Strategic Extremism: Why Republicans and Democrats Divide on Religious Value

1. Strategic Extremism: Why Republicans and Democrats Divide on Religious Value Ed Glaeser, Giacomo Ponzetto, Jesse Shapiro

2. Social Science Motivation • Psychology and Markets– If people are so strongly shaped by framing, situation and social influence, then the supply of these things is critical. • This means that embedding psychology into markets is critical– a long term agenda. • Politics is a natural place for this (after all voting itself is pretty “irrational”).

3. Politics and Hatred • In past work I have focused on the political roots of group-level hatred: anti-Americanism, anti-Semitism, anti-Black hatred in the South. • Central lesson is that hatred is always built with stories of past and future crimes of the object in question, but political divisions create the incentives to build hatred with these stories. • But what ensures different political divisions.

4. What we mean by extremism • We say that parties are extreme when their stated policies diverge from those favored by the median voter • If the two parties differ on something, then at least one of them must be “extreme” • Extremism does not mean passing a value judgment on their policies • Extremism also is not about polarization of the electorate (we agree with Fiorina on this)

5. A Starting Point: Extremism Exists • “We stand proudly for the right of every woman to choose, consistent with Roe v. Wade, and regardless of her ability to pay.” (DNC platform, 2004) • “...The unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed. We support a human life amendment to the Constitution and we endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to unborn children.” (RNC Platform, 2004) • • Controlling for constituents’ tastes, Republicans implement different policies than Democrats (Lee, Moretti and Butler, 2004).

6. Much of American extremism is about values, not economics • “Under John Kerry and John Edwards, 99 percent of American businesses will pay less in taxes than they do today.” (DNC Platform, 2004) • “Small business .... deserve far better treatment from government than they have received. We will provide it through many of the initiatives explained elsewhere in this platform: lower tax rates, ending the death tax, cutting through red tape...” (RNC Platform, 2004) • In foreign policy as well, both candidates espouse strong defence and essentially continuing current policies.

7. As a result, religion predicts voting habits as much as income • 40 percent of people who never attend religious services vote Republican; more than 70 percent of people who attend daily vote republican. • The impact of income is also large, but mostly at the extremes. Within the middle of the distribution, there is little link between income and Republicanism. • Across states, there is a remarkable negative connection between per capita income and voting Republican in 2004.

13. Religious attendance and voting habits are becoming more correlated • Using probits to predict voting Republican in the last election, and excluding independents, the impact of attending once per month or more has risen from almost nothing in 1976 to 17 percent today. • The impact of log of income is relatively flat over the same time period, rising slightly between 1968 and 1980 and declining slightly between 1980 and today.

15. Our Core Questions • Why is there extremism at all? Why don’t policies converge to those of the median voter? • What determines when parties diverge on economic issues and when parties diverge on social or religious issues? • What explains the rising connection between religion and Republicanism?

16. Breaking the Median Voter Theorem • Median voter result (Hotelling, 1929): politicians move to the center to maximize votes • In multi-party systems with proportional representation, this result does not hold (Cox, 1990) so extremism outside the U.S. is less of a puzzle. • The median voter result does not need to hold with multiple issues, but most of these models suggest a multiplicity of equilibria.

17. Breaking the Median Voter Result in Majoritarian Systems with One Issue • The preferences of politicians (Calvert, Alesina) • The preferences of elites (Fiorina) • The primary system which provides a two-stage process where the first stage favors insiders • There is clearly much truth to all of these theories– but we saw extremism before primaries were important and history supports the view that differentiation was strategic.

18. Preferences vs. Strategy • One test of whether extremism reflects preferences or vote-getting strategy is to look at rhetoric vs. ex post policies. • If extremism reflects strategy then rhetoric should be heated, but policy differences muted • If extremism reflects preferences then rhetoric should be muted, but policy differences extreme.

19. Rhetoric vs. Reality • In economy policy, reality is more extreme than rhetoric • Little difference in platform language • But income taxes are 11.2 % of GDP under Democratic president, and 10.0% under Republican president (t-statistic>4) • In abortion, rhetoric is more extreme than reality • Massive differences in stated (platform) positions • But 313 abortions per 1000 live births under Democrats vs. 294 under Republicans (t-statistic<1)

20. Table 1: Party effects on policy outcomes, 1970-2000

21. And another problem with preference based theories • Even if these theories are right, they give us little ability to explain changes in extremism over time and space • After all, where do those preferences come from? • One virtue of the strategic extremism view is that it will provide predictions about when we should see extremism and on what topic.

22. The Two Ingredients for Strategic Extremism • A second margin– voter turnout or donations (Downs, 1957) • Without the second margin, moving away from the center will always lose you votes. • An asymmetry between your supporters and your opponents • Without this asymmetry, going extreme makes as many enemies as friends

23. Past Literature on this Question • Hinich and Ordeshook (1969) evaluate a model with abstention, and find that “if abstentions are permitted, if they are assumed to be caused by alienation, and if the density of preferences is symmetric and unimodal, the mean remains the dominant strategy.” • Or put another way (Riker, 1973) “if the sensitivity of turnout is sufficiently high, if [the preference distribution] is bimodal, if citizens abstain because of alienation and if utility functions are symmetric, then the candidates adopt divergent strategies.”

24. Voter Turnout and Extremism • Voters don’t show up if the parties are too similar and as such, differentiation induces the party faithful to show up. • Karl Rove is alleged to know this. • “But with the prospect of low turnouts, it is the most motivated–and militant–elements at the edges of the ideological spectrum who will receive the most attention.” (David Broder, 1997; cited in Fiorina, 1999).

28. Voter Turnout and Religion: 2000-2004 • Non-Battleground (in 2000) states with less than 50 percent of the population attending church monthly have turnout increase from 56.6% to 61.3% • Non-Battleground states with more than 50 percent of the population attending church monthly goes from 53.4 % to 60.1 % • Difference-in-difference estimate is significant and is 6.7% vs. 4.7% (one standard deviation)

29. Information Asymmetry and Extremism: The Model • Voters have different preferences for a single policy– right to left. • Voters also have costs of voting which differ in the population. • The benefit from voting is a function of the policies stated by the politicians. • Most simply, it is a function of the difference of policies between politicians.

30. Politicians and Policies • Politicians try to maximize their votes minus their opponents votes. • The only thing that politicians do is choose policies. • These policies are heard by both political affiliates and non-affiliates • But political affiliates hear them more often.

31. Voting and Policies • Then people vote– people who have heard the policies base voting on what they have heard. • People who haven’t heard base voting on what they believe (which is correct in this model). • People who have more extreme views will vote more often. • Politicians will still differentiate even if, in equilibrium, everyone views are right.

32. Results in One Dimension • A party with some affiliates will adopt a platform that coincides with the position of the median voter if and only if there is no informational difference between affiliates and non-affiliates or there is no differences between the ideal policies of the average affiliate and the average voter. • If party affiliates are on average better informed about the party platform and more conservative than non-affiliates, the party will adopt a right-wing platform.

33. How Conservative a Platform • The degree of extremism increases in the informational asymmetry between affiliates and non-affiliates • Extremism increases with the number of party affiliates (holding their bias constant) • Extremism increases with the bias of party affiliates (holding their number constant)

34. More results on extremism • If right-wing party affiliates include all citizens whose preferences are beyond a point and no others, then extremism is increasing in the heterogeneity of voters’ preferences (measured by the mean deviation of their distribution). • If there is a group of people who always vote, then the amount of extremism declines with the size of this group.

35. An Alternative Model • Riker and Ordeshook: if people don’t care about the difference between policies, but rather they really care about the policy of their candidate and not about the other, then extremism happens as well if preferences are not unimodal • But this doesn’t seem true (anti-Bush sentiment in the last election) • And preferences are not unimodel (Fiorina) • It also predicts that moderates will vote more than extremists when politicians are moderate (untrue).

36. Two Dimensions • Now imagine that politicians have policies along two dimensions: religion and economics. • Voting is determined by costs of voting and preferences. People with extreme preferences vote more than people with moderate preferences along either dimension. • This will provide the incentive to go to extremes.

37. Core Results • Multiple Equilibria will often exist. • A party with a positive measure of affiliates will adopt a platform that coincides with the position of the median voter if and only if there is no informational difference between affiliates and non-affiliates or if there is no difference between the ideal policies of the average affiliate and the average voter along either policy dimension.

38. More results in two dimensions • If party affiliates are on average better informed about the party platform and more conservative than non-affiliates along both dimensions, then the party will choose a platform that is right-wing along both dimension. • The party’s extremism along either dimension increases with informational asymmetry (think about new technologies).

39. Two Dimensions, Continued • Extremism will increase as the number of party affiliates increases (keeping their average ideal policy constant), or their average conservatism increases (keeping their number constant). • But what forms the number and nature of affiliates (more on that later).

40. On what issue will parties divide? • The party platform will be more extreme on the issue where the average preference of affiliates is more different from the median-voter position. • If all voters for whom t + a > 0 are party affiliates, then a monotonic increase in the heterogeneity of voters’ preferences on one issue increases extremism on that issue and reduces it on the other.

41. Preference Heterogeneity and Extremism • One potential reason for increasing political divisions over religion is that heterogeneity of religious beliefs has risen (but what about Fiorina on Culture Wars). • But what about increasing economic inequality within the U.S.?

42. Understanding party affiliation: Exogenous social groups • Previously, we took affiliation as given, now we try to understand it. • In the paper, we allow voters to choose affiliations. • In this section we assume that there are pre-existing social groups (defined along one of two policy dimensions) and assume that each group is allocated to one party. • This might come from a bidding war.

43. Exogenous social groups, continued • We refer to the group defined on attribute a (religion oriented policies) as the church and the group defined on attribute t (the economic attribute) as the union. • If the union is defined by economics and the church by social values • And if one party has the church and the other the union then

44. Results with Exogenous Social Groups • The party with the union will be extreme on economics, and moderate on social issues • The party with the church will be extreme on social issues and moderate on economics • The church party extremism is maximized for some size of the church that is less than .5 (.4-.5) • The amount of extremism is non-monotonic in group size.

45. The Intuition of that Result • If no one is in the group, then there is no incentive to cater to that group. • If everyone is in the group, then the ability to speak privately to that group also has no impact. • The group matters most when it is intermediate in size. • This doesn’t mean that as religion declines, parties will generally become more religious. • But it does suggest that religious divides will be bigger.

50. Table 2: Cross-country determinants of right-wing orientation