Is a Polarized Party System a Too Extreme Party System? Understanding Perceptions of Party Extremity in the United States

Abstract

The Democratic and Republican parties have polarized since the 1960s. Does the American public believe that the parties have grown “too extreme?” I leverage data from 18 national surveys to explain perceptions of party extremity as well as text-analysis of open-ended survey responses from an additional national survey to examine what the public associates with the concept of extremity. Three key results emerged. First, a growing proportion of Americans believe that both parties are too extreme, but this belief remains in the decided minority. Second, ideology and partisanship interact to shape beliefs about extremity. Moderates are more likely to believe that both parties are too extreme, but this is conditional on the presence of partisan motivations to say that only one party is too extreme. Finally, the public has a multifaceted conceptualization of extremity that is frequently tied to perceived procedural failures with only the highly knowledgeable reliably connecting perceived extremity to programmatic considerations. These results suggest that elite partisans have little reason to moderate their views given that most Americans do not perceive them to be too extreme, partisan considerations gain them ideological leeway, and many fail to connect extremity with the parties’ ideological reputations.