The Authoritarian Divide: Partisan Identity, Voting, and the Transformation of the American Electorate [Hardcover]

This book shows how authoritarian predispositions influence American political preferences, voting, and partisanship. Higher levels of authoritarianism, particularly in White Americans, tend to be found in the Republican Party, though the trend has not been linear in recent decades, starting and stopping for a variety of reasons. The authors examine how partisan sorting based on authoritarianism occurs and what its consequences are for political conflict and democracy in the US.Concerns about political polarization and threats to democratic ideals are on the rise in the US.The Authoritarian Dividetakes on both of these issues by showing how authoritarian predispositions--desires for social conformity and in-group conformity--have influenced American political preferences, voting, and partisanship in recent decades. Voters have increasingly sorted into political parties based on their levels of authoritarianism, with higher levels tending toward the Republican Party and lower levels to Democratic. The authors reveal complexities in this trend, including the outsized effect on White Americans, the dependence on parties offering certain types of choices, and the different ways education level factors into the sorting process. Drawing from nationally representative samples, panel data, and experiments, the book demonstrates that authoritarianism has increasingly structured a wide range of attitudes and has become a growing influence on vote choice. The analysis carries crucial implications for partisan conflict and the future of American democracy.[to come]1. The Authoritarian Tide2. The Political and Psychological Dynamics of Authoritarianism3. Assessing Authoritarianism in the American Public4. The Authoritarian Belief System5. The Contingent Trajectory of Authoritarian Sorting Among White Americans6. Authoritarianism and the Mechanisms of Partisan Sorting7. Authoritarianism and Sociocultural Issue Defection8. Authoritarianism and Its Consequences in an Ideolló±