The Origin of American Political Polarization

“The United States is also a one-party state, but with the typical American extravagance, they have two of them”

Julius Nyerere (first President of Tanzania)

The two-party system in the United States has been characterized by great political polarization since the creation of its first political parties. These ideological divisions first reached a fever pitch when the Civil War (1861-1845) broke out. However, since the end of the 20th century, it has been possible to observe a growing asymmetry between the Democratic and Republican parties.

This graph shows the growing ideological divide in the US political spectrum. Source: Pew Research Center, Washington D.C. (October 2017).

The causes of this polarization have come to be attributed to its electoral system, which works by majority vote in single-member constituencies. In this way, the “winner-takes-all-system_”, which creates an illusion of “false majorities” that over-represents the largest parties [1].

The main consequence of this situation is an extreme ideological division, to which the media have contributed. Consequently, electoral candidates lean towards political proposals that tend to the two opposite poles of the political sphere, which has allowed candidates like Donald Trump to gain so much popularity.

The constitutional dilemma, the first ideological separation

Although the founding fathers were the ones who created the world's first political parties, they initially disagreed with the party system. In fact, the first president of the United States, George Washington, was not part of any party at the time of his election. They considered that the creation of internal factions represented a danger, since disagreements could eventually separate the nation.

However, the differences of opinion proved irreconcilable and led to two political groups: the federalists and the anti-federalists. The first, among which Alexander Hamilton and John Adams stand out, advocated the ratification of the Constitution. On the other hand, anti-federalists such as Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, refused the idea of a centralized government and the presidential figure, since they considered that, later, this could give rise to a monarchy [2].

This internal division of the political class was the cause of the creation of the Democratic-Republican party, founded by the anti-federalists in 1792, from which an ideological separation between the states of the North and the South originated, due to the fact that the The former supported the Federalists and the latter their counterpart. This was the first antecedent of the two great parties that still dominate the American political sphere.

The Federalist Party proposed a centralized national government with strong fiscal bases (they created the first US national bank), a constitution more open to interpretation, and a system of government that would more closely resemble the English monarchy. On the other hand, the Democrat-Republican sought a strict constitution, state banks to decentralize power, the promotion of the agricultural production mode (predominant in the South) and the separation of English influence (for which they promoted an alliance with France). .

This division lasted until the year 1800, when Thomas Jefferson, candidate of the Anti-Federalist Party, was elected to the presidency. Thereafter the Federalist Party went into decline and finally disappeared in 1816. Likewise, the first party system culminated in 1824 with the end of the "era of good sentiments," the period of national unity that took place during the presidency of James Monroe (1817-1825), after the Anglo-American War of 1812.

The slaveholder's dilemma

During the second party system (1824-1854), an internal division arose in the Democratic-Republican Party that led to the creation of the Democratic Party in 1828, which won elections led by its founder, Andrew Jackson. Likewise, in 1834 the Whig Party emerged as opposition to the Democrat. These were established as the two national parties, however, they did not have defined political proposals, so the demographics of their voters varied.

The third system (1856-1896) began with the dissolution of the Whig Party due to internal disagreements over the slave issue. The Democratic Party also faced disagreements, as its influence in Congress came from slave-owning representatives from the South. This situation led some of its members to join the Republican Party, created in 1854 by abolitionists and dissidents from the Whig Party.

Abraham Lincoln was nominated for president by this new anti-slavery party and won the 1860 elections. However, a year later the Civil War broke out when the southern states, dissatisfied with Lincoln's election, decided to secede from the American Union and form their own Confederacy in which they planned to maintain their slave-owning lifestyle.

The country was sharply divided between North and South for four years. Subsequently, with the victory of the Northern states in 1865, a period of hegemony began for the Republican Party that characterized the fourth party system (1896-1928) and practically lasted until the presidential election of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933. .

The division that defined the current political spectrum

The fifth party system is considered to have begun in 1932, with the implementation of the US version of the welfare state. This era was characterized by Democratic political dominance for more than fifteen consecutive years. Likewise, state interventionism was predominant until the 1970s, the decade in which its current decline as a hegemonic power began.

At the end of the 19th century and during the first half of the 20th century, the ideological positions of the Republican and Democratic parties began to reverse. The Republicans, who had remained the hegemonic party since the end of the Civil War, became a political party made up of big business capitalists who cast aside the anti-slavery principles that had brought them to power in Lincoln's time.

For their part, the Democrats won dissidents from the Republican Party as supporters, but lost the support of Southern states, which disagreed with the party's growing concern for the rights of segregated groups such as African-Americans and immigrants. During the hegemonic period of the Democratic Party in the 20th century, numerous social programs were implemented and the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act were passed.

In this way, both parties were outlined based on the ideals they currently represent; Republicans with conservative leanings and Democrats with more liberal leanings. These changes in the internal structures of political parties and the Reagan era (1981-1991, approximately) are what transformed the American political system in ways that suggest the culmination of the fifth party system. However, there is still no clear consensus on the start of a sixth system.

Donald Trump and Joe Biden: polar opposites?

As mentioned, the Democratic and Republican visions have reversed positions throughout history, in such a way that the party that began as an anti-slavery party is the one that allowed the first African-American president to come to power. For its part, what began as the party of Abraham Lincoln, one of the most emblematic characters of the values of American democracy, is now represented by a great capitalist like Donald Trump.

The presidential elections that will take place next Tuesday, November 3 will be held under special circumstances, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Trump administration has been one of the most controversial in American history; from the unusual comments that he usually makes in interviews and social networks to the impeachment trial that he faced since December 18, 2019 and from which he was acquitted on February 5 of this year.

Economic crises are never good for the party in charge, and in the US the recession tripled the level of unemployment in the country during the month of April [3]. This pandemic has exposed the deficiencies of the countries' health system, especially in the North American country, which has been saturated with more than 8 million infections. The same with the judicial system, due to the wave of demonstrations against the abuse of the police force, for which, in general, the political system has been harmed.

Joe Biden has been one of the main critics of President Trump's management of the pandemic. The Democratic candidate's proposals to counteract this crisis focus on improving working conditions, federal measures to deal with the economic recession, social and medical security, equal pay for women, and a fairer and more humane immigration system [4].

Democrats are not the only ones speaking out against Donald Trump's political decisions. The Lincoln project was created in December 2019 by some prominent Republicans and former Republicans as a political action committee with a million-dollar fundraiser that they have used in propaganda to combat the re-election of Trump [5].

With the above, the internal misconfiguration of the Republican Party is evident. Since 2016, Donald Trump has won the votes of big businessmen with his tax cut proposals, likewise, his nationalist speech has added the vote of numerous conservative families in the southern and central states of the country \ [6 ] .

For its part, the demographic of supporters of the Democratic Party is concentrated on the East and West coasts, especially in urbanized cities with large minority populations such as the African-American and Hispanic communities. Similarly, Democratic voters tend to be younger than Republicans, to be middle class, and others, like a portion of Republicans, to belong to the economic elite [7].

In this presidential contest it has been possible to observe that the Democratic candidate Joe Biden has sought to add the votes of the sectors in disagreement with Trump's management. Even the choice of Kamala Harris, a middle-aged woman of immigrant parents, as the vice presidential candidate has been attributed to Biden's interest in unifying and representing the Democratic demographic.

final considerations

The indirect election system in the US is a decisive aspect in this very particular scenario, since larger states like California (with 55 electoral votes) outshine smaller states like Wyoming (with only 3 votes). In this way, it becomes more important to win the vote of state representatives than that of the citizenry.

Also, while Electoral College voters typically respect the popular vote of their respective states, this is why candidates like George W. Bush, Donald Trump, and others have been able to win the presidency, despite losing the national vote before their contenders. Consequently, and as Trump himself has emphasized on multiple occasions, national polls are not reliable indicators and the power over the final results rests with the political elite.

However, given the social discontent derived from the pandemic crisis and the demonstrations against racism, Joe Biden positions himself as a possible path to a solution and national unity. Various media such as the New York Times [8] and media figures such as the young environmentalist Greta Thunberg [9] have expressed their support for the Democratic candidate, which is, at least, to be expected given the unpopularity of the current american president.

Nonetheless, Donald Trump's position prevails; he has been nominated for the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize, has contributed to temporary pacification in the Middle East through the Abraham Accords, and has significantly accelerated job creation. Trump and Biden have aspects in common, typical of North American politics, but also a considerable ideological separation, typical of the parties to which they belong.

The nature of the American political system has generated a growing asymmetric polarization that has been exacerbated by the media. The foregoing leads to the question: in a country where the electoral system acts as an inhibitory mechanism in the formation of third parties, how representative of the popular will are the two hegemonic parties?