Partisan hatred between Democrats and Republicans is at its worst point in 125 years, according to a political science professor who recently released a book about the United States’ political polarization.
Earlier this week, Professors Marc Hetherington and Jonathan Weiler of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill released a book titled Prius or Pickup?: How the Answers to Four Simple Questions Explain America’s Great Divide.
In one part of the book, the professors used data collected by the National Election Study to show that partisan hatred between Republicans and Democrats is at its highest since 1980.
According to the chart, the percentage of people who either hated the Republican Party or the Democratic Party was below 20 percent for the 1980 presidential election.
However, after the 2000 election, the percentage began to dramatically increase, with hatred of Republicans in the 30s and of Democrats in the 20s during the 2008 election.
By 2016, half of those surveyed hated the Democratic Party while nearly half of those surveyed hated the Republican Party.
In an interview with The Christian Post on Wednesday, Hetherington explained that he believed that current level of partisan hatred was the greatest it has been since after Reconstruction.
“I suspect that, based on what we know and what we can fill in, this is the highest level of partisan hatred that we’ve probably had in 125 years,” said Hetherington.
“Although we only have the data to 1980, I’m sure with almost complete certainty, that this goes back a lot farther.”
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Source: Christian Post
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