The Partisan Sort: How Liberals Became Democrats and Conservatives Became Republicans

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Reviews / Recensions

It is commonplace for citizens, journalists and politicians to bemoan the stark divisions and shrill partisanship that seem to characterize contemporary US politics. In The Partisan Sort, Matthew Levendusky examines one important aspect of this situation: the phenomenon of increasing ideological homogeneity within each of the two major political parties or, as the book's subtitle puts it, "How Liberals Became Democrats and Conservatives Became Republicans."

Levendusky's main argument is fairly straightforward. Over the past few decades, political elites became more ideologically polarized, which led to greater clarity about the ideological differences between the parties, which in turn led individual voters to adjust their own ideology to fit that of their party, or to "sort." In Levendusky's account, this process got underway in earnest in the 1980s and 1990s, such that today the parties are much more sorted than they were a generation ago, and the conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans who were once common are now rare. However, he contends that while this has resulted in parties that are more homogeneous and distinct, it has contributed only slightly to greater polarization; according to Levendusky, "Sorting makes voters less centrist, but does not make them extremists" (75).

Levendusky's analysis is largely empirical,...