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Which Party Has Gotten More Extreme Faster?

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Matt Yglesias has written a couple of posts (1, 2) on the subject of this meme (originally by Colin Wright, recently signal-boosted by Elon Musk): He concludes that, contra the image where the Right stays in the same place and the Left moves, both Republicans and Democrats have “changed a lot” since 2008. He wisely avoids speculating on whether one party has moved further or faster than the other. I’m less wise, so I’ve been trying to look into this question. My conclusion is: man, people really have strong emotions on this. I think a lot of the disagreement happens because this is more than one question. You can operationalize it a couple different ways: Which party’s policy positions have changed more in their preferred direction (ie gotten further left for the Democrats, or further right for the Republicans) since 2008 - or 1990, or 1950, or some other year when people feel like things weren’t so partisan? Which party has diverged further from ordinary Americans? Which party has bec

Which Party Has Gotten More Extreme Faster? ... Scott Alexander Jun 08, 2022 171 1,061 3 Share Matt Yglesias has written a couple of posts ( 1 , 2 ) on the subject of this meme (originally by Colin Wright, recently signal-boosted by Elon Musk): He concludes that, contra the image where the Right stays in the same place and the Left moves, both Republicans and Democrats have “changed a lot” since 2008. He wisely avoids speculating on whether one party has moved further or faster than the other. I’m less wise, so I’ve been trying to look into this question. My conclusion is: man, people really h

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