There's a lot of evidence to suggest that they might not abortion is a little bit of a different issue. People tend to have pretty strong opinions on on that but for a lot of issues people just don't think about it and then they just adopt their party's view or they ignore their party’s view so there's a great study by jeff rick owen from yale, he had two welfare proposals one was incredibly generous uh you know a lot of money every month free two years of college child care paid for health care paid for way more generous than the us has ever had. Then he had another far less generous proposal with very little money and then you only get it
The democratic ideal demands that the citizenry think critically about matters of public import. Yet many Democrats and Republicans in the United States have fallen short of that standard because political tribalism motivates them to acquire, perceive and evaluate political information in a biased manner. The result is an electorate that is more extreme, hostile and willing to reject unfavorable democratic outcomes.
Shermer and Redmond discuss: why we have political duopoly (Duverger’s law) • parties vs. policies • Are we living in a post-truth, fake-news, alternative facts world? • How do we know political polarization is worse now than in the past? • acquiring, perceiving, and evaluating political information • evaluating: false political information, political numbers and arguments, claims of rigged election • whataboutism • cognitive responsibilities of citizenship • cognitive biases • political polarization • myside bias • numeracy vs. innumeracy • solutions to the polarization problem.
Timothy J. Redmond received his PhD in political science from the University at Buffalo. He is an award-winning educator and author of over one hundred articles on critical thinking and politics. He is a professor at Daemen University where he teaches a political science and history course for education students.