Chapter 12 Quiz: Partisanship, Polarization, and Sorting

15 questions: 10 multiple choice, 5 short answer. Answer key at the bottom.

Multiple Choice

1. Partisan sorting, as used in this chapter, refers to:

A) The process of voters registering with parties that match their ideological positions B) The alignment of ideology with party identity, such that liberals become Democrats and conservatives become Republicans C) The geographic clustering of partisans in ideologically homogeneous communities D) The sorting of candidates into parties based on their issue positions

2. Ideological polarization differs from affective polarization in that:

A) Ideological polarization concerns feelings about the opposing party, while affective concerns policy positions B) Ideological polarization concerns actual movement of policy opinions toward extremes, while affective polarization concerns growing hostility toward the out-party C) Affective polarization affects only partisan activists, while ideological polarization affects ordinary voters D) Ideological polarization is measured by feeling thermometers, while affective polarization is measured by issue positions

3. "Negative partisanship" refers to:

A) Voters having a negative attitude toward all political parties B) The tendency for strong partisans to hold negative views of their own party's candidates C) Partisan motivation driven primarily by hostility toward the opposing party rather than enthusiasm for one's own D) The decline of party identification as a predictor of vote choice

4. The nationalization of elections refers to:

A) The federal government taking over administration of state and local elections B) The increasing tendency for congressional and Senate election outcomes to follow national partisan trends rather than local factors C) The expansion of competitive elections to more states D) The rise of national campaign financing from PACs and party organizations

5. Which of the following is NOT identified in this chapter as a cause of election nationalization?

A) The ideological sorting of elected officials B) The decline of local news media C) The expansion of the federal government's regulatory authority D) The nationalization of campaign finance

6. The "Big Sort" argument holds that Americans are increasingly clustering into ideologically homogeneous geographic communities. According to the chapter, much of this geographic sorting reflects:

A) Ideological conversion of existing community members to the dominant local ideology B) Compositional effects — Democrats moving to cities, Republicans to rural areas — rather than existing communities becoming more uniform C) The deliberate placement of partisan offices and institutions in politically sympathetic communities D) Electoral district gerrymandering that forces partisan concentration

7. Partisan differential nonresponse in polling refers to:

A) The tendency for partisans to refuse to answer survey questions about opposing parties B) The tendency for members of one party to participate in surveys at higher rates when their political environment is favorable, biasing poll results C) The differential accuracy of polls for different partisan groups D) The tendency for partisan respondents to change their survey answers based on who is administering the survey

8. "Herding" in polling refers to:

A) Pollsters asking questions about herd behavior among voters B) Voters following the opinions of their partisan group C) Pollsters adjusting their results to be closer to the consensus of other public polls to avoid being outliers D) The tendency for poll aggregators to weight poll averages toward their house effects

9. The class realignment described in this chapter refers to:

A) College-educated white voters moving toward Democrats while non-college white voters move toward Republicans B) Working-class voters moving from Democrats to Republicans due to economic policy disagreements C) Upper-class donors switching from the Republican to the Democratic Party D) The decline of class-based voting and the rise of cultural identity as the primary predictor of vote choice

10. The chapter describes the red-and-blue county-level election map as misleading because:

A) The geographic boundaries of counties don't correspond to actual voting populations B) Red counties are predominantly urban while blue counties are predominantly rural C) The map's visual dominance of red reflects geographic area rather than population, overstating Republican geographic prevalence D) The map conflates presidential and congressional vote shares

Short Answer

11. Explain the difference between "sorting" and "polarization" using a concrete example. Why is this distinction analytically important for understanding contemporary American politics?

12. How does affective polarization complicate the job of a pollster? Describe at least two specific ways that high levels of affective polarization between Democrats and Republicans create challenges for measuring electoral preferences accurately.

13. What does it mean to say that the Democratic Party's voters are "wasted" at a higher rate than Republican voters in winner-take-all elections, and what does this have to do with the Big Sort?

14. Describe the specific strategic challenge that the Garza campaign faces because of high affective polarization in the Garza-Whitfield state. Why is it simultaneously difficult to mobilize the Democratic base and persuade moderate independents in a highly polarized environment?

15. What is elite polarization, and how might it contribute to mass affective polarization even if ordinary voters' policy positions haven't dramatically changed? Describe the mechanism through which elite polarization could generate popular hostility toward the opposing party.

Answer Key

Multiple Choice:

  1. B — Sorting specifically refers to the alignment of ideology with party identity — liberals becoming Democrats, conservatives becoming Republicans — distinct from geographic clustering or registration patterns.

  2. B — Ideological polarization is about the actual distribution of policy opinions moving toward extremes; affective polarization is about growing emotional hostility toward the out-party, independent of policy positions.

  3. C — Negative partisanship is voting motivated primarily by hostility toward the opposing party (voting against rather than for), rather than enthusiasm for one's own party.

  4. B — Nationalization refers to congressional and Senate election outcomes increasingly following national partisan tides rather than local candidate quality, incumbency advantages, or local issues.

  5. C — The expansion of federal regulatory authority is not identified as a primary cause of electoral nationalization; sorting of elected officials, media change, and campaign finance nationalization are.

  6. B — Much of the apparent Big Sort reflects compositional effects — Democrats have moved to cities at higher rates than Republicans — rather than existing communities becoming ideologically uniform through conversion.

  7. B — Differential nonresponse means members of one party participate in surveys at higher rates when they perceive the political environment as favorable, biasing the sample composition.

  8. C — Herding is the practice of adjusting poll results to be closer to the existing poll consensus, reducing apparent divergence at the cost of suppressing information about genuine uncertainty.

  9. A — The class realignment specifically describes college-educated white voters moving toward Democrats and non-college white voters moving toward Republicans — restructuring the educational and economic composition of both parties' coalitions.

  10. C — The map is misleading because it shows geographic area, not population. Red counties that are physically large are often sparsely populated, so the visual impression of overwhelming Republican geographic dominance overstates their electoral weight.

Short Answer Guidance:

  1. Sorting means liberals become Democrats and conservatives become Republicans — the parties align ideologically without necessarily meaning the public moves to extremes. Example: if 40% of the public was liberal in 1970 and 40% in 2020, but in 1970 half of liberals were Republicans and by 2020 virtually none were, that's sorting without polarization. This matters because sorting can make electoral conflict look more extreme (the parties are more distinct) even if the public isn't more extreme.

  2. Affective polarization creates: (1) partisan differential nonresponse — when one party is demoralized, their voters participate in polls less, biasing results; (2) social desirability effects — voters may not honestly report support for socially stigmatized candidates; (3) herding — poll outliers face intense scrutiny that discourages publishing results that diverge from the consensus.

  3. The Big Sort concentrates Democratic voters in dense urban areas. In winner-take-all elections, winning by huge margins in urban areas and losing elsewhere means many Democratic votes are "surplus" — they exceed what was needed to win the urban area without contributing to outcomes elsewhere. Republican voters, more efficiently distributed across suburban and rural areas, achieve more seats for fewer total votes. The result is a structural Republican advantage in House seats and the Electoral College that doesn't reflect the national popular vote.

  4. High affective polarization energizes both bases — making base mobilization easier — but also makes persuasion harder. The voters Garza needs to convince (moderate independents, soft Republicans in suburbs) are the voters most put off by partisan intensity. Messaging that fires up committed Democrats may alienate the persuadables. The campaign is essentially trying to send different signals to different audiences simultaneously, and in a nationalized, polarized media environment, those signals bleed into each other.

  5. Elite polarization refers to the dramatic increase in ideological distance between elected officials, party activists, and major donors. Elites control the cues, framing, and emotional tone of political communication. When elites are highly polarized, they frame political conflict in extreme terms, portray the out-party as not just wrong but dangerous, and reward partisan hostility in media and fundraising. This creates an information environment in which ordinary voters — even those with moderate policy positions — absorb increasingly hostile frames about the opposing party, producing affective polarization without commensurate ideological polarization.