Kan socioekonomiska regionala ojämlikheter förklara den ökade affektiva polariseringen i USA? : En kvantitativ studie om affektiv polarisering i de amerikanskadelstaterna

Sammanfattning: The American public is more politically divided than it has been in a very long time. Americans are not only polarized in their policy preferences, but also in the way in which they view the other side. This type of feelings based polarization is called affective polarization, and it's on the rise in America. Republicans and Democrats today despise each other. At the same time, supporters of each party don't live amongst each other anymore. Republicans live in rural areas, while democrats are located in the cities. In this study, regional socioeconomic inequalities have been studied as a possible cause for the rise of affective polarization in the United States. The study finds that poorer states and states that have been performing economically worse in the last 20 years have a higher degree of affective polarization than states that economically perform better. However, this only applies to urban areas. For rural areas, the states' economic performances barely have an effect on their degree of affective polarization. The study also finds that states that have had more positive employment change in the industrial sector for the last 20 years, but with a negative population growth, have a bigger gap between urban and rural areas in their degree of affective polarization.