ezra klein

The Double Edged Sword Surrounding Senator Warren’s Medicare for All Plan.

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Last week, Senator Elizabeth Warren released the details on how she would pay for her Medicare for All Plan. Her plan presents a double-edged sword for Democratic candidates and the supporters they want to vote for them in 2020. While all Democrats agree that the Republican approach (embraced by Arizona’s Republican Senator and Representatives) to … Read more

Polarization Schmolarization

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

pew polarization

Pew (and others) discover the SHOCKING TRUTH that people who pay attention to politics are polarized! You won’t believe what happens next!

Here’s Vox‘s Ezra Klein on a research paper by Pew analyzing “polarization” in the American electorate:

Perhaps the single most important fact about American politics is this: the people who participate are more ideological and more partisan, as well as angrier and more fearful, than those who don’t.

The finding emerges from Pew’s massive survey of 10,000 Americans, which concluded that “Republicans and Democrats are more divided along ideological lines — and partisan antipathy is deeper and more extensive — than at any point in the last two decades.”

But everyone already knew that. Here’s the real kicker: “these divisions are greatest among those who are the most engaged and active in the political process.”

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The science is in: “Moderate” voters are a myth

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

moderate def

Vox‘s Ezra Klein covered some interesting new research involving ideological stances of average voters.

What happens, explains David Broockman, a political scientist at the University of California at Berkeley, is that surveys mistake people with diverse political opinions for people with moderate political opinions. The way it works is that a pollster will ask people for their position on a wide range of issues: marijuana legalization, the war in Iraq, universal health care, gay marriage, taxes, climate change, and so on. The answers will then be coded as to whether they’re left or right. People who have a mix of answers on the left and the right average out to the middle — and so they’re labeled as moderate.

“”These people look like moderates but they’re actually quite extreme””

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