The weight and counter-weights at the far end of both parties
by digby
I’ve always seen partisan politics in America as a tug of war where the weight of the truest believers, the activists, the hard core ideological members of the two main parties weight the ends of the political rope. When they are not equally engaged and pulling equally hard, one side has a built in advantage.
Anyway, Pew has another poll about polarization that I’ll delve into in more detail over the next few days. But this is interesting for starters:
Overall, the study finds that consistent conservatives:
Are tightly clustered around a single news source, far more than any other group in the survey, with 47% citing Fox News as their main source for news about government and politics.
Express greater distrust than trust of 24 of the 36 news sources measured in the survey. At the same time, fully 88% of consistent conservatives trust Fox News.
Are, when on Facebook, more likely than those in other ideological groups to hear political opinions that are in line with their own views.
Are more likely to have friends who share their own political views. Two-thirds (66%) say most of their close friends share their views on government and politics.
By contrast, those with consistently liberal views:
Are less unified in their media loyalty; they rely on a greater range of news outlets, including some – like NPR and the New York Times– that others use far less.
Express more trust than distrust of 28 of the 36 news outlets in the survey. NPR, PBS and the BBC are the most trusted news sources for consistent liberals.
Are more likely than those in other ideological groups to block or “defriend” someone on a social network – as well as to end a personal friendship – because of politics.
Are more likely to follow issue-based groups, rather than political parties or candidates, in their Facebook feeds.
And yet the news media persists in presenting conservatism as “mainstream” and liberalism as “fringe.” You can make a case that both are fringe but I don’t think you can make a case that conservatism if mainstream when they rely on openly partisan, often crackpot media for their information and only talk to each other.
Now it’s true that liberals tend to “unfriend” people on Facebook, and are somewhat intolerant of conservative views. I think that’s human on both sides. But the information flow really seems to be different between the two and I think that requires those who talk about trends and factions to be specific.
An, by the way, there are a lot of reasons why the hard core conservatives are more successful in party politics than the hard core liberals (even though, according to Pew’s definition there are actually more of the latter) but one of the reasons has to be this:
They vote in primaries more often than we do. Liberals could bring a lot more weight to bear in this whole thing if they just bothered to do that.
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