This ask the expert is part of MSU’s “Ask the experts: 2024 election issues series” where experts answer questions on specific issues. For this one, the topic is rising polarization and reasons for its cause.
With under two months until the presidential election, political polarization is high and rising. A key reason is the increasing educational differences between the two political parties, according to a new book from a Michigan State University political science professor.
Matt Grossmann, director of MSU’s Institute for Public Policy and Social Research, has published “Polarized By Degrees,” a book that explores the nation’s current political polarization and how it interacts with a diploma divide and a culture war between the parties.
Given the findings in “Polarized By Degrees,” Grossmann, also a professor in the Department of Political Science in the College of Social Science, answers questions about how educated liberals are winning the culture war but provoking a backlash and how the diploma divide has polarized views of expertise and social institutions.
Why has polarization become so pervasive?
Americans are now more likely to have viewpoints and social identities that match their partisanship, taking a clear side in a bifurcated political system. Their views of the other side have deteriorated, even if they feel lukewarm about their own side. And politics has become about everything, from consumer choices to family lifestyles, making each decision a guide to your politics and no institution credibly independent.
How have the two parties changed in terms of educational attainment?
Educational attainment has risen dramatically in the United States. But the Republican Party has remained dominated by white voters without college degrees. The Democratic coalition has changed dramatically: a majority of Bill Clinton’s voters in 1992 were white voters without college degrees, but now they account for less than a quarter of the Democratic coalition. This increasing education divide between the parties also means citizens hold opposing views as to who is better able to make policy decisions, with Democrats preferring credentialed experts. At the same time, Republican voters have increasingly held populist views and show skepticism toward supposed experts, including teachers, scientists, journalists, universities, nonprofit organizations and even corporations. This divergence of views is contributing to an electorate that is becoming more divided.
How does this educational divide contribute to polarization?
American society has experienced fundamental changes — from shifting relations between social groups and evolving language and behavior norms to the increasing value of a college degree. These transformations have polarized the nation’s political climate and ignited a perpetual culture war. Policymaking increasingly requires expertise, but Republican voters and leaders have become far more skeptical of experts — seeing them as part of the liberal opposition. As college-educated voters make their home in the Democratic Party, almost no institution is still seen as neutral in the culture wars that increasingly define our politics.
What will it take to bring more unity to the country?
There is no easy way out of our increasingly polarized politics. Most of the mechanisms that produce it are self-reinforcing: as the Democratic coalition changes, so do its priorities — and it increasingly becomes seen as the party of educated liberals. These changes have affected many other nations, but the U.S. has the strictest two-party system in the world. That means movements that would be seen as third parties elsewhere, such as green parties on the left or populist parties on the right, instead transform our major parties. With only two sides, it is hard for any social institution to stay above the fray.
