American Politics

Name

University

Course

Tutor

Date

American Politics

Question 1

Fiorina argues that voters always appear polarized simply because the political arena offers them choices which are mainly polarized . If politicians provide people with polarized cues , then the public reflects them eventually . Alternatively voters might send elite cues that suggest to politicians that they ought to move toward the center (Fiorina , et al , 4

The 2000 election brought to us the familiar pictorial representation of the culture war in the form of the blue and red map of

the United States (Fiorina et al , 4 . Claims of deep national division were standard fare after the 2000 election (Fiorina et al , 5 . However they argue , there is little evidence that ideological or policy positions of America are more polarized today than they were two or three decades ago , although their choices often seem to be (Fiorina et al , 8 . To explain this disconnect , Fiorina et al . argue that the political figures Americans evaluate are more polarized . A polarized political class makes the citizenry look polarized , but it is only an appearance (p . 8

Centrist voters can register polarized choices , and even if the positions and beliefs of voters remain constant , their voting decisions and political evaluations will appear more polarized when the positions electoral candidates adopt and the actions taken by elected officials become more extreme . The opposite is true as well , of course , voter positions and beliefs could change but their evaluations and votes might not change if the candidates and their parties acted in such a way as to offset the voter changes . The general point is that the interpretation of evaluations and votes and requires information on both the candidates parties ' and voters ' parties (Fiorina , Abrams , and Pope , 25-32 170-182

There are probably fewer moderates in the electorate than was the case thirty or forty years ago but in modern American politics most citizens are not ideological extremists and there is a great middle when it comes to public opinion in this country . If we think about the views of the citizens as regards policies that fall along a line ranging from liberal to conservative , the distribution of attitudes looks something like a bell-shaped curve . On issues as diverse as immigration , education and even abortion , national surveys show that the biggest proportion of citizens hold views which are centrist (Fiorina ,et al , 185

Fiorina claims that there has not been much increase in geographical polarization in recent decades and the differences between blue states and red states have been greatly exaggerated . Not all blue states uniformly blue and not all red states are uniformly red . He further notes , many of the most blue states in 2004 were simultaneous voting mainly for John Kerry and electing governors who are Republican , and similarly , many of the most red states were electing governors from the Democratic party . Instead many states are basically purple , a mixture of red and blue and red . There can be no doubt on this assertion . When the blu-red...