Fascinating Atlantic Article, the gist of which is as follows (see link below):
1. Political Alignment is based on dislike, not like: Americans identify less with their own party and candidates than in the past (so, there is less bot-like partisanship), but identify more strongly against the other party and its candidates than in the past.
[And yet, everyone here thinks, erroneously, that most on the other side are "otherside-bots" totally supportive of that side. Why is that? Keep reading....]
2. Perception Gap: Each side grossly overestimates the extremism on the other side...and it gets worse:
--(a)The Media makes it worse: Those who "rarely or never" follow the news have a 10% extremism estimation error of the other side, but those who "follow the news most of the time" have a 30% extremism estimation error of the other side.
[So, the more news media you follow, the more likely you are to think, incorrectly, that the other side is all bots, all the way down.]
--(b)Education makes it worse, but only for Democrats: In summary, educated Republicans better estimate the responses of Democrats, but the more educated a Democrat is, the more they misunderstand Republicans. From the article: "Perhaps because institutions of higher learning tend to be dominated by liberals, Republicans who have gone to college are not more likely to caricature their ideological adversaries than those who dropped out of high school. But among Democrats, education seems to make the problem much worse. Democrats who have a high-school degree suffer from a greater perception gap than those who don’t. Democrats who went to college harbor greater misunderstandings than those who didn’t. And those with a postgrad degree have a way more skewed view of Republicans than anybody else." Judging by this study, I'd say we have some very educated Democrat posters on this board. :-)
"It is deeply worrying that Americans now have so little understanding of their political adversaries. It is downright disturbing that the very institutions that ought to help us become better informed may actually be deepening our mutual incomprehension." Details at the link:
Link: The Atlantic: R's Don’t Understand D's, and vice-versa...and our institutions make it worse.
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How many R’s with a college degree here just prattle crappy they hear on Fox without any real thought? Same for the other bunch.
It showed that education makes R's more politically knowledgeable about their opponents, and Dem's less politically knowledgeable about their opponents...
...which is how I know you are a Dem.
in that regard. So, no I don’t agree with that study on that issue.
It’s pretty well known though that serious partisans never understand each other.
The world is black and white to them.
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