Nostalgia Isn't What it Used to Be: Partisan Polarization in Views on the Past*

Abstract

ObjectiveIn this article, we seek to extend our understanding of the partisan lenses through which Americans view politics by investigating if there is partisan polarization in views of the past. Current political issues are frequently contextualized with references to the past. Despite these frequent evocations of the past, public opinion scholars’ knowledge of how citizens view earlier eras is incomplete.MethodsWe evaluate competing explanations of the effect of the past on present political attitudes: generational effects, partisanship, and ideology. To do this, we administered a novel battery of questions to a nationally representative sample drawn from the 2012 Cooperative Campaign Analysis Project.ResultsThe data show evidence of generational effects, but also of partisanship in the case of opinions of governmental performance, and of ideology in the case of evaluations of culture and quality of life.ConclusionThis study suggests that Americans are divided not just in their views of the present, but also in their views on the past. To the extent that peoples’ evaluations are shaped by how well government is performing relative to some past era of good performance, polarization in views of the past could have long‐lasting effects on how Americans evaluate the government.