Talk Elections

41.01% + 6.61% = 47.62%
Liberal 1980 vote: 47.62%
Liberal 2004 vote: 48.63%

Conservative 1980 vote: 50.75%
Conservative 2004 vote: 50.75%

Now, someone who isn't a worthless snob, please explain to me how the country is more polarized now.

I think a lot of the talk about being more polarized today stems from the fact that we seem more divided by geography, both in terms of North v. South and urban vs. rural, particularly looking at the direction of the Senate in recent years.  But certainly Reagan was a very polarizing figure in 1980 on an individual level.  I'm not sure what your point it. 

Anderson ran as a moderate in 1980....remember, he was a Republican.   And I'm sure Reagan got a much higher % of the Democratic vote than Bush got. 

I think "polarized" in this case refers to one's presidential vote corresponding very strongly to one's state, one's Senate vote, one's party ID, one's views on the war, one's view on gay rights, etc.  There was a lot more cross-party voting in 1980 than today.  And a lot more people voted for Democratic Senators and Congressmen while voting Republican for President in 1980 than today.

False assumption.

Just because somebody votes republican doesn't mean they're a conservative, and just because somebody votes democrat doesn't mean they're a liberal.  There are plenty of people in both parties who are just ignorant and pull the level for a party and have no idea what the party or the candidate stands for.

However, on the whole, rural areas tend to be more Republican and more conservative and cities more Democratic and more liberal, because most liberals are Democrats and most conservatives are Republicans.

It was a somewhat similar situation in 1980, but still less rural-urban divide.

Just look at Dukakis vs. Bush, 1988:

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Compare it to Kerry vs. Bush II: The Rebushining, 2004:

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   The 1980 election actually had a fair amount of straight ticket voting, thats why the GOP gained 12 seats in the senate that year and 30 seats in the house. Had the GOP the funds to compete in 1980 at the local level, it may have had close to 210 house members.

    As for Anderson, one could argue many of the issues he ran on  then were to the left of Carter. Anderson did his best in counties that  had highly educated and secular whites, the kind of counties such as Marin County in CA,  King County WA, the Boston suburbs, that Kerry did his best in.

Neither Carter nor Anderson were liberals.

Correct! 

Carter was sort of a liberal, Anderson shared too much of the Reaganomic ideas for the economy to be considered liberal.

"Why, the percentages won by each particular candidate has nothing to do with how polarized the electorate is. Two centrist candidates could easily split the vote 50/50, as could two candidates on radical extremes. Polarization refers to the shape of the electorate's preferences: is it a bell curve, large in the middle, is it relatively flat, or does it have a depression in the middle? Alternately, the answer may lie less in the electorate itself than in the candidates nominated by the two parties. Jimmy Carter's strongest support, even in 1980, was the conservative South."

- Worthless Snob

It's ridiculous to assume that all Anderson votes would have gone to Carter.

Yes, most would, but some moderate Republicans would have voted Anderson-Reagan.

Even if you give all Anderson votes to Carter, the map would look like this...

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Reagan would have won 331-207 (45 more EV's than Bush).

This map is also less ideogically and geographically driven than the 2004 map.

Carter was a social moderate and economic liberal. Anderson was a social liberal and economic moderate.

Who Anderson took more votes away from isn't really the issue though, since the simple fact he did fairly well is proof the country wasn't anywhere near as polarized. More than 99% of the electorate voted for either Bush or Kerry. In non-polarized times, third parties prosper. They don't in polarized ones. In a polarized elctorate Anderson would've have broken 6%

That's not polarization. That's one half of the country hating the guy the other half supports.

If in 1980 Carter had won the same 18 states (+DC) as Kerry in 2004, then Carter would have won 270 to 268.  Since Bush won by 286 to 251 this year, this illustrates how population shifts have favored the Republicans over the last 2 decades.  The trend is predicted to continue after the 2010 census.

I am not disagreeing on your point about the trend. I just want to say that I think had the 2004 election been carried out with the same demographics and population as in 1980, Bush still would have won.

In some cases the population shift has helped the Democrats. California voted for Bush I in 1988. In that election, Bush lost LA County by about 130,000 votes while winning the state by about 350,000 votes.  In 2004, Bush lost LA County by over 800,000 votes while losing the state by 1.2 million votes. The total vote cast in LA County increased from about 2.5 million in 1988 to 3 million in 2004. It looks like the added people were mostly Democrats!

Statewide W. got 500,000 more votes in losing the state than his Dad did in winning it in 1988, and eyeballing the turnout graph it looks like the turnout percentage was about the same. Meanwhile the Democrat vote increased by 2 million from 1988 to 2004.

I think if the 2004 election had been conducted over the 1980 population, Bush would have won California. Add California to the states Bush won and that's the ballgame. Heck, Ford even carried California.

States that either side would still win in a 55-45 'landslide':

2004:
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'Swings':  212

2000:

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'Swings':  221

1980:
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'Swings':  400

Looking at the trend of standard deviations of state margins off of the national average in a given year over time...

It seems that, generally, the country has been growing more polarized (geographically speaking) since 1960.  (Note that 1964 stands out like a sore thumb [sorry, but I can't post a graph]--but that's almost entirely due to Mississippi).

The country was more polarized before 1960...but that's due to the fact that the South was much more solid for the Democrats back then than it is now for the Republicans.

1960 (NOT 1964) has stuck out repeatedly in my analyses as a critical year--the year you saw the first huge shift in the North towards the Democrats, and in the South towards the Republicans.  While this process is taking place, the country as a whole is very unpolarized.

Although it can be argued whether the country as a whole is more polarized or not--geographically speaking, the V-shaped curve--and the current increase in polarization--is a direct manifestation of the South getting more Republican, and the North getting more Democrat--a trend that's continued since FDR's death.

Std Dev Data: (2004 -> 1892:  does not include 1924 or 1912 (too wacky) )
0.105332408   
0.108562977   
0.092264059   
0.08120441   
0.079458834   
0.087870571   
0.099539878   
0.077469894   
0.089644931   
0.085452188   
0.116386254   
0.058259472   
0.084479903   
0.085590108   
0.103639768   
0.128139653   
0.135731885   
0.122677048   
0.137523412   
0.124419216   
0.175761763   
0.145235624   
0.158750435   
0.204461501   
0.144517543   
0.183074314   
0.16001398
 

The Most Polarized Election in History:  1904

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Blue states represent the 'swing' states:  Only 141 EV's even theoreticallly up for grabs.

EDIT:  Oh, and Wyoming should exist.  And it isn't a swing state.

No, 50.75% is not equal to 50.73%. ;)

https://uselectionatlas.org/USPRESIDENT/national.php?year=2004&f=0