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GGPViper
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14 Apr 2014, 2:33 pm

Via Pew Research, I found these highly illustrative depictions of the voting records in the US House of Reprehen.... uh, Representatives and the Senate:

Image
Image

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the ... y-dead/?la

Washington Post (probably correctly) identifies gerrymandering as the cause for the polarization of the Kindergar... uh, the House...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering

... but one cannot gerrymander the Senate. So, what gives?

Please discuss.



naturalplastic
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14 Apr 2014, 5:00 pm

Very interesting.

The sudden change from the Eighties to the Nineties is not totally surprising because of the famous 1994 off year election.

For most of the twentieth Centurey the GOP was mostly conservative, but had quite had quite a few quite liberal members in congress. The Democratic party had most of the liberals, but a huge chunk of the Democratic party were the anti-civil rights movement, pro segration Southern democrats who were staunchly conservative. So the GOP was peppered with liberal mavericks, And the Democratic Party in the mid twentieth centurey was all about beating the crap out of itsself over Black Civil Rights (with both wings seeking Republican allies against it arch enemies in the same Democratic party).

Dial ahead a few decades later to 1994.


The 1994 offyear election is known as the "Republican Revolution" Because the Dems took a beating in Congress. But it really should be called the "Dixiecrat Extinction Event". The reason that the Democratic party took a beating was that year all of the White Southern voters all defectected en masse to the GOP, and so did their reps. Suddenly there were no more Dixiecrats/yellowdogdemocrats/southerndemocrats. The conservative white southern wing of the Democratic party simply broke away and joined the GOP. So suddenly both parties became more ideologically pure. Hense the big change from the Eighties to the Nineties in those charts.

But apparently (from those charts) the trend toward hardening the lines and polarization has continued even long after the 1994 election.Which is why we have deadlock now. In the old days (when each parties had both liberals and conservatives)there was much more "reaching across the aisles".



Jacoby
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14 Apr 2014, 5:13 pm

The parties use to be more regional, now it is more split ideologically.



Hopper
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14 Apr 2014, 7:45 pm

Ideological contraction at a party level?

Change in what is seen as 'political', with politics reduced to 'culture wars' stuff?


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