing political views, the “cross-pressured voters”. From the beginning of the studies on political behavior, the academics believed that people in these groups are less prone to pursuing active political participation. (Lazarsfeld, Berelson, and Gaudet 1944; Campbell et al. 1960). However, this segment of the electorate is very important to the political system, since cross-pressured voters provide the system with flexibility and constrain clear-cut intergroup polarization, since they tend to make their political decisions more carefully and do not take political identity for granted. “The available evidence suggests that the chances for a stable democracy are enhanced to the extent that groups and individuals have a number of cross-cutting, politically relevant affiliations” (Lipset, 1959).

However, these properties are only important if this segment of society is politically active. Obviously, cross-pressured voters do not express their political position as openly and as frequently, like regular partisans do, because it threatens to undermine socialization of a person with his social group. (Mason, 2018)

As the number of cross-pressured voters diminishes (Lavine, Johnston, and Steenbergen, 2012) and the social identities become more attached to ideology, parties gain more influence in the political decision-making, political behavior and ideational landscape. Thus, it increases social polarization. This increase is driven by the two separate factors.

The first one involves partisanship in general. In other words, it means increasing partisan bias on the policy opinions (set of opinions of how government should, or should not handle certain issues). Although, we previously argued that moderate polarization could improve rationality of voting behavior and ideological consistency, it is easy to exceed the boundaries of benign divergence and take the conflict to the extremes. At this point, the public becomes less independent in making decisions and less open for alternative policies and compromise.

The second one deals with the power of social identityto distort voters' perception of parties, political activism and the opposing camp in general. The existing literature has already shown how issue-based divergence can decrease the public demand for compromise, (Wolf, Strachan, and Shea 2012) and lower the importance of substantive unbiased information on political preferences. (Druckman, Peterson, and Slothuus 2013)

In her extensive book on social identity, Liliana Mason gives an assessment for how the United States met the conditions of a normal political system in the past: “Decades ago, social divisions between Americans over party, ideology, religion, class, race, and geography did not align neatly, so that particular social groups were friends in some circumstances and opponents in others.” She also provides the summary of the current state of affairs: “Unfortunately, the conditions for political and social stability that characterized the last century are increasingly unmet in American politics today.” (Mason 2018)

In order to back this point, Mason examines two opinion polls that cover a large time span. TheAmerican National Election Studies 1948-2008, and ANES 2012. It measures the political views on two main scales: ideological identity and policy opinion. In terms of policy choice, Democrats became 7% more liberal, Republicans became 10% more conservative. In terms of social identification, Democrats became 24 point more liberal and Republicans became 35 points more conservative. Although both scales show significant increase in divergence, the difference in ideological identity is almost twice as large as policy opinion differences, which proves the importance of the social sorting factor. We can make this conclusion, since identity proved to be a more differentiating factor than policy opinion.

Consequently, all the phenomena, stated above, can result in transformation from benign to pernicious polarization. In the stage of pernicious polarization, social polarization reaches its peak. Voters within the separated groups directly project their ideological identity on the social one and the link between a person's ideological views and social group becomes clear-cut. As a result, this clear “friend or foe” distinction may spark political crisis and political violence. However, in case of the United States of America, we can discuss this scenario only as a potential situation, which can take place in case the current state of political polarization in the country exacerbates.

That is why, before discussing the state of affairs under the current presidential administration, we need to take a look at how Barack Obama's actions and policies of mobilizing certain groups within society resulted in increasing political and social polarization that provoked the subsequent populist emergence.

2.3 Barack Obama's Influence on Political Polarization

There is no doubt that Barack Obama, as the first US black president, put a strong emphasis on the racial politics. In the previous parts of this paper, we already established that the process of political divergence under his rule, as a continuation of the general polarizing trend, did not become especially intense under Obama's presidency. It was gradually increasing, resulting in quantitative, rather than qualitative changes. It happened, due to the absence of the reversed tendency, although Obama had the plans to start a “post-racial” era in American politics. In this section, devoted to Political Polarization under Barack Obama, we will discuss why the policy of decreasing partisanship and getting Americans together did not work out and resulted in the opposing trend. Namely, it resulted in popular party sorting that exacerbated political polarization and prepared a stage for the Trump phenomenon.

When Barack Obama for the first time ran for President of the United States, he found himself in a difficult situation. On the one hand, as the scholars numerous times pointed out (Hill, Tausanovitch 2015; Jordan, Bowling 2017; Andris, Lee, Hamilton, Martino, Gunning, Selden 2015): at that time, the US Congress was in the long-lasting process of partisan polarization with legislative gridlocks, happening more and more frequently, which posed obvious obstacles for any presidential administration, including his one. On the other hand, Obama was going to become the first African-American president of the United States. Since the founding of the country, race has been one of the crucial issues of the national politics. Although, the most pressing racial problems were solved long before Obama, diverging racial attitudes in the public persisted, partly in connection with party and ideological preferences.

That is why, his campaign for presidency posed a two-sided problem. First, it was highly dependent on how well he would mobilize the black electorate and other minority groups that usually align with the Democratic Party. Second, he needed to avoid a race-based differentiation among voters and ensure the electorate's universal recognition of the new president. In many regards, Obama's presidency was expected to bringthe “post-racial politics” in America. (Richomme 2012)

Firstly, in terms of the electoral strategy, Barack Obama chose to target the two large groups to ensure the victory. They include racial minorities and the youth. This strategy worked out as intended and Obama decisively won the elections. Still, the 2008 US presidential race was landmark, not only because it brought the first black president to power, but also because it reflected deep ideological and racial divisions within the American society.

We should begin by providing several electoral estimations of the 2008 presidential elections and discussing it. In general, the Democratic candidate won the largest shares of vote in urban areas with high education levels and a large amount of ethnic and racial minorities, such as African-Americans and Hispanics. On contrary, the Republican candidate won the largest amount of votes in predominantly rural areas with low quantity of racial minorities. “The overall picture that emerges from an examination of the 2008 electoral map is one of a country that had moved decisively in a Democratic direction since 2004 but that remained deeply divided.” (Abramowitz, 2010) Although, the divide was evident in most electoral niches, it was largest in terms of race and age. Obama managed to mobilize the majorities of black, Hispanic and young (including whites) voters. In specific, the Democratic candidate won 95% of black votes and 66% of Hispanic votes, which is much more (7% and 12% respectively) than his 2004 predecessor John Kerry. In addition, the white vote for Obama in 2008 was 43%, as compared to 41% of Kerry in 2004. Despite the slight improvement, it is notable that Barack Obama did not achieve the majority of white votes. The fact that the white electorate preferred a Republican candidate, although the previous president from the same party was highly unpopular and the economy was in recession, suggests that there is a connection between the racial issues and the voting behavior among the white electorate. “There is little doubt that discomfort with the idea of an African-American president played a role in limiting white support for Barack Obama.” (Abramowitz, 2010) However, we should also point out that since 1964 no Democratic candidate managed to win the white majority. In this regard, Obama's result in 2008 was not special.

Thus, we can conclude that Obama's election was due to two large electoral shifts that happened in the United States at that time. The rising share of non-white voters historically aligned with the Democratic Party and the increase in liberal self-identification among young voters of different races (meaning voters under 30 years old).

The first aspect of the shift has been observed for at least 50 years, but accelerated approximately 20 years before the 2008 presidential elections. Coupled with the higher birth rates among ethnic and racial minorities, it resulted in the major increase in the amount of non-white voters. Nevertheless, the electoral potential of this group is not fulfilled yet, since many non-white voters are still not registered and do not have a legal status. In general, during the 2008 presidential elections, black voters constituted 24% of Obama's electorate, while Hispanics and other non-whites gave the candidate 16% of his votes. The existing data suggest that this trend will persist. “…these data indicate that we can expect the nonwhite share of the U.S. electorate to continue to grow for many years.” (Abramowitz, 2010)

The second aspect of the shift is more recent. It presupposes that the voters under the age of 30 gradually, but steadily shift to the Democratic Party, increasing the range of issues that they assess from the liberal point of view. It is partly explained by the increasing number of young non-white voters. However, white voters under 30 alone gave Obama 54 percent of the vote, which means that the younger generation supports liberal candidates over the Republican ones. As with the race-based voting, this pattern has been observed for a certain period of time, but the number of young voters, preferring the liberal candidate for presidency was for the first time a major factor of electoral victory. In addition, Obama won 95% of support of the voters under 30, who identify as liberal, while McCain won 84% of support, of those young people, identifying as conservative. It indicates that partisan polarization among the young people is at least as intense, as divergence among the older cohorts. (Abramowitz, 2010)

Despite the stated data, it can be argued that the depicted polarization among common voters was not a result of the true ideological divide, but the result of the polarized choices, given to the electorate by the two major parties. Thus, elite polarization overshadows the true popular attitudes, forcing them to go apart. However, according to the American National Election Study of 2008, 91% of Democrats and Democratic leaners voted for Obama, while 90% of Republicans and Republican leaners voted for McCain. In addition, the different survey(Abramowitz, 2010), conducted in October 2008 that assessed public attitudes on 10 key issues of the national politics, found that the majority of the respondents (no matter the party preference) chose radical (both supportive and unsupportive) positions, while the moderates on both sides remained the minority. On top of that, this poll found out that those, choosing a radical stance on one of the given issues, picked radical positions on the rest of the policies, consistent with the same ideology. It means that voters do not choose a position on different separate issues individually, but rather pick an ideological camp and assess all the issues from the partisan standpoint.

The second problem, faced by the president, was addressed in the Monika L. McDermott and Cornell Belcher's “Barack Obama and Americans' Racial Attitudes: Rallying and Polarization”. Unlike most studies on the topic that choose the theories that describe linear connection between the presidency and the racial attitudes, this paper tries to establish a more complicated connection. It deals with two theories, helpful in explaining mobilization and polarization.

The first one is “the rally events” theory. It describes the situations, in which ordinary citizens align with some political forces amidst a dramatic event in the national politics. Usually this term is used to refer to the matter of international relations and the military, such as WWII, or September 11 terrorist attacks. However, in this context election of the first black president is seen as a pivotal point in history, as it happens for the first time. Therefore, according to this theory, the presidential elections are the “rally events” that mobilize the American white electorate to support the black candidate, raise his popularity and reduce party polarization. However, this effect loses its power, shortly after the elections, returning the public racial views to the status-quo.

The second one is the theory of “presidential popularity cycles”. It presupposes that any president enjoys the short period of relatively high approval ratings from both partisan groups at the beginning of the term. However, after that period the job approval rate starts to gradually decrease, as the opposition accumulates dissatisfaction with the incumbent, while representatives of his own party retain relatively stable approval ratings during the whole term. The authors of the paper, projected these assumptions on the racial issues, claiming that presidential cycles of Barack Obama correlate with the racial attitudes rates. In other words, the elections brought Americans together at first, but re-polarized them along the party lines during the term.

With the use of Racial Antagonism Index, the authors find out that the both assumptions were right. The party polarization over racial attitudes increased over the course of the Obama presidency both for Democrats and for the Republicans. “The result is a stark and significant partisan polarization in racial antagonism.” (McDermott, Belcher, 2014) However, the authors also conclude that the evidence, used in the paper, does not imply that polarization had a party sorting format. On top of that, since the discussed article provides us only with the data about the white American voters, we need to analyze the participation of black voters as well. By doing so, we will be able to make far-fetched conclusions about the process of party sorting.

2.4 Supplementary Causes of Populism

All of the phenomena, previously discussed in this chapter, deal with the origins and nature of political polarization and the subsequent social conflict. Still, they are not directly devoted to discussing the origins of the populist emergence. In other words, the discussed phenomena do not establish a link that connects popular discontent and differentiation with the support of antidemocratic political forces that sometimes directly admit to be bending the rules and bypassing democratic norm and institutions. Thus, in this section we will try to establish this link with the use of the existing data and literature on this topic.

As Roberto Foa and Yascha Mounk pointed out in their article, devoted to the possibility of democratic deconsolidation, “Three decades ago, most scholars simply assumed that the Soviet Union would remain stable. This assumption was suddenly proven false. Today, we have even greater confidence in the durability of the world's affluent, consolidated democracies. But do we have good grounds for our democratic self-confidence?” (Foa, Mounk, 2016) As the current political environment shows us, over the last 30 years citizens in the consolidated democracies of the west have grown increasingly distrustful and cynical of the existing democratic institutions. Traditional political participation that involves voting for and joining mainstream parties gave way to more unconventional ways of political engagement, such as voting for populist candidates, participating in the single-issue movements, or backing “antisystem” forces. Popular willingness to support those, claiming to destroy or drastically reshape the status quo even in the richest countries of the west, is worrisome. Many scholars (Easton 1975, Norris 2011) claim that these tendencies indicate the decline of support for the government, but not for the regime (democracy). In other words, this interpretation suggests that people more frequently feel that the democracy in their country is not working well and the incumbent leaders poorly handle their job, but it does not destroy their faith in democracy. On contrary, it raises public demands for democracy and the support for “antisystem” movements serves as a corrective of the mainstream politics.

In order to disprove this optimistic interpretation, we should take a look at the World Values Surveys from 1995 to 2014. More specifically, we should look at four measurements that indicate regime legitimacy. These involve the degree of support for key democratic institutions (civil rights, separation of powers, etc.), willingness to pursue the chosen political stance through existing institutions and acceptability of non-democratic alternatives in terms of forms of governance.

The results, derived from WWS (1995 - 2014), show that the United States (generally perceived as a consolidated democracy) citizens became more critical and distrustful of both the current incumbents and the regime. They also became less convinced that their opinion could change anything in politics. These general conclusions come from the more concrete measurements.

First, the respondents were asked about the importance that that they attribute to living in the democracy. For the older generations, born between the world wars, or shortly after WWII (baby boomers) living in a democracy is extremely important. On rate from 1 to 10 assessing the importance of democracy 72% of the interwar generation marked 10. However, the younger generations show consistently lower approval of democracy. Only 30% of those born since 1980 attribute extreme importance for living in a democracy.

Second, answering the opposite question, Americans gave the answers, consistent with the previous one. When asked, whether democracy was a bad political system for their country, 16% of born in the 1970s replied positively, while in 2015 this number for the same cohort rose up to 20%. Additionally, in 2011 24% of the American millennials (born in the 90s) said that democracy was a bad system of governance for their country. It means that the stated phenomenon is not just a generation gap, but also a shift in the public perception of politics over time, reinforced in the younger cohorts.

Third, we should keep in mind that the bulk of the millennial population in the west, including the US, take democracy for granted. They have been living in the world of unchallenged democratic dominance and stability. On contrary, baby-boomers and the interwar generation have observed fierce ideological standoff in both WWII and the Cold War, which probably made them appreciate democracy more.

Fourth, there is one more aspect of public politics perception to be considered. It is the properties of democracy that the voters consider its vital part. In other words, a democracy is under a threat not only when large groups within the electorate reject it altogether, but also when people employ a more minimalist definition of this political system, stripping it from essential components, such as popular rule with the respect for interests of the minority, adherence to the protection of civil rights, etc. The measurements of this aspect also show the results, consistent with the stated negative trend. Among the US respondents, born in the interwar and early post-war decades, 41% think that the protection of civil liberties is absolutely essential for a democracy. Among millennials, the same answer was given only by 32% of respondents. When asked about the importance of free elections for democracy, 10% of the interwar generation and 14% of the boomers answered negatively, while for the millennials this number stood at 26%.

Lastly, we should check the statement that the decrease in the traditional political participation results in the increase of non-conventional political engagement. The fifth (2005 - 2009) and the sixth (2010 - 2014) waves of WWS suggest that the trend of decline in political polarization that originated in the 1960s still persists. Having separated themselves from traditional democratic participation, young people (the group, most likely to engage in new political movements) have been largely indifferent. It is a negative trend, not only because it decreases the quality of participation, but also since popular passivity highlights antisystem radical movements, relatively marginal in their size and importance.

Decline in popular support for liberal democracy, reinterpretation of democracy and decreasing political engagement are the essential components of deconsolidation, which give way to other ideational shifts that create a demand for a populist movement. In specific, takenforgrantedness of democracy leads to the rise of authoritarian sentiments within the electorate. “In the past three decades, the share of U.S. citizens who think that it would be a “good” or “very good” thing for the “army to rule”-- a patently undemocratic stance -- has steadily risen. In 1995, just one in sixteen respondents agreed with that position; today, one in six agree.” (Mounk 2016) In addition, in 1995 24% of the voters believed that their country would be better off with “a strong leader”, who does not “bother with parliament and elections”. By 2011, this figure rose to 32%.

In conclusion, we summarized the public opinion factors that, in our opinion, created a demand for “the outside alternative” of the existing mainstream politics. Deterioration of the liberal democratic values in the US has been accompanied by the process of mass party sorting and elite ideological divergence that aggravated the situation and triggered the non-systemic response to this crisis.

In the next chapter, we are going to examine the Trump phenomenon to find out how did he change the processes described above. (Mounk 2018)

Chapter III. Political Polarization and Populism under Donald Trump

In the previous chapter, we examined the processes of political polarization and ideological sorting, discussed their properties and implications for the US electoral politics that resulted in the emergence of the Trump phenomenon.

To summarize, political polarization in the US has been following the dual track. On the one hand, the elite polarization has been expressed in the increasing divergence of political views among the establishment and subsequent growing inability to reach compromise and cooperate. On the other hand, ordinary voters have been polarizing as well. Presidential job ratings since 1980s have been marked by the increasing gap in approval between the proponents and the opponents of the incumbent leader. In addition, the electorate has become better sorted in terms of party and ideology. In the normal situation, it is a positive trend, since it involves higher political engagement and clearer distinction between the competing ideologies. However, the US popular party sorting has increasingly been linked to social identity, such as race, religion, etc. In turn, it means that the increasing partisan hostilities transfer to the larger social conflict, fueled by the lack of cross-pressured voters that may result in the transfer to pernicious polarization in the country that threatens to provoke violent conflict. Still, ideological entrenchment of different social groups with one of the parties is not a finished process yet. The two parties keep their fight over the young voters and the disenfranchised lower middle class and blue-collar whites. In this chapter, we are going to examine the Trump phenomenon. We will follow the changes in the dynamics, established in the previous parts and assess Donald Trump's populist ideology from the standpoint of the chosen theory. Lastly, with the use of the existing literature and data we will examine how Trump's rise to power influenced popular polarization in the qualitative way.When discussing the stated topic we will use “the Trump phenomenon” to refer to his populist movement in general and “Trumpism” in reference to his specific ideology.

3.1 Essence of the Trump Phenomenon

In general, the 2016 presidential elections in the US did not stand out in terms of the established party balance and the American electoral history. Two equally large electoral coalitions based on the party affiliations were fighting for the high chance victory with a minor vote margin. Essentially, both the Republican and the Democratic candidates were fighting for a relatively small portion of swing voters in certain states that decides the outcome of the elections.

3.1.1 Trump's Electorate

In specific, Trump won having secured the support of white working class swing voters in the states of the Midwestern Rust Belt (most importantly in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania). The minimal advantage of 77 thousand votes in these states allowed Trump to get the additional 46 votes of the electors and secure the victory. (Pechatnov 2017) According to the polls, Trump won 67% of white American voters without higher education, against 28% for Clinton. The bulk of this group lives in the countryside and in small towns. In these areas, Trump got 62% against Clinton's 34%. Among white men in the same areas, this ratio is 72% against 24% respectively. In turn, the Democratic candidate easily won the most urbanized areas of the country. In these areas, Clinton won 59% of the electorate, against 35% of Trump supporters. (Pew Research Center 2016)

At this point, we come to the main electoral reason why Donald Trump managed to win the office and has been referred to as the political phenomenon. White American workers have historically been one of the core parts of the Democratic electorate. Nevertheless, in these elections the Republican billionaire won their support with a significant margin. This outcome became a surprise for the academics and the media alike.

However, such a drastic change in the electoral preferences was not an accident, but rather a result of the deliberate exploitation of the deeply rooted socio-economic problems existing among this social group.

The general problem of this region and its dwellers is the economic decline and social crisis. The American sociologists found out that the demographic situation among poor whites has been worsening. Life expectancy of this group has been decreasing so much that it brought down this rate for all white Americans in general. This decrease is caused by the rise in suicide rates, drugs and alcohol abuse. The subsequent analysis of the psychological state of working class white Americans, showed widespread depression, hopelessness and frustration among them. Most likely, it was caused by the loss of their former social status, sense of “leftbehindness” and absence of self-respect. (Murray 2013; Hochschild 2016). Although, the data shows that African-Americans' living standards are worse than those of white workers, the latter group is three times less optimistic about their well-being than the former group. (Graham, Pinto 2016)

This portion of the population was largely affected by the Global Recession of 2008 - 2010 and hoped to get new jobs and return its status after the crisis comes to an end. Unfortunately, new workplaces were created mostly in postindustrial sectors of the economy in the well-developed urban areas and small working towns remained disenfranchised. (Porter 2016) Thus, the main reason of social depression among Trump's target group is the crisis of its economic well-being. Since 1980 the per-capita GDP nearly, doubled, 80% of the income growth in the same period was achieved by the top 10% wealthiest Americans. The top 1% of the population doubled its share in the national income from 10,7% up to 20,2%, while incomes of the poorest layers of the society stagnated, which resulted in the decline of their share from almost 20% to 12,5% in the national income. This tendency shows the increasingly polarizing distribution of wealth. Such a change was mainly provoked by the consequences of globalization and technological development. Automatization of the industry and its outsourcing to the third world countries, coupled with the higher competition against the foreign workforce resulted in the unemployment and stagnation of wages among the local workers in America. This tendency is exacerbated by the fierce competition between the native employees and the immigrants from the third world countries, willing to take the same jobs on less favorable conditions.

Consequently, this state of affairs undermines “the American dream' that is to a large extent found on the confidence that in the future personal incomes and living standards will inevitably be rising. The Stanford University scholars found out that people born in the 1940s had 92% chances of raising more money than their parents, while the generation born in 1980s has only 50% chances of achieving it. Trump managed to exploit the fears of uncertainty that are especially strong in these areas.

The second major aspect that led this group to support Donald Trump is the cultural backlash within the country. We partly, covered this topic when discussing the social conflict. Yet, in this section, we need to provide statistical data and concrete positions of these people to make further conclusions about the essence of Trumpism.

To begin with, the racial composition of the United States has been steadily and drastically changing over the course of the last 50 years. Currently, non-white population in the US has a share of about 30% of the whole population. Most of the forecasts claim that by the middle of the XXI century there will be no majority race in the country. Although the Trump voters mostly live in low-density towns with small portions of racial and ethnic minorities, they have a fear of being replaced by non-native groups and losing the power in their native country. Consequently, the public opinion among these groups tends to link immigrants to criminal activities, terrorism and dependence on the welfare state.

In addition, since the 1960s the liberal agenda has been focusing on integration of the minorities into the common American nation through the policies of multiculturalism, political correctness, and wealth redistribution. Many Americans view these antidiscrimination policies as discrimination against themselves. In their views, the elite left out “privileged” Americans. In addition, the Democratic Party that has long been focusing on fighting economic inequality, which helped poor white voters, switched to the minorities, thus abandoning the interests of white Americans. As a result, the white working class not only feels forgotten and useless in terms of economy, but also humiliated by the cultural changes, encouraged by the liberal establishment.

3.1.2 Ideological Trumpism

The political agenda, created by the socio-economic problems discussed above, has become a basis of the Trump's political ideology. In essence, Trump merged together the traditional conservative approach to addressing these issues with the anti-elitist and partly antidemocratic message, typical for the populist leaders. In order to establish himself as a counter-establishment leader, he invented a simplistic language that would drastically differ from the cold, eloquent, technocratic style of professional politicians and inserted his policy proposals into a made up narrative about the contemporary American politics.

First, he presented this group of people as “the silent majority” that constitutes the core of the American nation both as the class that produces most of the country's wealth and as the spiritual center of the nation that adheres to its true values (“true Americans”). (Tyson, Maniam 2016). He explicitly admitted the disastrous state, in which “the silent majority” found itself, because the liberal anti-people elites have been holding the power for too long and misleading the country's development. Trump presented himself as a person, who can change the situation and help “the true Americans” with their problems by directly discussing them, not bothering himself with the deceitful politically correct euphemisms. (Pechatnov 2017)

Second, he pointed out those responsible for this situation within and beyond the country: globalization, elites, immigrants, financial capital and foreign nations, using the US for their own interests). He insisted that most of these groups were interconnected and formed the transnational anti-American elite. This evil elite hindered the true meaning of democracy and disrupted proper representation of the people's interests. (Kivisto 2017)

Third, he directly promised to stop the destruction of the United States by these elites, reverse this trend and “make America great again”, by returning power to those, who make it what it truly is. In order to achieve this, those, who sincerely care about the country's future, should vote Trump into the office and support his unilateral direct actions against the opponents of his ideas. Trump also added, that getting the Oval office for him would not be enough “to drain the swamp” (defeat the elite), since the power of these shadowy elites stretches beyond formal political authorities. Implicitly, he admitted that without bending the rules, “making America great again” would not be possible. In general, Trump has built the relationship with his electorate that can be summarized in one sentence: “Trust me, and I will fix everything.” (Pechatnov 2017) Although indirectly, he means that the people should trust only him. Otherwise, the whole narrative about the corrupt elite, depriving the people of its rights, would be meaningless.

Thus, we can conclude that the Trump phenomenon completely falls into the frames of the classical populist movement, discussed in the first chapter. It is based on the Manichean distinction of the two homogenous groups: “the silent majority” (“true Americans”, “the people”) and “the Washington swamp” (the corrupt establishment). Thus, the political landscape is ultimately a fight between these two homogenous groups for power, in which a charismatic strongman (in this case Donald Trump) represents “the people” to counter the elitist threat. This narrative creates an informal movement with a strong personalist rule that requires direct loyalty to this leader, bypassing party affiliations. However, despite the strong support from the target groups that are presented as “the people”, most of the electorate gives votes based on the partisan preferences. That is why, there is still a need to retain connection with a “thick centered ideology” and a party that represents it.

3.2 The Trump Phenomenon and Political Polarization

Finally, we come to the part, in which we will try to assess the influence that the populist movement in the United States has had on the process of popular political polarization. In order to answer the research question, we will discuss the existing statistical data of this phenomenon that captures both the current state of polarization and its dynamics before and during the Trump's administration.

In order to examine this problem, we need to formulate several separate questions that will help us draw the general conclusions about the political fluctuations that happened over the course of the Trump's presidency. First, did Americans become more partisan? Second, did they become more ideologically consistent/radical? Third, did the political center shift? Fourth, did the mutual perception of partisans change? Fifth, did the voters diverge over approval of the presidential administration along party lines? Answers to these intermediate questions will give us an understanding of whether populism enhances political polarization and does populism qualitatively change it.

To answer these questions we need to employ a set of statistical surveys that will both cover popular political polarization over time and discuss the current state in detail. For these purposes, we use a set of reports, based on the Pew Research Center poles: “The Partisan Divide on Political Values Grows Even Wider” (2017), “Partisan Antipathy: More Intense, More Personal” (2019), “In a Politically Polarized Era, Sharp Divides in Both Partisan Coalitions” (2019), “Majority Says Trump Has Done `Too Little' to Distance Himself from White Nationalists” (2019).

We begin by discussing the trends in political polarization between 1994 and 2017 to trace back the tendencies that preceded Trump's presidency and continued during his administration (2019 data) to show how his rule changed them.

Although Barack Obama set a historical record of party divisions over the key issues of national politics and presidential approval, Donald Trump quickly beat them. The key finding of this period is that “…the magnitude of these differences dwarfs other divisions in society, along such lines as gender, race and ethnicity, religious observance or education.” (Pew Research Center 2017)

For instance, in 2017 when asked whether the government should help the needy more, 71% of Democrats answered positively, while only 24% of Republicans gave the same answer, as opposed to 54% and 25% respectively in 2012. Prior to 2012, the two groups of partisans followed the same trend. In 2017, 64% of Democrats agreed with the statement that racism is the key reason why many black people cannot get ahead, while only 14% of Republicans supported the same statement. In 2010, these rates were 28% and 9% respectively. The gap between the answers significantly grew from 19 points to 50 points over a relatively short period of time. The portion of Democrats, saying that immigrants strengthen the country rose from 32% in 1994 to 84% in 2017, while for Republicans this numbers are 30% and 42% respectively.

Aside from the policy assessment, Americans show the same trend in terms of political values. In nearly every question asked, Republicans and Democrats are now further away from each other than at any point in the Pew survey history. (Pew Research Center 2017) In 1994, the gap between the partisans on the issue of business regulation was 18 points, while in 2017 it was 33 points. The respondents from different parties evaluated ineffectiveness of the government with 15 points difference in 1994 that rose up to 24 point gap in 2017. The gap on the issue of benefits for the poor skyrocketed from 19 to 47 points in this period. The list goes on. Even on the issues, in which Democrats and Republicans clearly followed the same trend, such as the acceptance of homosexuality, they increased the gap, because the Democrat supporter switched their position more rapidly.

The political values questions stated above, alongside other crucial questions on the same topic, have been asked together as the part of a larger survey to determine the partisan gap among the electorate. In 1994 the partisan gap was 15 points, while in 2017 it was 36 (21 points higher). The first year of Trump's administration showed modest increase from 33 in 2014 to 36 in 2017, consistent with the previous trend. It means that the view on the political issues among American have become more clear and consistent, with the diminishing number of mixed-values voters. In addition, this data shows us that the division over political issues exceeds the divide over socio-demographic measurements, such as age, race, education, gender, etc. (Pew Research Center 2017). However, it does not mean that the political stances became extreme.

On this graph, we can see that the political center has become less pronounced, since more voters hold consistently liberal or conservative positions. In the meantime, the center shifted to the left, since both partisan groups follow close trends on homosexuality and immigration approval.

The statement of the party sorting process is additionally reinforced by the fact that individual median lines of the two parties went apart. Judging by the 10-point scale, median Republican is now more conservative than 97% of Democrats, while median Democrat is more liberal than 95% of Republicans.

In 1994, only 64% of Republicans were more conservative than a median Democrat and 70% of Democrats were more liberal than a middle Republican.

Party sorting and ideological divergence have been coupled with the change of attitude towards those in the opposing camp and the party itself. Both Republicans and Democrats have long been negatively predisposed to the other party. However, in the 1990s, the bulk of the respondents on both side assessed the opponents as “unfavorable”, but as of 2017, the majority in each party switched to the “very unfavorable” mark. Among Democrats, 81% sees the opposing party as “unfavorable” with 44% taking a “very unfavorable” position. In 1994, these rates were 57% and 16% respectively. In turn, 81% of Republicans gave an “unfavorable” assessment with 45%, claiming the other party was “very unfavorable”. In 1994, it rate was 68% and 17% respectively.

Partisan animosity, assessed on the so-called “feeling thermometer”, provides us with the same type of data, focusing on the personal feelings of the people in the other camp, unlike the previous poll that does not have personal attachment. In this poll, the respondents are asked to assess on the scale from “0” (the coldest) to “100” (the warmest) their attitude towards the supporters of the opposing party. In December 2016, shortly after the election of Donald Trump, 56% of Democrats assessed their attitude towards Republicans as cold (below 50) with the majority taking a “very cold” (below 25) position. For the Republicans this number was 58 with the majority, choosing very cold. By September 2019, this number rose up to 79% for Democrats and 83% for Republicans. Thus, the change in presidential administration brought a drastic increase in mutual animosity between the parties.

In addition, both group of partisans tend to attribute negative characteristics to the people on the opposite side. As of 2019, the majority of Republicans claim that, compared to other Americans, Democrats are more closed-minded (64%), unpatriotic (63%), and immoral (55%); while the large portions of Democrats thinks that Republicans are more closed-minded (75%), immoral (47%) and unintelligent (38%), than the rest of the country. Although both parties actively point out negative traits of the other group, Republicans are more prone to doing so.

What is more, political differences stretch beyond party assessment and attitudes towards those in the other camp. Political polarization is currently influencing people's everyday social choices that reinforce wider social polarization and intensify internal political hostility. Less than a half of respondents in both parties claims that they share many values and goals outside politics with the other political group, despite their political differences. For Democrats this number is 45%, while for Republicans it is 38%. Simply put, the clear majority in each party does not share any nonpolitical goals or values with the other group. Moreover, ordinary voters acknowledge this problem and demonstrate their concern for the lack of common ground. Out of all respondents, 73% claim that most Republican and Democratic voters not only differ over the policy proposals, but also cease to agree on “the basic facts”. The amount of voters, thinking that the other party has “almost no” good ideas has also increased over the course of Trump' presidency. In 2016, this number was 34% for Democrats and 43% for Republicans. By 2019, it rose up to 45% and 53% respectively.

Partisans also tend to choose politically likeminded friends. Overall, 57% of Republicans have “a lot of” friends from the same party, while the rest 21% have only “some” of the same party friends. In turn, 67% of Democrats claim to have “a lot of” their friends from their party, while 18% have only some. By contrast, the majority of both Democrats and Republicans (64% and 55% respectively) “have just a few or no” friends in the opposing camp.

Finally, all the polls, described above, provide an assessment of how the two groups of partisans became strongly polarized and negative towards one another. In turn, the following poll assesses their willingness to cooperate and make concessions, which may prove helpful in mitigating the stated problem. Republicans were asked, whether Donald Trump should focus on either finding common ground with Democrats, or pushing hard for Republican policies? Only 45% of Republican voters preferred the compromise with the other camp, while 53% supported the hardline approach. Democrats were asked, whether the Democratic candidate for Presidency should seek common group with Republicans, or push hard for Democratic policies. The clear majority of 58% supported compromise and 41% advocated hardline measures.

There is one last aspect of popular political polarization to consider, before we draw the final conclusions and answer the research question. It concerns the public assessment of the incumbent President, calculated by party preferences. As of May 2020, the average job approval rating of Donald Trump is 40%, as compared to 48% average of his predecessor Barack Obama. Trump followed the longstanding trend of job approval polarization between parties that has been observed since Eisenhower's presidency. On top of that, Trump managed to beat a record of interparty gap in job approval, set by Barack Obama. As of May 2020, Trump's average approval among Republicans is 92%, while for Democrats it is just 14%. Thus, the average gap is 78 points. The record gap was set in February 2020, the gap between Republicans with 94% approval and Democrats with 7% approval was 87 points at that time. This drastic number shows the incredible polarization of the public opinion about the incumbent leader.

When assessing the traits of the Trump's character in detail, the two partisan groups largely agree only over two issues. First, both Democrats (54%) and Republicans (90%) believe that Trump stands up for what he believes. Second, both parties (85% of Democrats and 56% of Republicans) think that the president is not “even tempered”. The rest of the issues, concerning his ability “to get things done”, “strong leadership”, “trustworthiness” etc.; show drastic differences in opinion between the opposing camps.

3.3 Political Consequences

In this chapter, we examined the essence of the Trump phenomenon and its implications for public polarization. The results that we obtained are partly consistent with our initial hypothesis. The statistical surveys show that the long established trends in popular attitudes towards politics persisted and deepened under the Trump's administration. Ordinary voters from the different groups continued to be sorted over party lines, thus diminishing the number of cross-pressured voters with mixed attitudes towards political ideologies. This party sorting now overrides the other existing social differences. “The partisan gap is much larger than the differences between the opinions of blacks and whites, men and women and other groups in society.” (Pew Research Center 2017) In the meantime, party sorting qualitatively changed under Trump's rule. Unlike the party sorting under Obama, which centered mainly around social groups' alignment with the Democratic and Republican Parties, based on a single issue (race), party sorting under Trump was a full-fledged ideological polarization that brought apart partisans' views of the most pressing issues and policies to solve them. Simply put, mass identity sorting under Obama was followed by an increase in ideological consistency of the voters and their rising loyalty to one party under Trump.

Still, the second finding is more disturbing. As we multiple times mentioned above, full-scale polarization has a tendency to spread on the larger social issues and become the key conflict that splits the society in half. The data on the personal attitudes towards those in the different party and the social choices, connected to the political stances, suggests that the American voters became a lot more hostile towards their opponents in the other party to the point that they restrict their social interactions with the opposite group. “We don't just disagree politely about what is the best way to reform the health care system. We believe that those on the other side are trying to destroy America, and that we should spare nothing in trying to stop them.” (Gentzkow 2016) It means that each group is less prone to perceiving the other one as part of the “normal world”. Subsequently, it reduces public incentives for seeking compromise and remain part of the common community. Deepening of this trend may lead to the state of pernicious polarization, which directly threatens the integrity and cohesion of the American Democracy.