Political Choice in a Polarized America: How Elite Polarization Shapes Mass Behavior. Zingher, Joshua N. . New York: Oxford University Press, 2022. 256 p. $99.00 cloth, $27.95 paper.

Political Choice in a Polarized America: How Elite Polarization Shapes Mass Behavior. Zingher Joshua N.. New York: Oxford University Press, 2022. 256 p. $99.00 cloth, $27.95 paper.

Much of the research in political behavior, rooted in canonical scholarship during the 1950s and 1960s, frets that the American public does not know enough and cares too little about politics to hold representatives accountable. Since the late 1970s, however, apathy has morphed into hyperpolarization. The foundational struggle over what it means to be an American, the mobilization of base supporters who scorn compromise, and rancorous tribalism with Democrats and Republicans viewing each other as an existential threat to the country have fractured the nation. Into the fray steps Joshua Zingher, whose book Political Choice in a Polarized America seeks to explain these developments. His core argument is unequivocal: mass polarization is a consequence of elite-level trends in partisanship.

This conclusion may be straightforward, but its rendering challenges the conceptual framework of The American Voter (1960), the study that has guided much of the research on political behavior since the earliest iterations of the American National Election Study (ANES). Voting decisions in the United States, Philip Converse and coauthors (1960) argued, have little connection to issues, let alone ideology; rather, political choice is determined by partisan loyalties that emerge from family ties and group identities. Zingher acknowledges that the Michigan model was a “brilliant” explanation of post–World War II politics, but he denies that partisanship and voting are “time invariant.” The weakness of the Michigan model, and much of the current public opinion literature, is “its failure to take context into account” (p. 209). “Most of the canonical studies of political behavior were written at a time when elite polarization was at an all-time low,” Zingher argues. Scholars of public opinion and political behavior “need to update [their] ideas” to take account of elites who divide sharply on issues and signal their stark differences to the public (p. 206).

Relying principally on time-series analysis from the ANES and the General Social Survey (GSS), the book demonstrates that since the 1970s political elites have increasingly signaled significant differences on economic and social issues. Moreover, most voters have responded to these cues: party identification and voting choices are now closely...