This article investigates the implications of Thomas Frank’s “conservative backlash” thesis that cultural cleavages have become much more important in contemporary American political life relative to traditional socioeconomic bases for political differentiation. We frame our research within the recent literature on the “polarization” of the electorate with respect to social and cultural issues. Using Hunter’s “culture war” imagery, we examine the extent to which opposing cultural forces on issues of abortion, gay rights, women’s extra-familial labor force participation, and child-rearing have become more important in shaping political identities and party preferences. We use data from twenty-six nationally representative surveys of the General Social Survey (GSS) from 1974 through 2010, and we find evidence of polarization in the liberal-conservative identities of respondents. We find that occupational class had a clear and consistent relationship to political views, which is relatively stable over time. We also find that cultural views are related to political identities, and that most features of the cultural component in our analysis are increasingly associated with liberal political views. Our results favor an interpretation of a changing role of cultural orientations in shaping political identities and provide tentative support for Frank’s “Kansas hypothesis” as revealed in the GSS data.
AbramowitzAlan I.SaundersKyle L.1998. Ideological realignment in the US electorate. Journal of Politics60 (3): 634–52.
2.
AlthausScott L.2003. Collective preferences in democratic politics: Opinion surveys and the will of the people. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
3.
AlwinDuane F.2001. Parental values, beliefs, and behavior: A review and promulga for research into the new century. In Children at the millennium: Where have we come from, where are we going? eds. HofferthS. L.OwensT. J., 97–139. New York, NY: JAI Press.
4.
ArbuckleJames L.1995–2013. IBM SPSS Amos 22 [Computer Program]. Chicago, IL: SPSS Inc.
5.
BaldassarriDeliaBearmanPeter. 2007. Dynamics of political polarization. American Sociological Review72 (5): 784–811.
6.
BaldassarriDeliaGelmanAndrew. 2008. Partisans without constraint: Political polarization and trends in American public opinion. American Journal of Sociology114 (2): 408–46. doi:10.1086/590649
7.
BartelsLarry M.2006. What’s the matter withWhat’s the matter with Kansas? Quarterly Journal of Political Science1 (2): 201–26.
8.
BentlerPeter M.BonettDouglas G.1980. Significance tests and goodness of fit in the analysis of covariance structures. Psychological Bulletin88 (3): 588.
9.
BlauPeter M.1977. Inequality and heterogeneity : A primitive theory of social structure. New York, NY: Free Press.
10.
BoyleRichard P.1970. Path analysis and ordinal data. American Journal of Sociology75 (4): 461–80.
11.
BrandoliniAndreaSmeedingTimothy M.2009. Income inequality in richer and OECD countries. In The Oxford handbook of economic inequality, eds. SalverdaW.NolanB.SmeedingT. M., 71–100. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
12.
ChenFang F.2007. Sensitivity of goodness of fit indexes to lack of measurement invariance. Structural Equation Modeling – A Multidisciplinary Journal14 (3): 464–504.
13.
ConversePhilip E.1964. The nature of belief systems in mass publics. In Ideology and discontent, ed. ApterD. E., 206–61. New York, NY: Free Press of Glencoe.
14.
ConversePhilip E.1970. Attitudes and non-attitudes: Continuation of a dialogue. In The quantitative analysis of social problems, ed. TufteE. R., 168–89. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
15.
ConversePhilip E.2000. Assessing the capacity of mass electorates. Annual Review of Political Science3 (1): 331–53.
16.
DanzigerSheldon H.GottschalkPeter, eds. 1994. Uneven tides: Rising inequality in America. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.
17.
DavisNancy J.RobinsonRobert V.1997. A war for America’s soul? The American religious landscape. In Cultural wars in American politics: Critical reviews of a popular myth, ed. R. WilliamsH., 39–61. Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter.
18.
DiMaggioPaulEvansJohnBrysonBethany. 1996. Have American’s social attitudes become more polarized?American Journal of Sociology102 (3): 690–755. doi:10.2307/2782461
19.
EvansJohn H.2003. Have Americans’ attitudes become more polarized?—An update. Social Science Quarterly84 (1): 71–90.
20.
FiorinaMorris P.AbramsSamuel J.PopeJeremy C.2005. Culture war? The myth of a polarized America. New York, NY: Pearson Education, Inc.
21.
FrankThomas. 2004. What’s the matter with Kansas? How conservatives won the heart of America. New York, NY: Henry Holt and Company.
22.
HetheringtonMarc J.WeilerJonathan D.2009. Authoritarianism and polarization in American politics. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
23.
HornJohn L.McArdleJohn J.1992. A practical and theoretical guide to measurement invariance in aging research. Experimental Aging Research18 (3–4): 117–44.
24.
HoutMichaelBrooksClemManzaJeff. 1995. The democratic class struggle in the United States, 1948–1992. American Sociological Review60:805–28.
25.
HoutMichaelMoodieBenjamin. 2006. The realignment of US presidential voting, 1948–2004. In Social stratification: Readings in class, race, and gender, eds. GruskyDavidSzelenyiSzonja, 567–75. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
26.
HuLi-tzeBentlerM.1999. Cutoff criteria for fit indexes in covariance structure analysis: Conventional criteria versus new alternatives. Structural Equation Modeling: A Multidisciplinary Journal6 (1): 1–55.
27.
HunterJames D.1991. Culture wars: The struggle to define America. New York, NY: Basic Books.
28.
HunterJames D.1994. Before the shooting begins: Searching for democracy in America’s culture war. Vol. 13. New York, NY: Free Press.
29.
KingstonPaul W.2000. The classless society: Studies in social inequality. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
30.
KlineRex B.2011. Principles and practice of structural equation modeling. 3rd ed.Methodology in the social sciences. New York, NY: Guilford Press.
31.
KrymkowskiDaniel H.1991. The process of status attainment among men in Poland, the U.S., and West Germany. American Sociological Review56 (1): 46–59.
32.
LeeKristen S.TufiPaula A.AlwinDuane F.2010. Place, time, and social change in beliefs about gender. Presented at the Annual Meetings of the American Sociological Association, Atlanta, GA.
33.
LenskiGerhard. 1961. The religious factor. 1st ed. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.
34.
Lewis-BeckMichael S.NorpothHelmutJacobyWilliam G.WeisbergHerbert F.2008. The American voter revisited. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
35.
LyonsMorgan. 1971. Techniques for using ordinal measures in regression and path analysis. In Sociological methodology 1971, ed. CostnerHerbert L.San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
36.
ManzaJeffBrooksClem. 1999. Social cleavages and political change: Voter alignments and US party coalitions. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
37.
MayerSusan E.JencksChristopher. 1993. Recent trends in economic inequality in the United States: Income versus expenditures versus material well-being? In Poverty and prosperity in the USA in the late twentieth century, ed. WolffE. N.New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press.
McCallLesliePercheskiChristine. 2010. Income inequality: New trends and research directions. Annual Review of Sociology36:329–47.
40.
MuthénBengt O.AsparouhovTihomir. 2002. Mplus Web Notes: No. 4, Latent variable analysis with categorical outcomes: Multiple-group and growth modeling in Mplus. Available from http://www.statmodel.com/examples/webnote.shtml#web4.
SakamotoArthurKimChanghwan. 2010. Is rising earnings inequality associated with increased exploitation? Evidence for U.S. manufacturing industries, 1971–1996. Sociological Perspectives53 (1): 19–44. doi:10.1525/sop.2010.53.1.19
43.
SchwartzChristine R.2010. Earnings inequality and the changing association between spouses’ earnings. American Journal of Sociology115 (5): 1524–57.
44.
SmithTom W.MarsdenPeter V.HoutMichaelKimJibum. 2010. General Social Surveys, 1972–2010 [Machine-Readable Data File]. Principal Investigator, SmithTom W.; Co-Principal Investigators, SmithTom W.; Co-Principal Investigators, MarsdenPeter V.HoutMichael. NORC ed. Chicago, IL: National Opinion Research Center, producer, 2005; Storrs, CT: The Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, University of Connecticut, distributor. One data file (55,087 logical records) and one codebook (3,610 pp).
45.
SnidermanPaul M.TetlockPhilip E.1986. Interrelationship of political ideology and public opinion. In Political psychology: Contemporary problems and issues, ed. HermannM. G.San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
46.
SteenslandBrianRobinsonLynn D.WilcoxW. BradfordParkJerry Z.RegnerusMark D.WoodberryRobert D.2000. The measure of American religion: Toward improving the state of the art. Social Forces79 (1): 291–318.
47.
StonecashJeffrey M.MarianiMack D.2000. Republican gains in the House in the 1994 elections: Class polarization in American politics. Political Science Quarterly115 (1): 93–113. doi:10.2307/2658035
48.
ThomsonIrene T.2010. Culture wars and enduring American dilemmas. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
49.
TreierShawnHillygusD. Sunshine. 2009. The nature of political ideology in the contemporary electorate. Public Opinion Quarterly73 (4): 679–703. doi:10.2307/40467637
50.
TreimanDonald J.TerrellKermit. 1975. The process of status attainment in the United States and Great Britain. American Journal of Sociology81 (3): 563–83.
51.
WeedenKim A.2005. Stata algorithm for backcoding 1980 Census occupation codes into 1970 Census occupation codes. Ithaca, NY: Department of Sociology, Cornell University. Available from http://www.soc.cornell.edu/faculty/weeden/occupations.html.
52.
WeedenKim A.GruskyDavid B.2005. The case for a new class map. American Journal of Sociology111 (1): 141–212.
53.
WesternBrucePercheskiChristineBloomeDeirdre. 2008. Inequality among American families with children, 1975 to 2005. American Sociological Review73 (6): 903–20. doi:10.2307/25472567
54.
WuthnowRobert. 1988. The restructuring of American religion: Society and faith since World War II. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
55.
YuChing-Yun.2002. Evaluating cutoff criteria of model fit indices for latent variable models with binary and continuous outcomes. PhD diss., University of California, Los Angeles.
