Are Changing Constituencies Driving Rising Polarization in the U.S. House of Representatives?,

Author

Thomson; James A. ; Sussell; Jesse

Year

2015

Publisher

RAND Corporation

Language

English

Pages

Link

Last Update

01-Jun-2026

Keywords

Population Studies ; Statistics ; Political Science

Description

Virtually all observers of American politics agree that there is a high degree of polarization between the Democratic and Republican parties in Congress. There is also a general consensus that this interparty polarization has been increasing over time: The ideological gap separating the parties of Tip O’Neill and Gerald Ford in the 1970s may have been large, but it was smaller than the distance between the Clinton Democrats and the Gingrich Republicans in the 1990s, and smaller still than the gulf between the parties of Obama and Boehner today. There is much less consensus, however, as to the causes of...