The partisan sort how liberals became Democrats and conservatives became Republicans - Levendusky, Matthew 1979- (University of Chicago Press, 2010)
Includes bibliographical references and index
The transformation of the American electorate -- Why voters sort -- Have voters sorted? -- Testing competing explanations for sorting -- Untangling the causes of sorting -- How voters sort -- The impact of the sorted
As Washington elites drifted toward ideological poles over the past few decades, did ordinary Americans follow their lead? In The Partisan Sort, Matthew Levendusky reveals that we have responded to this trend-but not, for the most part, by becoming more extreme ourselves. While polarization has filtered down to a small minority of voters, it also has had the more significant effect of reconfiguring the way we sort ourselves into political parties. In a marked realignment since the 1970s-when partisan affiliation did not depend on ideology and both major parties had strong liberal and conserva