Why do voters prefer divided government

Many pieces of legislation were passed in the s and s with reasonably high levels of support from both parties. Most members of Congress had relatively moderate voting records, with regional differences within parties that made bipartisanship on many issues more likely.

Cross-party cooperation on these issues was fairly frequent. But in the past few decades, the number of moderates in both houses of Congress has declined. This has made it more difficult for party leadership to work together on a range of important issues, and for members of the minority party in Congress to find policy agreement with an opposing party president.

The past thirty years have brought a dramatic change in the relationship between the two parties as fewer conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans have been elected to office. As political moderate s , or individuals with ideologies in the middle of the ideological spectrum, leave the political parties at all levels, the parties have grown farther apart ideologically, a result called party polarization.

In other words, at least organizationally and in government, Republicans and Democrats have become increasingly dissimilar from one another. In the party-in-government, this means fewer members of Congress have mixed voting records; instead they vote far more consistently on issues and are far more likely to side with their party leadership.

Either they are becoming independents, or they are participating only in the general election and are therefore not helping select party candidates in primaries. The number of moderates has dropped since as both parties have moved toward ideological extremes.

What is most interesting about this shift to increasingly polarized parties is that it does not appear to have happened as a result of the structural reforms recommended by APSA. Rather, it has happened because moderate politicians have simply found it harder and harder to win elections. There are many conflicting theories about the causes of polarization, some of which we discuss below.

But whatever its origin, party polarization in the United States does not appear to have had the net positive effects that the APSA committee was hoping for.

With the exception of providing voters with more distinct choices, positives of polarization are hard to find. The negative impacts are many.

For one thing, rather than reducing interparty conflict, polarization appears to have only amplified it. For example, the Republican Party or the GOP, standing for Grand Old Party has historically been a coalition of two key and overlapping factions: pro-business rightists and social conservatives. The GOP has held the coalition of these two groups together by opposing programs designed to redistribute wealth and advocating small government while at the same time arguing for laws preferred by conservative Christians.

But it was also willing to compromise with pro-business Democrats, often at the expense of social issues, if it meant protecting long-term business interests. Recently, however, a new voice has emerged that has allied itself with the Republican Party. Born in part from an older third-party movement known as the Libertarian Party, the Tea Party is more hostile to government and views government intervention in all forms, and especially taxation and the regulation of business, as a threat to capitalism and democracy.

Although an anti-tax faction within the Republican Party has existed for some time, some factions of the Tea Party movement are also active at the intersection of religious liberty and social issues, especially in opposing such initiatives as same-sex marriage and abortion rights.

Although the Tea Party is a movement and not a political party, 86 percent of Tea Party members who voted in cast their votes for Republicans. Former presidential candidates Ted Cruz a and John Kasich b , like many other Republicans, signed a pledge not to raise taxes if elected.

Credit: modified image from OpenStax American Government. Movements on the left have also arisen. The Occupy Movement believed government moved swiftly to protect the banking industry from the worst of the recession but largely failed to protect the average person, thereby worsening the growing economic inequality in the United States. Credit: modification of work by David Shankbone. While the Occupy Movement itself has largely fizzled, the anti-business sentiment to which it gave voice continues within the Democratic Party, and many Democrats have proclaimed their support for the movement and its ideals, if not for its tactics.

To date, however, the Occupy Movement has had fewer electoral effects than has the Tea Party. Scholars agree that some degree of polarization is occurring in the United States, even if some contend it is only at the elite level. But they are less certain about exactly why, or how, polarization has become such a mainstay of American politics. Several conflicting theories have been offered.

The first and perhaps best argument is that polarization is a party-in-government phenomenon driven by a decades-long sorting of the voting public, or a change in party allegiance in response to shifts in party position. Since parties are bottom-up institutions, this meant local issues dominated elections; it also meant national-level politicians typically paid more attention to local problems than to national party politics.

But over the past several decades, voters have started identifying more with national-level party politics, and they began to demand their elected representatives become more attentive to national party positions.

One example of the way social change led to party sorting revolves around race. A second possible culprit in increased polarization is the impact of technology on the public square. After Barack Obama was elected president, Democrats became more likely than Republicans to favor single-party government, as was the case in every poll thereafter until Obama's last year in office.

In recent years when government was divided, supporters of the president's party were more likely to favor one-party government than were supporters of the party controlling Congress. After Democrats won control of both houses of Congress in , while Bush was in office, Republicans were still more likely than Democrats to favor single-party government. After the GOP regained control of the House in , Democrats were more likely than Republicans to support single-party government.

Trump is the fourth consecutive president to take office with his party in control of both houses of Congress. The previous three presidents all left office with Congress controlled by the opposing party, following midterm election losses.

No president since has had a Congress controlled by his own party for a full term of office. Recent history, along with low approval ratings for Trump and Congress , would seem to indicate that Democrats have a good chance of gaining control of at least one house of Congress next year.

Despite sizable percentages of Americans preferring single-party government in recent years, there is a real possibility that could swing in the other direction next year -- as it did preceding midterm elections in and In the broader picture, however, there has been one constant over the years in Americans' attitudes on single-rule vs. Media consumption. Presidential Approval Ratings. Show more. Use is, however, only permitted with proper attribution to Statista. When publishing one of these graphics, please include a backlink to the respective infographic URL.

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Does Statista also create infographics in a customized design? For individual content and infographics in your Corporate Design, please visit our agency website www. Any more questions? Get in touch with us quickly and easily. They link this emerging voting pattern to the sharpening policy differences between parties, illuminating the ways that ideological positions of candidates still matter in American elections.

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