Why We're Polarized

by Ezra Klein

In the previous chapter I mentioned the book Open versus Closed, which finds that the least-engaged voters tend to look at politics through the lens of material self-interest (“what will this policy do for me?”) while the most-engaged look at politics through the lens of identity (“what does support for this policy position say about me?”). This helps illuminate a long-running debate, particularly on the left, about whether working class voters who pull the lever for Republicans are betraying their self-interest in voting for a party that will cut taxes on the rich and break the unions that protect the poor. What Johnston, Lavine, and Federico find is that as people become more involved and invested in politics, the “self-interest” they’re looking to satisfy changes. It’s a mistake to imagine our bank accounts are the only reasonable drivers of political action. As we become more political, we become more interested in politics as a means of self-expression and group identity. “It is not that citizens are unable to recognize their interests,” they write, “rather, it is that material concerns are often irrelevant to the individual’s goals when forming a policy opinion.”15