Politics are increasingly polarizing. (Rob Dobi/Getty Images)
The 2024 national election highlighted a number of polarizing cultural issues. Americans have become accustomed to these national debates, but they should buckle their seatbelts because these hot-button issues will increasingly percolate down to the state government.
State political leaders have become far more polarized and the incentives for career advancement encourage this. Local party leaders increasingly recruit extreme candidates more than moderates, so up-and-coming politicians enter their careers more ideological to start.
States also have multiple executive positions that serve as launching pads for higher office and often have partisan professional organizations that promote polarized position taking. Eighteen Democratic attorneys general just sued the Trump administration over birthright citizenship within a calendar year of 26 Republican attorney generals suing the Biden administration over background checks for firearm purchases.
Not surprisingly, many of these recent attorney generals have leveraged their high profile to run for governor or US Senator and governors have championed polarized partisan policies to run for president.
State party polarization is not only a product of political leaders; the public has indirectly fueled division as well. Political scientists have detailed how lifestyle tastes have slowly fused with party beliefs, so partisans now differ on preferences of where to live, where to shop, what beer to drink, and even what to name their kids.
Consequently, while not everyone can relocate, a critical mass has geographically sorted based on lifestyle, which has created concentrated partisan legislative districts. It also means people seldom have their party beliefs moderated by friendly neighbors with different party beliefs.
Defining yourself
Ironically, as political interest has increased among the American public, so too has the identity people have with their party and their ideology; these engaged voters care more and identify more as being liberal or conservative.
American partisans correspondingly see the opposing party as threatening to the American way of life. It is exactly due to these cultural issues that this negative partisanship – the drive to vote against the other side more than vote for your own party – has thrived.
The pattern of increased party polarization occurs universally across states. One would think that polarization would be particularly vivid in the 38 trifecta states, where, like Indiana, one party controls both chambers of the legislature as well as the governor’s office. This is true, but it occurs as well in states where parties are nearly evenly split, the parties tend to avoid compromise to distinguish themselves on these very issues in an effort to gain the majority.
Political scientists Boris Shor and colleagues have followed polarization at the state level over time. In 2011, a vast majority of state legislatures were not polarized. By 2020, every state except two were more polarized and the polarization was across every type of issue that states tackle.
So what? There is nothing objectively wrong with people holding stark political views and having government reflect them in a representative democracy, particularly when elected officials have taken clear positions on those issues when running for office.
The problem with the growing polarization is the breakdown that has resulted between public opinion and state policy. Indiana University political scientist Gerald Wright, with his colleagues Robert Erikson and John McIver, found that citizen ideological beliefs meaningfully drove state policy public in their classic 1993 book, Statehouse Democracy. Their findings held for decades.
Now, political science findings indicate a disconnect between public opinion and policy. True a considerable portion of the public is driven by these issues, but the overall public opinion is far less connected with state policy than it used to be. Further, partisans do not embrace polarization on its face, but instead see it as being driven solely by the other party.
Wright’s recent work with Elizabeth Rigby finds that this disconnect has led to inequality in state policies. Legislators of both parties fail to represent the economic interest of their lower income supporters, and Democrats fail to represent those same voters’ social policy interests. Representative democracy is not flourishing on many measures.
This polarizing trend will not slow. These issues have riled up Washington, D.C. for decades but not fully broken through because of stringent checks at the federal level that states do not have. Simple majority votes win in the statehouse, gubernatorial vetoes tend to be easily overridden, and judges often run for election or are appointed by governors. Hence, skilled politicians with genuine beliefs will likely continue to push and implement polarized issues in states.
None of this is to criticize state Republicans or Democrats: they ran on these issues and govern on them. It is more a recognition that there are unintended political consequences in this political age. Further, we should get used to states – sometime neighbors like Indiana and Illinois – having completely different sets of policies despite their proximity.
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