Half a loaf

Blog: Just the social facts, ma'am

Abstract

 It's often said that "social issues" are more divisive than economic ones, and that increased political polarization in the United States reflects a shift from economic to social issues as the main focus of politics.  A good summary of this view is provided by William Galston, as quoted in a recent column by Thomas Edsall:  first, "The economic axis that defined our politics from the beginning of New Deal liberalism to the end of Reagan conservatism has been displaced," and then  "When the core political issues are matters of right and wrong rather than more and less, compromise becomes much more difficult, and disagreement becomes more intense. If I think we should spend X on farm programs and you think it should be 2X, neither of us thinks the other is immoral or evil. But if you think I'm murdering babies and I think you're oppressing women, it's hard for each of us not to characterize the other in morally negative terms."I've criticized this analysis in a previous post, but since it keeps coming up, I'll elaborate here.  One problem is that economic issues can be seen as matters of right and wrong:  people often talk about fair or unfair pay, prices, and treatment of employees.  With his example of farm programs, part of the reason we have them is that many people think of the "family farm" as a good thing that deserves to be protected.  Another is implicit in his example of a moral issue, which is obviously abortion.  He implies that there's a binary choice between two ways of seeing it, but to a large extent opinions fall on a scale:  it should be legal up to some number of weeks, and banned or allowed only in limited circumstances after that time.   Only a minority take the extreme positions:   that it should never be allowed or that it should be allowed at any time.  In a June 2023 survey, 73% said abortion should be legal at 6 weeks into the pregnancy, 51% at 15 weeks, and 27% at 24 weeks.   This illustrates the more general point that "matters of right and wrong" can also be matters of "more or less."Of course, abortion is a divisive issue and has been for a long time.  A major reason for this is that the parties have taken extreme positions.  The New York Times has a feature summarizing abortion laws in the states.  The distribution of gestational limits is shown in the figure (I show the laws that were passed, some of which have been overruled by state courts).  Twenty states have complete bans or six-week limits, 24 have 24 weeks or beyond, and only 7 are in the range where median public opinion seems to fall.*  So why have the parties taken extreme positions?  One possibility is that people with extreme views put more weight on the issue.  A 2015 Pew survey asked whether abortion should be legal in all cases, legal in most cases, illegal in most cases, or illegal in all cases and also asked how important the issue would be to you in deciding how to vote in the 2016 election.  The mean importance (1-4, higher means more important) by opinions on abortion:legal in all     2.82legal most     2.81illegal most   3.18illegal all       3.68This is a big difference:  about 80% of the people who thought it should be illegal in all cases said the issue would be very important to them, versus about 40 percent in the other categories.  That is, it wasn't people with extreme positions in general who put weight on the issue, but just people with extreme anti-abortion positions.  Of course, this is just one survey, and it just just involves self-assessed importance, not volunteering, contributing money, and other forms of activism.  Still, it suggests that Republican politicians are more influenced by extreme views from "the base" than Democrats.  That leaves the question of why Democratic elites haven't made more effort to appeal to moderate voters on the issue.  I think that's because they're currently benefitting from the issue--they can appeal to moderate voters by pointing to what Republicans are doing or are trying to do.  If the Republicans moderate their position, the Democrats may have more incentive to moderate theirs.*Of course, public opinion differs among the states, but not by enough to account for the differences in laws.  See the survey report here.  [Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]