God and country: Polarization rising in presidential politics

Every four years, the differences between the U.S. political parties are thrown into sharp relief, thanks to presidential elections. A study of three decades of voter choice has shown that while the influence of religion on voter choice intensified in the years between the elections of Ronald Reagan in 1980 and Barack Obama in 2008, the phenomenon is limited to upper-income white Protestants and Catholics. In a study published in the Review of European Studies (Vol. No. 4) , professor of development sociology Thomas Hirschl and professor of biological statistics and computational biology James Booth analyzed two large surveys of voter choice. The General Social Survey is a nationally representative, repeat cross-section of American voters across eight presidential elections from 1980 to 2008, and the Cornell National Social Survey (CNSS) recovered identified presidential choice in 1,000 households for the 2008 election. In addition to basic demographic information collected in both surveys, the CNSS included a "biblical authority scale" to assess the degree to which a respondent agreed with such statements as "The Bible is without contradiction" and "The Bible is to be read literally." A thorough analysis of voter presidential choice and personal characteristics, from family income to race, gender and religious identity, allowed the researchers to identify not only the magnitude of polarization, but also its specific source within the general population.