the notion that American voters have become ideologically polarized, pointing out data that suggest Americans, while more sorted in a partisan sense, have not grown more extreme in their views (i.e., there aren’t fewer people in the center than there used to be). This is true—ideological sorting is far more prevalent among politicians than voters. But when many of us talk about how politically polarized America seems to be today, we’re talking about something different: affective polarization, i.e., people not trusting or liking those from the other party. This has been on the rise—and
