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Morris P. Fiorina*

If I Could Hold a Seminar for Political Journalists…

Abstract: During every election campaign, political jour-

nalists make claims and offer interpretations that politi-

cal scientists who study public opinion, campaigns, and

elections know to be inaccurate. In this article, I discuss a

number of misconceptions that frequently appear in media

discussions of electoral polarization. Chief among these

are the confusion between polarization and party sorting,

along with the tendency to attribute any changes in voter

behavior to changes in the voters, rather than to changes

in the candidates who are running and the nature of their

campaigns. Also important is the widespread confusion

– much of it due to incomplete political science research

this time – about independents. A significant part of whatjournalists get wrong no doubt reflects the unrepresenta-

tive political contexts in which they live and work.

*Corresponding author: Morris P. Fiorina , Department of Political

Science, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA,

E-mail: [email protected]

Introduction

My wife hates presidential campaign season. Like manyother political scientists (you know who you are), I carry

on a running argument with election commentators on

TV: “That’s not quite right.” “Not true in general.” “That

is totally wrong.” “Not according to ANES data.” “Give me

a break, what about the____ election?” And so on, and so

forth. Like all election seasons, the 2012 campaign was

rich in commentary that was at odds with or unsupported

by findings from political science. In particular, the polar-

ization narrative, which had taken a sabbatical of sorts

during the 2008 campaign and its immediate aftermath,

enjoyed a resurgence that had little basis in the available

data, even though members of the media regularly cited

snippets of data that they regarded as evidence support-

ing their interpretations and commentaries.

Many in the media who write and talk about elections

are smart people, but they are not trained as political

scientists. I began to wonder: if I could have their atten-

tion for a short time, what are the most important things

I would want to tell them, insofar as the polarization

narrative was concerned?1 As I thought further about the

question, I had to concede that we political scientists are

responsible for some of their misconceptions. We do not

always explain our findings clearly, and sometimes we

adopt a particular interpretation of a relationship without

adequate consideration of other equally or even more

plausible interpretations.

Fundamentals: The Difference

between Polarization and Party

Sorting

Of all the misconceptions associated with discussions of

political polarization, none is more common than the con-

fusion between party sorting and polarization. Many, if not

most, discussions in the print and electronic media conflate

the two processes. Simple examples illustrate the difference

between them. Suppose there is an electorate consisting of

100 Democrats, 100 Independents, and 100 Republicans.

These 300 voters include 100 liberals, 100 moderates, and

100 conservatives. At Time 1, the Democrats are a liberal

party with a minority right wing, and the Republicans are aconservative party with a minority left wing.

Democrats Independents Republicans

Time 1 80 liberals 100 moderates 20 liberals

20 conservatives 80 conservatives

Between Time 1 and Time 2, this electorate polar-

izes – that is, the middle disappears as all the moderates

become liberals or conservatives.


Time 2 120 liberals – 30 liberals

30 conservatives 120 conservatives

This has NOT happened in the US. Figure 1 shows

the trend in ideology, or more accurately, the lack of any

trend since the 1970s. The ideological middle (moderates)

is the same size as it was decades ago.2 Of course, specific

2 The difference between the GSS and the lower ANES series is a re-

flection of the additional response option in the ANES item, “ haven’t

thought much about this.”

1 Kaufman, Petrocik, and Shaw (2008) provide an earlier and more

ambitious contribution along the same lines.

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Fiorina: If I Could Hold a Seminar for Political Journalists… 3

individual issues may not tap into general ideology as closely

as one might expect (Ellis and Stimson 2012), but there is

little evidence of polarization on specific issues as opposed

to general measures of ideology like that in Figure 1. Since

1987, the Pew Research Center has been asking Americans

more than 40 questions about socio-economic attitudes,

values, and policy positions. According to their 2012 report:

The way that the public thinks about poverty, opportunity, busi-

ness, unions, religion, civic duty, foreign affairs, and many other

subjects is, to a large extent, the same today as in 1987. The values

that unified Americans 25 years ago remain areas of consensus

today, while the values that evenly divide the nation remain split.

On most of the questions asked in both 1987 and 2012, the number

agreeing is within 5% points of the number who agreed 25 years

ago. And on almost none has the basic balance of opinion tipped

from agree to disagree or vice versa (2012, 17).

Rather than polarization in the distribution of public

opinion, what has happened in the US is that the partieshave become better sorted since the 1970s (Abramowitz and

Saunders 1998; Levendusky 2009). The example at Time 2

above shows polarization without sorting: the ideological

middle has vanished (polarization) at Time 2, but the parties

are no better sorted at Time 2 than at Time 1 – each party

still has a minority wing consisting of 20% of the party. Now

consider an alternative, Time 2*: the distribution of liberals,

moderates, and conservatives at Time 1 does not change, but

all liberals become Democrats and all conservatives become

Republicans. So everyone is now in the “correct” party.


Time 2* 100 liberals 100 moderates 100 conservatives

This is pure party sorting without any ideological

polarization. Some analysts call this “partisan polariza-

tion.” I prefer the term party sorting for two reasons. First,

it distinguishes between the situation at Time 2 from that

at Time 2*, both of which have increased partisan polari-

zation relative to Time 1, although different processes

have produced the increase in party differences. Second,

in common usage, polarization tends to connote a process

of individual conversion – individuals move from moder-

ate to more extreme positions as they listen to Rush Lim-

baugh or watch Rachel Maddow, for example.

In contrast, sorting is more often a compositional phe-

nomenon – rather than change their views, the categories

to which people belong change. These correspondences

certainly are not perfect; people could sort because theyhave converted on some important issue or convert on some

issue because they have sorted for other reasons.3 Likewise,

the two processes are not mutually exclusive. Considering

our examples again, if at Time 2, conservative Democrats

and liberal Republicans realize that they are hopelessly in

the minority in their parties and migrate to the party that

shares their views, we would have polarization and sorting.

100

90

80

70

60

50

P e r c e n t

40

30

20

10

0′72

′76

′80

′84

ANES:Moderate, middle of road: GSS: Moderate

′88

′92

′96

′00

′04

′08

Figure 1 No decline in moderate ideological self-placements.

3 Layman and Carsey (2002) report individual-level conversion

among strong partisans in the 1992–96 ANES panel.




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4 Fiorina: If I Could Hold a Seminar for Political Journalists…


Time 3 150 liberals – 150 conservatives

This is in fact the case in Congress, where we clearly

observe polarization (the disappearance of the moderates)

and sorting (the decline of conservative southern Demo-crats and liberal northeastern Republicans). But accord-

ing to Poole and Rosenthal (2007, chapter 4), there is little

evidence of conversion: individual-level stability is the rule

in congressional voting. Party polarization has occurred

because more extreme members have replaced less extreme

ones at the same time that the parties have sorted.

While the two processes are not mutually exclusive,

the evidence at the level of mass public opinion indi-

cates that sorting is the dominant process in producing

today’s historically high partisan conflict. Baldassarri and

Gelman (2008) conclude that sorting is the primary mech-

anism underlying public opinion change between 1972

and 2008. Krasa and Polborn (2012) find that sorting is the

dominant mechanism of change between 1976 and 2004.4

Thinking about the major factors that have contrib-

uted to party sorting, such as the realignment of the South

(Shafer and Johnston 2006) and other long-term, large-

scale social changes (Stonecash, Brewer, and Mariani

2003; Fiorina and Abrams 2009), it seems to me that

replacement that produces better sorted parties is the

more important causal mechanism underlying the elec-

toral change observed during the past generation.

Before turning to some frequently misunderstoodconsequences of party sorting, I hasten to emphasize that

the extent of sorting in the mass electorate is nowhere near

as extreme as depicted in the examples above. Consider

an updated cross-tabulation originally noted by Leven-

dusky (2009). At the 2012 presidential nominating con-

ventions, the delegates of both parties adopted extreme

positions (relative to public opinion) on abortion. The

Republican platform said essentially, “at no time, under

no conditions.” The Democratic platform said essentially,

“at any time, for any reason.” Now consider the positions

of strong Democratic (about 20% of the population) and

strong Republican (about 12% of the population) iden-

tifiers (Table 1). In the 2008 ANES, 11% of the strong

Democrats queried said that abortion should never be

permitted, and 26% that it should only be permitted in

case of rape, incest, or a threat to a woman’s life.5 So,

Table 1 When should abortion be permitted?

Strong

democrats

Strong

republicans

Never permitted 11% 28

Only in case of rape, incest, or

woman’s life in danger

26 35

For a clear need 13 16

Always as a personal choice 50 22

Source: ANES 2008.

more than one-third of strong Democrats were closer to

Mitt Romney’s position on abortion than to that of their

own party. Perhaps even more surprisingly, 22% of strong

Republicans said that abortion should always be avail-

able as a matter of personal choice, and another 16%

in case of a clear need. So, more than a third of strong

Republicans were closer to the Democratic position than

that of their own party. Weak identifiers were even more

out of line with their parties’ positions.

Thus, while party sorting is an important phenom-

enon and a major contributor to changes in electoral

behavior over the course of the past several decades, the

picture of regiments of voters marching in lockstep with

their parties like members of Congress or the convention

delegates discussed above is a serious exaggeration. Even

though voters may express a clear preference for one party

or the other, many still disagree with that party on one or

more issues (Hillygus and Shields 2008; Pope 2012).

Many further correlations thought to reflect polariza-tion are in fact reflections of sorting. For example, ANES

data show that split-ticket voting (President-House, Presi-

dent-Senate) has declined since the 1970s and 1980s,

suggesting to some a hardening of partisanship. But a

plausible alternative hypothesis is that on average House

and Senate candidates today look more similar to the

presidential candidates of their parties than they did a

generation ago. There are far fewer districts now where

a Republican voter might be tempted to cross over for a

conservative Democratic House candidate, or a Demo-

cratic voter might be tempted to cross-over for a liberal

Republican House candidate.6

4 Somewhat counter-intuitively however, they find that sorting and

“radicalization” (polarization) are about equal in 2008.

5 2012 data are not available at the time of this writing, but the dis-

tribution of responses on this item (and abortion items generally)

shows little variance over time.

6 Noting that self-identified liberals increasingly vote for Demo-

cratic congressional candidates and conservatives for Republicans,

New York Times columnist Charles Blow (2010) writes that “We have

retreated to our respective political corners and armed ourselves in

an ideological standoff over the very meaning of America.” In fact,

liberal and conservative voters may not have changed at all. Com-

pared to a couple of decades ago, in how many House districts today

does a liberal voter have a liberal Republican candidate to vote for,

and in how many districts does a conservative voter have a conserva-

tive Democratic candidate to vote for?




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In short, compared to the 1970s and 1980s, if you are

closer to the presidential candidate of one party in the

2000s, you are likely to be closer to the congressional can-

didates of that party as well. Elite party sorting would be

expected to produce a decline in split-ticket voting even

in the absence of voter sorting. The latter would only

strengthen the expectation.

Similarly, just as party sorting would be expected to

produce an increase in voting consistency across offices,

so should it produce an increase in voting consistency

over time. If a voter finds herself closer to the Democrats in

2008, she is more likely to find herself closer to the Demo-

crats in 2012 than say, a voter in 1972 (George McGovern)

compared to 1976 (Jimmy Carter). In general, party sorting

should produce increased behavioral consistency.

Another relationship considered to be indicative of

increased polarization is the finding of “affective” polari-

zation: partisans dislike each other more than they did ageneration ago (Shaw 2012). Journalists publicize findings

like that of Iyengar, Sood, and Lelkes (2012) who report that

people are more likely to be upset about their children mar-

rying someone from the other party today than they were in

the 1960s. Yet party sorting is a natural explanation for why

partisans feel more negatively about the other party today.

Suppose a son or daughter from a Democratic house-

hold came home in the 1960s and reported that they

planned to marry a Republican. A parent might well think,

“What kind of Republican?” A Barry Goldwater sagebrush

conservative? A George Romney midwestern Main Street

Republican? A Nelson Rockefeller northeastern liberal

Republican? Alternatively, suppose a son or daughter

in a Republican household came home back then and

announced that they planned to marry a Democrat. As

a parent you might wonder “What kind of Democrat?” A

western dam builder? A southern conservative? A union

stalwart? An urban intellectual? In the heterogeneous

parties of 1960, it was very likely that there were plenty of

people in the other party who shared your views.

Contrast that with the contemporary era, after four

decades of party sorting. If the daughter of Democratic

parents announces her intention to marry a Republican,the parents probably will think of an evolution-denying

global warming skeptic. And if their Republican son

intends to marry a Democrat, their first thought might

be that he is bringing an America-hating atheist into

the family. As noted above, such stereotypes are gross

exaggerations, but the point here is that in light of party

sorting, there is more validity to them than there were to

any partisan stereotypes four decades ago.

Finally, consider the rising correlation between par-

tisanship and the vote. Here, we political scientists are

largely responsible for misconceptions in the wider world.

Miller (1991), Bartels (2000), and most recently Shaw (2012)

show that the relationship between party ID and the vote

has strengthened over time, leading some to conclude that

party loyalties are “stronger than at any time since World

War II” (Abramowitz 2012). Such conclusions go well

beyond the data. The estimated coefficients from regress-

ing the vote on party ID would be unbiased only if other

correlates of the vote were not correlated with party ID.

Clearly that is not the case, and it is less the case today

as a consequence of party sorting than it was before the

sorting began. In 1964, a Democrat who strongly opposed

civil rights would vote for Barry Goldwater. Likewise, a

Republican who strongly supported civil rights would vote

for Lyndon Johnson. Variables like racial attitudes were in

conflict with party ID for some voters. Today, after decades

of sorting, issues and ideology are more in line with party

ID. Thus, an increasingly strong relationship betweenparty ID and the vote may only reflect the fact that party ID

now incorporates the effects of other variables that used to

be less correlated with or even negatively correlated with

party ID. Are party loyalties stronger today? They very well

may be, but the only way to know for sure is to include

those other correlates in the equations, which brings up

another problem.

Further Implications

Kerry is not the same as Kennedy,

and Bush is not the same as Nixon

As just discussed, temporal comparisons made by elec-

tion commentators often implicitly assume that any

change in electoral behavior indicates a change in the

voters, overlooking the fact that the change may be in

the alternatives between or among which voters choose.

Did Republicans defect more than usual in 1964 (Gold-

water) and Democrats more than usual in 1972 (McGov-

ern) because their party identifications experienced asudden weakening in those years? To some extent they

did, according to ANES data, but the more important part

of the story was that each party nominated a factional

candidate who was strongly opposed by other factions

of the party.

This is an easy example, not likely to be misunder-

stood, but the same consideration is present in every elec-

tion. If an issue suddenly recedes or surges in importance,

and/or there is a sharp change in electoral outcomes, it

may not be the voters who are changing, but the candidates




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and the positions they take [Fiorina, Abrams, and Pope

(2005), chapter 8]. Thus, while surveys consistently show

abortion to be a second-tier issue for most Americans,

some polls in 2012 showed a rise in importance during

the campaign (e.g., Saad 2012). Did that reflect a change

in voters’ priorities, or did it reflect the fact that out-of-

the-mainstream comments by some Republican candi-

dates made some Americans think, “Gee, these people are

farther out on this issue than I had realized.”7

After presidential elections in which one party

replaces another or congressional elections in which

majority control shifts, one hears pronouncements that

the electorate has shifted to the left or right. In part,

that is true. Stimson (2004) shows that electoral rever-

sals tend to occur at the end of a shift in voter “mood”

in one ideological direction or another. But when a

Democratic president takes office, mood shifts in a con-

servative direction, and when a Republican takes office,mood shifts in a liberal direction (Wlezien 1995). Here it

appears that it is not voter preferences that are changing

but the policies government produces. Loosely speak-

ing, under Democratic administrations, centrist voters

get too much of what they want, and under Republican

administrations, they get too little (Stimson 2012).

As another example, consider the concept of “swing

voters” (Mayer 2008, 2012). During the 2012 campaign

there were frequent references to the small number of

undecided voters (e.g., Epstein 2012). There are various

ways of estimating the proportion of undecided voters –

those who say they are undecided whom they will vote for,

those who say they might change their minds, those who

actually give different answers in a panel (Hillygus and

Jackman 2003) – but I doubt that any method can give us

a very precise estimate. The reason is that whether a voter

will move between parties is to some extent endogeneous:

it depends on the candidates and issues.

In 1984 (Reagan v. Mondale), some surveys indi-

cated that the number of swing voters was in the single

digits, but 8 years later, nearly 20% of the electorate

swung against both major parties and supported Ross

Perot. Did the voters change that much in 8 years? Ormore likely, did a large number of them arrive at a dif-

ferent decision when given a different set of choices?

It is unlikely that strong partisans will swing, so their

proportion of the electorate may give us a rough upper

limit on the number of swing voters, but below that

limit, different issues and candidates can produce wide

variation.

And What About Independents?

The subject of independents is another major source of con-

fusion in election commentary. A first source of confusion

is their number: is it more than a third of the eligible elec-

torate and thus the largest “party” in the US, or is it <10%,

a number so small that it justifies the modern strategy of

mobilizing the base as opposed to the traditional strategy of

moving to the center? The second subject of confusion is the

composition of the independent category. Are independ-

ents a mass of centrists (Killian 2012) or proto-libertarians

(Boaz and Kirby 2010) waiting to be mobilized and move

our gridlocked political system in a positive direction?

Personally, I wish they were, but they are not. Yes,

some are ideological moderates not comfortable in either

a too-liberal Democratic Party or a too-conservative

Republican one. Yes, some are cross-pressured, like liber-

tarians who are closer to the Republicans on economicsand to the Democrats on social issues. But others are unin-

terested and uninformed about politics generally. And

still others are alienated from politics entirely. One thing

we can say with some confidence is that those who take

the independent label when asked the standard question

about party identification are a heterogeneous lot.

How many independents are there? Here political sci-

entists bear a great deal of responsibility for the rampant

confusion that exists. Political scientists traditionally divide

independents into “pure” independents and “leaners.” The

latter are independents who reply that they are “closer to”

(note, not “think of themselves as”) one party or the other.

There is ample evidence that pure independents are less

informed and less involved politically than leaners (Keith

et al. 1992), but not so the claim that leaners are actually

“closet,” “covert,” or “hidden” partisans, a claim stated

with great certitude by some political scientists:

Research by political scientists on the American electorate has

consistently found that the large majority of self-identified inde-

pendents are “closet partisans” who think and vote much like

other partisans (Abramowitz 2011, 2).

… numerous studies have shown that treating leaners as inde-

pendents is ‘the greatest myth in American politics.’ … Call them

IINOs, or Independents in Name Only. IINOs who say they lean

toward the Republicans think and vote just like regular Repub-

licans. IINOs who say the lean toward the Democrats think and

vote just like regular Democrats (Teixeira 2012, 1).

The evidence for such assertions is remarkably thin. A

careful reading of the “research” and the “numerous

studies” shows that the empirical evidence is equally

consistent with not one but two propositions: [1] leaners

are covert partisans as often claimed, and [2] leaners use7 In particular, comments relating to rape by Todd Akin in Missouri

and Richard Murdock in Indiana.




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their vote intention or issue positions to answer the ques-

tion about which party they are closer to.8 An analysis of

ANES panel shows that in 56 of 60 comparisons, leaning

Democrats and Republicans are less stable than the cor-

responding weak identifiers (as well as strong identifiers,

of course) in their responses to the party ID item.

On average, leaners hold the same position from wave

to wave <40% of the time, compared to 50% for weak

identifiers. Moreover, the variance of leaners’ moves on

the scale is greater (Abrams and Fiorina 2012). These find-

ings are consistent with Brody’s (1978) and Miller’s (1991)

contention that the direction in which independents lean

is endogeneous.9 In addition, leaners are more likely to

vote for third parties, to assert that no party represents

their interests very well, and to rate the party toward

which they lean lower than weak identifiers do. Moreover,

in a number of respects, the policy views of leaners differ

from those of weak identifiers – not greatly, to be sure, butconsistently (Abrams and Fiorina 2012).

None of this shows that leaners are pure independents;

they are not. But to the extent that the causal arrow is the

reverse of that generally posited by many political scien-

tists, equating leaners with weak partisans exaggerates the

importance of partisanship, understates the importance of

candidates and issues, and underestimates the potential

change in the electorate that new candidates and issues

could generate. This is a subject that cries out for more

research that exploits the wealth of new data now available.

Head-to-Head Polls and Election Returns Say

Less About Public Opinion than you Think

Some commentators write as if there is a direct correspond-

ence between candidate choice in polls or elections and the

underlying distribution of public opinion. In 2012, there

were claims that the closeness of the polls indicated that

Americans were deeply divided.10Once again, closely-divided

and deeply-divided are distinct concepts. If every voter were

totally indifferent between the candidates, walked into the

voting booth, flipped a coin and said “heads Romney, tails

Obama,” the expected result would be a 50:50 election, but

it would not indicate a polarized electorate.

Only additional public opinion data can shed light on

that question. As Pope (2012) puts it, “When scrutinized

closely, it becomes clear that Americans often vote in a

highly partisan way, yet they are far less likely to think in

a clearly partisan fashion.” If votes were divisible, many

voters might want to vote something like 66% Democratic,

34% Republican or vice-versa, but the indivisible nature

of the voting act prevents such behavior.

According to some political scientists “We all know

that 2012 was a partisan, polarized election . . .” Kondik,

Geoffrey, and Sabato (2012) Do we? Partisan probably –

most recent elections have been partisan – but at the time

of this writing, the data that will allow us to measure howdeeply divided the American electorate was in 2012 are not

yet available. I suspect that when the relevant analyses are

performed, they will show an American citizenry that was

less intense about its candidate preferences in 2012 than in

2008, and certainly one less intense than in 2004.11

Always Remember that Most People you

Talk to are Abnormal

According to Markos Moulitsas (2012), founder of Daily

Kos :

Americans Elect and Unity 08 are history. No Labels an irrele-

vant joke. Despite repeated efforts by Beltway hacks to appeal to

a mythical and nonexistent bipartisan “middle,” it’s clear there

is zero appetite for such constructs from the American public.

And from the other side of the political spectrum, conserva-

tive commentator and author Stanley Kurtz (2012) concurs:

First, we need to understand that our political divisions are real

and growing. They are rooted not in top-down political rheto-

ric but in profound and lasting social and cultural differences.For a while, analysts tended to make light of our polarization,

fruitlessly predicting year after year that our culture war (still

8 This was the contention of Shively (1980) in response to Petrocik(1974) who first claimed that leaners were hidden partisans.

9 Based on 1970s and 1980s evidence, Miller (1991) concluded that

the “how strong” and “closer to” probes were contaminated by short

term electoral forces and argued that only the three categories pro-

duced by the root survey item should be used. More recently, Norpoth

and Velez (2012) conclude “The partisanship of leaners is not a long-

term loyalty rooted in a partisan identity acquired from the previous

generation. To be sure, leaners vote in fairly large numbers for the

presidential ticket, but this may be due to common factors shaping

both their party leanings and the partisan vote.”

10 “Obama began his 2012 presidential victory speech praising the

unity of our nation. Unfortunately, exit polls reveal a devastatingly

polarized electorate propelled him to victory.” Elkins (2012) bases

this conclusion entirely on vote splits in demographic groups, with

no supporting data on their policy references, which (Pew Research

Center 2012) reports as not widening in recent years.

11 The fact that 2.5 million fewer people appear to have voted in 2012

than in 2008 despite 6 million more eligible voters and massive turn-

out drives by both parties is consistent with this expectation, unless

the drop-off in turnout was predominantly due to nonpolitical fac-

tors like Hurricane Sandy, which does not appear to be the case.




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raging) was just about to end. If anything, the culture wars have

expanded now to include the whole of politics.

Political journalists need to remember that most of the

people they talk to professionally are abnormal, that is,

that they are statistically far from the average. The politi-

cal class comes from the tails of the distribution of Ameri-can public opinion. Political scientists have documented

this since the 1950s, when McCloskey and his associates

(McCloskey, Hoffman, and O’Hara 1960) pointed out the

differences between Republican national convention

delegates and the Republican rank-and-file.12 While we

do not have comparable data that would enable us to

track the degree of divergence over time, it is likely that

the process of party sorting has increased this divergence,

because as noted earlier, the sorting process is much

farther along at the elite level than at the voter level.

Hard though it may be for political journalists to

believe, of the approximately 61 million people who

voted for Mitt Romney, more than 58 million did not

watch Fox News last night. (I am making the generous

assumption that all of the 2.6 million nightly viewers

turned out and voted Republican.) Similarly, of the 65.5

million Americans who voted for Barack Obama, nearly

64 million did not watch any MSNBC news show last

night.13

In the US, there is indeed a great divide within the

political class – those Americans most involved with

politics, including public officials, candidates, donors,

campaign activists, interest group activists, and, lest weforget, the intellectuals and commentators allied with

the parties. To journalists who spend their days interact-

ing with people like this, the evidence of polarization is

overwhelming.

Yet away from the politicized haunts where the

national media is headquartered, the world is differ-

ent. Most Americans are not ideologues and do not hold

extreme views. They feel no need to impress their friends

and acquaintances with the purity of their political views

and the intensity with which they hold them. And they

have no monetary or career incentives to behave like jerks.

Hundreds of Millions of Dollars Spent on

the Media Probably does not Make much

Difference

I will write “probably” because it is always possible that

research on the 2012 campaign will show the opposite. But

this is most unlikely. As Diana Mutz (2012) notes, there is

an “enormous chasm” between the beliefs held by jour-

nalists and the typical voter about the effects of campaign

media vs. the findings of political communications schol-

ars. The former believe that the effects of the media are

major, even determinative, whereas academic research

finds much smaller effects. I shall say no more about

this, because given the long history of the disjunction,

it is doubtful that academics could change journalists’

minds about this subject if they had a whole semester, not

just a seminar. Who are they going to believe: academic

researchers, or their own eyes and ears?

Finally, the American Electorate,

Collectively, is not Stupid

Beyond being told over and over by self-interested big-

spending campaign consultants that TV ads are power-

ful influences on public opinion and voting behavior,

part of the reason that political commentators ascribe

such great importance to the media is the implicit

assumption by many of them that Americans are dumb.Even though pre-school age children quickly learn to

discount commercials on their TV programs, mature

adults are supposedly unable to resist the influence of

political media.

To be sure, voters are generally uninformed, and many

try to avoid politics until the imminent approach of elec-

tion day makes it impossible. Yet the collective electorate

manifests a degree of knowledge and wisdom that gives

those of us who have studied that electorate for decades

some cause for optimism.14 If only I could say as much

about the knowledge and wisdom of the political class.

12 On some issues Democratic delegates were actually closer to the

Republican rank-and-file then Republican delegates were.

13 Based on November cable ratings, which are the latest available at

the time of this writing.

14 Besides myself I would include Page and Shapiro (1992), Stimson

(2004) and other scholars of a certain vintage.




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Morris P. Fiorina is the Wendt Family Professor of Political Science

at Stanford University and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution.

His interests include representation, elections and public opinion,

and democratic theory generally.



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