Examples Of Political Polarization

“Political polarization can refer to the divergence of political attitudes to ideological extremes.” (https://www.populismstudies.org/Vocabulary/political-polarization/) Political polarization is an individual's opinions on a certain topic or issue that leans more towards a certain political party's ideas rather than having a moderate opinion. With many people having different viewpoints on policies or ideas for the government, this causes problems. It can cause divisions on big issues brought up, which can cause huge confusion on what decision to take on the topic. According to the article, “7 things to know about polarization in America,” American politics are “further apart ideologically than at any point in recent history” (pg 1). It

Pietro Nivola included a couple of the solutions in his article, one of the solutions he included in this article was increasing voter participation, “higher voter turnouts in U.S. elections could conceivably exert a moderating influence” (pg 1). He says that the increase in voter participation will help balance the parties out and not just let the obvious popular one win. This also goes with another remedy he mentioned about the electoral college. He says how the electoral college often lets the runner with the less popular vote win and this can “depress voter participation in much of the nation” (pg 1). He suggests either fix or get rid of the electoral college as it decreases voter participation and makes others feel “that their votes don’t matter” (Pg 1). (Thinking About Political Polarization) Another article written by the Atlantic titled, “What's the Answer to Political Polarization in the U.S.?” talks about how political polarization is at its all time worse and throughout the article it is like a Q&A. Some of the major questions it answers/explains are: (1) is the country really polarized, (2) what is wrong with Congress, (3) If political parties weren’t the founders idea, will the system still work, (4) “Would non-partisan elections, in place of party primaries, re-empower the political center by

Out of all the solutions mentioned by the articles, I personally think that weakening party leaders and implementing an automatic voter registration will greatly help the decrease in polarization. The weakening of party leaders will allow people to really think about what they want. Party leaders have way too much power making people listening to them believe them and automatically follow their thoughts. Weakening them, will allow for citizens to actually form a thought or idea of what they want. I also believe that getting an automatic voter registration will also allow for the decrease of polarization. This will increase voter participation as they don’t have to go through the trouble of registration and it makes the voting process way easier. I believe that the one to be most likely implemented is the automatic voter registration as it will probably be the easiest that the government can do. As much as I would want the party leaders to decrease their power the likelihood of that is low. However, the automatic registration will still increase voter participation, which will balance the parties' votes out. Political polarization is caused by many things like the competition of power, the way the media portrays political parties, and the electoral college. However, if we implement some of the solutions mentioned the political polarization