Was 2020 peak polarization?

[pbrower2a]

Quite possibly. It's mostly an urban-rural divide with rural areas (except the Black Belt of the South) being super-heavily R (maybe 80-20) and urban and suburban America heavily D (about 65-35). The difference between Illinois and Tennessee isn't that Illinois is a "northern" state and Tennessee is "southern"; it is that Tennessee is much more rural. Memphis and Nashville are strongly R; Knox (Knoxville) and Hamilton (Chattanooga) are almost even -- but neither Nashville nor Memphis has much of a suburban fringe.  No, Tennessee has not been a hotbed of political reaction from seeming antiquity; Al Gore is from there. Tennessee used to have the reputation of the most progressive state in  the South, at least in its politics; that is over. Oh, is it over!  Illinois has Greater Chicago and huge swaths of rural area. Democrats still win Peoria (Peoria), Champaign (Champaign), McLean (Bloomington). Rock Island (Moline), and Winnebaco (Rockford) Counties, but put those counties together and you have much less than the population of either Nashville or Memphis.

But Democrats have Greater Chicago, and that matters for statewide totals. Oh, does that matter!

       

[pbrower2a]

Let's contrast 2020 to 1976. Both were close in electoral votes and the popular vote.

Ford by 10% or more 32
Ford by   5% to 10%  65
Ford by 9% to 5% 126
Carter by 5% or less 153
Carter 5% to 10% 49
Carter by 10% or more 89

Carter had a strong regional appeal, winning all former Secessionist states except Virginia, and losing the Old Dominion just barely. Even with that he ended up with only 89 electoral votes decided by 10% or more. I'm guessing that for a short time America had the New South in which blacks and whites had yet to divide on a partisan basis. That of course is over.

Except for Florida (17) and Michigan (Ford's home state, 21), states with 15 or more electoral votes in 1976 went one way or the other by less than 5%.

Consider this: fully 279 electoral votes were decided by 5% or less.  

Obviously the political life of America was quite different in 2020 from what it was in 1976. The two main Parties are clearly different in ideology to the extent that people vote largely on identity The rural-urban divide in politics is extreme polarization. It is easy for people to know nobody who voted for the Other Side. Winning elections is now a matter of getting out marginal voters for one while discouraging the marginal voters of the Other Side from voting. There were conservative and liberal elements in both Parties in 1976; until we see a realignment, likely with younger pols supplanting the older and often more fanatical ones that we now have, we will not see that again.

 

[pbrower2a]

Hope so. In addition to other reasons - it became utterly uninteresting to observe US politics from abroad: you can basically predict positions on almost all important issues for 98+% of Democratic candidates and 99+% of Republican after seeing a letter behind their name. That's why i prefer 1960th-1970th period, when you could find almost every type of candidates in both parties - even really conservative Democrats and really liberal Republicans. Now it's so boring....

It's as if the Parties have become brand names, and that the Parties control their "product" (elected officials) like a manufacturer controls the taste of a soft drink. You don't expect a wildly different taste from normal with a soft drink.

Here's the problem: the system creates little room for any genuine moderates, people who can buck a party line on some principle. We have politicians who think it fine that some people think it acceptable to thwart the results of an election. We have the potential for totalitarian-style personality cults. Maybe because Democrats are more diverse they are less vulnerable... but one can't fully be sure.