Partisans are Wrong about the Other Party

American voters don’t understand each other; they really do live in (at least) two separate worlds — and that’s just the Democrats and Republicans. The United States aren’t very united (not even within their individual borders). Generally, data suggest we are poor judges of our fellow citizens, basing our views on deeply held biases. In particular, we hold more negative views of the people we don’t know and who are not aligned with our political ideologies. 

Only 2% of Republican households earn more than $250,000 a year, but Democrats believe 44% of registered Republicans are wealthy. Curiously, wealth actually correlates to Democratic voting — because income correlates to urban living and higher education. Registered voters of both parties have highly skewed perceptions of each other. 

There are some statistically valid generalities. The further you live from an urban center, the more likely you are to vote for GOP, Libertarian, and independent candidates. The higher your educational and income level, the more likely you are to vote for the Democrats on a ballot. (Higher income correlates to Democrats because it correlates to living in an urban center.) Your choice of car, your television habits, the sports you follow, and your musical preferences also hint at your political views.

Yes, those statistical generalizations are just that: generalizations. They are not complete pictures of any fellow citizen. Worse, we take “is more likely” to mean a majority of a group. Democrats are more likely to have humanities degrees does not mean a majority of Democrats studied philosophy or art. Republicans are more likely to attend church regularly does not mean a majority of Republicans are regular church goers, though they might identify as religious. 

We are lousy at trying to describe other groups because we take snippets of data and over-apply those. The following article discusses how far apart and how unfamiliar we are with each other:

Democrats Are Wrong About Republicans. Republicans Are Wrong About Democrats.
Perry Bacon Jr.
9:00 AM; Jun. 26, 2018

Welcome to Secret Identity, our regular column on identity and its role in politics and policy.

The defining divide in American politics is probably between Republicans and Democrats. It encapsulates all our other divides — by race, education, religion and more — and it’s growing.

This partisan divide is such a big part of people’s political identities, in fact, that it’s reinforced simply by “negative partisanship,” or loyalty to a party because you don’t like the other party. A Pew Research Center poll from last year found that about 40 percent of both Democrats and Republicans belong to their party because they oppose the other party’s values, rather than because they are particularly aligned with their own party.

But what if Americans’ views of the parties, particularly whichever one they don’t belong to, are, well, kind of wrong? That’s the argument of a study by scholars Douglas Ahler and Gaurav Sood that was recently published in The Journal of Politics. They had the polling firm YouGov ask American adults to estimate the size of groups in each party. For example, what percentage of Democrats are black, or lesbian, gay or bisexual? What percentage of Republicans earn more than $250,000 a year, or are age 65 or older?

What they found was that Americans overall are fairly misinformed about who is in each major party — and that members of each party are even more misinformed about who is in the other party.

How the parties see each other
Based on polling from March 2015

How many Democrats are…	Actual share	>Estimated by Republicans	Difference
Agnostics or atheists	9%	36%	+27
Black	24	46	+22
LBG	6	38	+32
Union members	11	44	+33
How many Republicans are…	Actual share	>Estimated by Democrats	Difference
65 or older	21%	44%	+23
Evangelicals	34	44	+10
Southerners	36	44	+8
Earning $250K or more a year	2	44	+42

Ahler and Sood confirmed the 44 percent across Republican categories estimated by Democrats.

Blacks made up about a quarter of the Democratic Party, but Republicans estimated the share at 46 percent. Republicans thought 38 percent of Democrats were gay, lesbian or bisexual, while the actual number was about 6 percent. Democrats estimated that 44 percent of Republicans make more than $250,000 a year. The actual share was 2 percent.

People also overstated the numbers of these stereotypical groups within their own party — Democrats thought 29 percent of their fellow Democrats were gay, lesbian or bisexual — but they weren’t off by as much as members of the other party.

In short, “the parties in our heads,” as Ahler and Sood write, are not the parties in real life.

Though we inaccurately describe the composition of the opposition political parties (and our own parties), this problem arises because there are generalizations that statisticians and political scientists have established. Because so many political scientists and data crunchers from other fields have published articles and books on these data, people have internalized and over-generalized the implications. 

If we see someone driving a Volvo or a Subaru, it isn’t absurd to assume that the person is probably a suburban, college-educated, professional — or the child of such parents. Likewise, a Ford F-150 driver is more likely to be an exurban or rural resident, though that person might also be a city-dweller from the Southwest. We generalize because doing so is grounded in reality. 

Lilliana Mason, a political scientist at the University of Maryland, published a book earlier this year that I highly recommend called Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity. In describing American politics today, she argues that partisan identity (Democrat or Republican) has become a “mega-identity” because it increasingly combines a number of different identities.

Mason writes in her book:

“A single vote can now indicate a person’s partisan preference as well as his or her religion, race, ethnicity, gender, neighborhood and favorite grocery store. This is no longer a single social identity. Partisanship can now be thought of as a mega-identity, with all of the psychological and behavioral magnifications that implies.”

Think about how political affiliation can suggest potential probabilities. We know that…  

…if you told someone on the phone whom you had never met before that you are white, that single fact would not tell them much more about you. But if you told them that you are a Republican, they could reasonably assume that you are not black, lesbian, gay, transgender or bisexual, nonreligious or Jewish. They could also assume that you don’t live in Washington, D.C., and that you don’t believe racial discrimination is the primary reason blacks aren’t making more advances in today’s America. If you told them you are a Democrat, they would have good reason to believe that you are not a white evangelical Christian and don’t live in coal country in Kentucky. (We should not exaggerate how perfectly sorted people are: In raw numbers, there are still plenty people who buck their party’s stereotypes — young and non-evangelical Republicans and Democrats who are religious and non-urban.)

The problem is that our political identities are becoming increasingly tribal. Studies have shown that if you put Barack Obama’s name on a George Bush policy, Democrats will defend the policy. Likewise, Republicans will defend an Obama policy attributed to a Republican president. This is a psychological process that is difficult to counter, as most people do not analyze information as bracketed and apart from other contexts. If you tell someone that an opponent supports an idea, that person will often attribute sinister motives to the support. We’re unable to assume the best of anyone with whom we aren’t aligned. 

“The danger of mega-partisan identity is that it encourages citizens to care more about partisan victory than about real policy outcomes,” Mason told me. “We find ways to justify almost any governmental policy as long as it is the policy of our own team. What is best for America, Americans or even small children is secondary to whether our party’s team gets what it demanded.”

We increasingly identify with our locations, ethnicities, and political affiliations. Just as a West Texas resident what he or she thinks of the Coastal elites. We’re not merely isolated, but we’re celebrating our isolation. At least at the time of the military draft (before educational exemptions) men met other men unlike themselves. Without some form of forced social integration, we remain in our sorted bubbles, surrounded by people like ourselves. 

So we are in a situation where Americans have sorted themselves into two parties along not just ideological lines, but also by geographical, religious, racial and other social and cultural differences. At the same time, they’ve adopted inaccurate, caricatured views of both parties that overstate these already sizable demographic differences. And they’ve started taking positions on issues based on whatever stance their party adopts.

This dynamic seems less than ideal — hence the title of Mason’s book.

“These misperceptions are one of many factors fueling the contemporary partisan gulf,” Ahler said in an interview.

How do we change this among a majority of voters and citizens? I am unsure. I tend to dislike most things both major parties now do, and I’m not impressed by the Libertarian Party or any other third party. This dissatisfaction might make it easier for me to see both the bad and good that the groups propose — but I also have a deep bias against ideologies that are statist and collective, so I filter information through that lens.