81 | Ezra Klein on Polarization, Politics, and Identity

/ Politics / 7 Comments

People have always disagreed about politics, passionately and sometimes even violently. But in certain historical moments these disagreements were distributed without strong correlations, so that any one political party would contain a variety of views. In a representative democracy, that kind of distribution makes it easier to accomplish things. In contrast, today we see strong political polarization: members of any one party tend to line up with each other on a range of issues, and correspondingly view the other party with deep distrust. Political commentator Ezra Klein has seen this shift in action, and has studied it carefully in his new book Why We're Polarized (out Jan. 28). We talk about the extent to which the apparent polarization is real, how we can trace its causes, and whether there's anything we can do about it.

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Ezra Klein received a B.A. in political science from the University of California, Los Angeles. He is currently the editor-at-large and founder of Vox. As a writer and editor his work has appeared in/on The Washington Post, MSNBC, Bloomberg, The New York Review of Books, and The New Yorker. Among his awards are Blogger of the Year (The Week), 50 Most Powerful People in Washington DC (GQ), Best Online Commentary (Online News Association), and the Carey McWilliams Award (American Political Science Association).

7 thoughts on “81 | Ezra Klein on Polarization, Politics, and Identity”

  1. George

    Great podcast — a number of counterintuitive insights, which are always welcome, so thanks for that! EK mentioned that he could provide a list of people to read from the “other” political party. Even though he suggests that this is only partially effective, maybe posting a list of these writers would be helpful? Thanks again, g

  2. VicP

    Fascinating discussion. Throughout the late 19th and 20th centuries the Democrat bosses owned the political machines in the big cities where millions of Catholic immigrants settled and became Democrats. Hence the 1960 election of Kennedy as a Catholic and first president descended from The Great 19th Century Imigration. The Republican party by default was the party of the non-immigrant. Queue the post WW growth of the suburbs and those Americans looked back towards the urban centers and perceived them as corrupt plus with their new affluence led many with an identity With the Republicans. We can say that party identity comes by default and less of an intellectual process. Trump with his real estate background and constant conveyance of his personal work ethic attracts the traditional 20th Century Republican suburban voter.

  3. Erik

    The only real solution is the moderate majority must come together to select an important cause and dictate to all incumbents some progress must be made on a given problem – say climate change. If something is not done then all incumbents get voted out.

    As an insurance policy this moderate majority can try and summon /conjure Santa Claus from another world – where he surely exists to come and be the enforcer we knew him to be as kids.

    This can be done at all Santa cons across the globe.

  4. Gaute Einevoll

    I have many favorite Mindscape episodes, but this is a favorite among favorites. Learned a lot about principles that may increase political polarization – also applicable and relevant here in Norway. And also about possible techniques for communicating across the division lines. Already looking forward to the promised book on the “physics of politics”. 🙂

  5. Patrick

    Ezra Klien seemed an interesting guest and I hope he continues advocating on this important topic.

    Unfortunately, I feel that he has a bit more research to do.

    He lightly teased that our voting system plays a role in polarization but did not explore this much during the interview. This is a tremendous oversight.
    For my money, the voting system is the single strongest factor driving polarization (as well as every other aspect of our political atmosphere).

    For example, at 1:04:54, he states that political scientists do not know why each major party’s market share is ~50%.
    This is simply not true. Duverger’s Law is a well established phenomenon, explaining why the Plurality voting system encourages and reinforces two-party domination. The majoritarian aspect of the system means a party only needs %50 + 1 of the votes to win an election. It is not surprising that parties reorganize their platforms with that goal in their sights. As was mentioned in the interview with Will Wilkinson, attempting to win over some blocks will alienate others. A party that aggressively courts %51 of voters (and does not care if they are hated by the rest) will have an advantage over a party that seeks to be liked by all.

    A little bit before this section, at 1:02:05 he points out shortcomings of the Electoral College and somewhat romanticizes getting to “… a system where it really was majority vote rules …”
    This misses the point that a majority rule system is inherently polarizing.

    I hope that in the future, Ezra devotes more attention to alternative voting systems which do not emphasize majority rule. I recommend either Approval Voting or STAR Voting which both perform very well in simulation.

    https://electionscience.github.io/vse-sim/VSE/

  6. George Bellarious

    I’ve re-re-re-listened to the part about how smart people are better at being wrong because they have more resources to go out and find confirming information. This is a really serious bias!

    “You talk to a 9/11 truther and they’ll know a lot about the melting points of steel”.

    Really good one, thanks Sean and Ezra.

  7. VicP

    The nature of poles is two equal and opposites. Humans are natural information absorption systems and Ezra’s profession of journalism itself is an information delivery system. Most journalists are by nature left or liberal or very few said they entered the profession because they wanted to cover dog shows or local charity events. Rather the change the world attitude or next Watergate reporter is endemic to the profession. Also a well constructed debate argument may convince voters but a polar opposite or negative attack is harder to refute, hence polar politics work better in this short attention span media environment. Case in point due to the information overload of the Dem field, most voters were entering the Iowa Caucus or New Hampshire polling place without their minds made up on which Dem to select but were polarized by the idea that Trump must be defeated by whoever they select.

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