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POLARIZATION
WHAT EVERYONE NEEDS TO KNOW®
POLARIZATION
NOLAN McCARTY
1
3
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.
“What Everyone Needs to Know” is a registered trademark of

Oxford University Press.
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

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© Oxford University Press 2019
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

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You must not circulate this work in any other form

and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: McCarty, Nolan, author.
Title: Polarization : what everyone needs to know /Nolan McCarty.
Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2019. |
Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018058213 | ISBN 9780190867782 (hardcover) |
ISBN 9780190867775 (paperback)
Subjects: LCSH: Political culture—United States. |
Polarization (Social sciences)—Political aspects—United States. |
Social structure—United States. | BISAC: POLITICAL SCIENCE /General. |
POLITICAL SCIENCE /History & Theory.
Classification: LCC JK1726 .M399 2019 | DDC 306.20973—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018058213
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Paperback printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America

Hardback printed by Bridgeport National Bindery, Inc., United States of America
To Keith and Howard
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xiii
1 Introduction 1
2 What Is Political Polarization? 8
2.1 What is the difference between partisanship and polarization? 12

2.2 What is the difference between mass and elite polarization? 13
2.3 What is partisan sorting and is it different from polarization? 14
2.4 What is belief constraint and ideological consistency? 16
2.5 Who is polarized—the public or the politicians? 17
2.6 Why is polarization bad? 19
2.7 What have we learned? 21
3 Are Partisan Elites Polarized? 22
3.1 How do we measure elite polarization? 24

3.2 Why do you assume legislative voting occurs only on the
liberal-conservative dimension? 32
3.3 Are there other sources of data for measuring congressional
polarization? 34
3.4 Do roll-call ideal points really reflect congressional ideology? 38
viii Contents
3.5 What issues divide Congress the most? 41

3.6 Are both parties responsible for polarization? 42
3.7 Are state legislatures polarized? 44
3.8 Are the courts polarized? 47
3.9 And the media? 48
4 Is the Public Polarized? 50
4.1 How is it even plausible that the public is not polarized? 51

4.2 Is the public moderate? 54
4.3 What is the evidence in favor of increased voter sorting? 55
4.4 Why does it matter whether voters are sorted but not polarized? 58
4.5 Is sorting a good thing or a bad thing? 58
4.6 What issues are the public sorted on? 59
4.7 Is it the economy, stupid? 60
4.8 Does polarization reflect a “culture war”? 60
4.9 What is affective polarization? 61
5 What Are the Causes of Polarization? 69
5.1 Why was polarization so low from the 1930s to the 1960s? 70
5.2 Can the polarization of the late nineteenth century be
compared to what we see today? 71
5.3 What is the Southern Realignment and why did it happen? 72
5.4 Why did southern whites move to the GOP? 75
5.5 Why is congressional voting on racial issues no longer distinctive? 78
5.6 Does economic inequality cause polarization? 78
5.7 Do party leaders engineer polarization? 81
5.8 Is the rising competition for congressional majorities to blame? 84
5.9 Why don’t more moderates run for Congress? 86
Contents ix
5.10 Is the media responsible for polarization? 88

5.11 What about the emergence of the Internet and social media? 93
5.12 Is the United States unique? 98
6 How Does Electoral Law Affect Legislative

Polarization? 101
6.1 How much does polarization reflect geographic sorting? 101

6.2 Does gerrymandering cause polarization? 104
6.3 Isn’t it possible that the effects of gerrymandering on the
House carried over to the Senate? 108
6.4 But isn’t gerrymandering responsible for a decline in electoral
competitiveness? 108
6.5 Are there other ways in which redistricting can impact
polarization? 112
6.6 Do partisan primaries cause polarization? 115
6.7 Hasn’t California’s “Top-Two” system reduced polarization there? 118
6.8 What role does campaign finance play in polarization? 119
6.9 Would stronger parties reduce polarization? 122
6.10 Would a different electoral system reduce polarization? 125
7 What Are the Consequences of Polarization for

Public Policy and Governance? 134
7.1 Why does polarization impact congressional policymaking

capacity? 135
7.2 How do legislative parties turn polarization into gridlock? 136
7.3 What about the filibuster and the presidential veto? 138
7.4 Does polarization make Congress less productive? 140
7.5 How has polarization affected the executive branch and the
bureaucracy? 141
x Contents
7.6 Has the American judiciary and legal system changed as a

result of polarization? 142
7.7 How has polarization affected the balance of power between
the national and state governments? 145
7.8 Has polarization affected policymaking in the states? 147
7.9 Has polarization increased the political power of the wealthy
relative to others? 149
7.10 Does polarization have a conservative bias? 153
8 Is the Trump Presidency a New Normal or More

of the Same? 156
APPENDIX A HOW ARE LEGISLATOR IDEAL POINTS

ESTIMATED? 169
A.1 What if the liberal-conservative dimension does not explain all
voting? 172
A.2 Do members’ ideal points move over time? 173
A.3 Can ideal points be compared over time? 174
A.4 Are there other methods for measuring ideal points and
polarization from roll calls? 175
A.5 What are the limitations of the roll-call–based measures
of polarization? 177
APPENDIX B HOW DO WE MEASURE POLARIZATION IN

THE PUBLIC? 181
B.1 What is a survey? 181
B.2 What is a population and sample? 182
B.3 How do we draw inferences from surveys? 183
B.4 Why is random sampling important? 184
B.5 What happens when samples are not random? 186
B.6 What are some of the problems associated with the design of
surveys? 187
Contents xi
B.7 What are some limitations of using surveys to measure

polarization? 190
B.8 What is a survey experiment? 192
B.9 What are survey scales? 195
B.10 What is a thermometer rating? 199
B.11 What is party identification? 199
B.12 What is an independent? 200
B.13 What is ideological self-placement? 202
B.14 Can we estimate ideal points of voters? 203
NOTES 207
BIBLIOGRAPHY 229
INDEX 253
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The years that I have been studying the polarization of

American politics overlap exactly with my years as a scholar.
My first research paper in my first summer of graduate school
was an effort to produce measures of candidate divergence
from the campaign contributions of interest groups. While
that paper made only a modest contribution to the research
I discuss in this book, its real impact on me was the opportu-
nity to begin a career-long collaboration with Keith Poole and
Howard Rosenthal. They, of course, were the pioneers, sub-
stantively and methodologically, of the entire enterprise. Their
1984 article “The Polarization of American Politics” is arguably
the earliest warning of the political winds that were to shape
the last quarter of the twentieth century and the first quarter
of the twenty-first. Their development of the D-NOMINATE
scale fired the first shot of a measurement revolution in po-
litical science that redefined how we study political represen-
tation.1 It’s been my great honor to tag along for the rest of
the ride.
Our first explicit collaboration was the development of
DW-NOMINATE, a model that plays a prominent role in what
follows. The first application of that model was our short mono-
graph for the American Enterprise Institute on polarization and
the realignment of the American political system.2 It was here
that we first discovered the correlation between polarization
xiv Acknowledgments
and income inequality that we would explore in more depth

in two editions of Polarized America.3 Along the way we wrote
articles on the role of party discipline and gerrymandering on
polarization and applied our insights to the political economy
of financial crises.4 I could not have asked for more out of a
collaboration. I learned something from each and every email
(and there were lots of emails!).
My work on polarization has led to collaborations with
many of political science’s finest scholars. Most significant has
been my work with Boris Shor. Many years of effort went into
our compilation of over twenty-five years of roll-call voting in
state legislatures. As I discuss in this book, the resulting po-
larization measures are proving very valuable in addressing
a large number of questions about causes and consequences
of polarization. The debt of gratitude is not small for Michelle
Anderson, Peter Koppstein, and the many others who have
contributed to that project.
Special acknowledgment goes to Keith’s and Howard’s best
student, Adam Bonica. He may have been the only person
who read that paper I wrote in my first summer. But I am de-
lighted that he picked up my fumble and carried it forward.
His use of campaign finance data to measure the preferences of
politicians and donors has made a huge impact on the knowl
edge that I report in this book.
My other polarization collaborators are a veritable Who’s
Who in the study of American politics: Michael Barber,
Chris Berry, Tim Groseclose, Frances Lee, Seth Masket, Eric
McGhee, Jonathan Rodden, Steve Rogers, Eric Schickler,
Chris Tausanovitch, John Voorheis, and Chris Warshaw. Their
fingerprints are all over this book.
I would also like to thank Julian Dean, Jake Grumbach,
Andy Guess, Howard Rosenthal, Sepehr Shahshahani,
Danielle Thomsen, and two anonymous readers for their very
helpful comments on various parts of the book.
POLARIZATION
1
INTRODUCTION
The months following the election and inauguration of Donald

J. Trump have been a time for reflection about the state of
American politics and its deep ideological, cultural, racial, re-
gional, and economic divisions. But one aspect that contem-
porary discussions often miss is that these fissures have been
opening over several decades and are deeply rooted in the
structure of American politics and society. Indeed long before
the historically divisive presidential election of 2016, the polar-
ization of American politics has been an important concern of
scholars, journalists, and elected officials.
Unfortunately, there have been few, if any, efforts to syn-
thesize these debates in ways that are accessible to the gen
eral public. A few monographs on polarization such as Morris
Fiorina’s Culture War? and Thomas Mann and Norman
Ornstein’s It’s Even Worse Than It Looks have directed their
arguments about specific aspects of polarization to the general
public.1 A number of edited volumes have been published that
cover the range of issues related to political polarization, but
the target audiences have been researchers in the social sci-
ences and law. There have been few attempts to explain what
social scientists know and don’t know about the origins, de-
velopment, and implications of our rising political conflicts to
a general audience. This volume is intended to fill this gap.
2 Polarization
The second chapter begins with foundational questions,

such as “What is polarization?” and “How is it different than
partisanship?” I define polarization as the increasing support
for extreme political views relative to the support for centrist
or moderate views. Partisanship, on the other hand, is re-
flected as a strong bias in favor of one’s party and strong dis-
like or prejudice against other parties. Although polarization
can contribute to partisanship, and possibly vice versa, the
two concepts are clearly distinct. Yet they are often conflated
in the popular discourse. I argue that these distinctions are not
purely “academic” but have important implications for how
we understand and evaluate the performance of our political
system. While I primarily focus on polarization, I address is-
sues related specifically to partisanship throughout the book.
In chapter 3, I discuss what we know about the extent to
which political elites such as elected officials, judges, and the
media have polarized. The bulk of this examination focuses
on the US Congress, both because its polarization has been the
most studied and is arguably the most consequential. A very
important part of that discussion focuses on how political
scientists measure polarization. Specifically, I explain in non-
technical terms how the polarization of Congress can be meas-
ured using a variety of data including roll-call votes, legislative
text, and bill co-sponsorship. I also discuss how polarization
of the general public is computed using public opinion polls.
Importantly, I provide the necessary caveats related to the in-
terpretation of these measures. Because some of the details are
technical in nature, I include an appendix that goes into con-
siderably more depth.
Chapter 3 establishes several important findings about elite
polarization. The first is that the current era of polarization
in Congress began in the middle-to-late 1970s. After several
decades in which the average ideological differences between
the parties were relatively stable, partisan disagreement in
Congress has increased almost every term since 1978. The cur-
rent period is almost the mirror opposite of the period from the
Introduction 3
1920s to the 1950s when partisan polarization fell dramatically.

Second, the trends in the US House and the Senate since the late
1800s are extremely similar. This pattern suggests that many
of the forces that have generated polarization are common to
both chambers of Congress. A third important finding about
polarization is the extent to which the trends have been asym-
metric across the parties. During the period of increased polar-
ization, the main driver has been the increasing conservatism
of the Republican party. Since the 1970s, almost every new
class of GOP legislators has compiled a more conservative
voting record than the party’s returning members. The pat-
tern for the Democratic party has been quite different. Almost
all leftward movement in the party can be attributed to an
increased number of black and Latino/a representatives who
tend to have positions located on the left wing of the party. The
average position of other Democrats has not moved substan-
tially. Finally, the chapter provides evidence that other elites
have polarized as well. Studies similar to those conducted on
Congress show that state legislatures, judges, and news media
outlets have all polarized to some extent.
Chapter 4 evaluates the extent to which regular citizens and
voters are as polarized as the elites discussed in c hapter 3. Here
we will see that the evidence is more mixed. It is true that there
is much more disagreement on policy issues between voters
who identify with the Democratic party and those who iden-
tify with the Republican party. But how to interpret that fact is
open to considerable disagreement. Many scholars argue that
it is indeed evidence that voters have polarized in the sense of
adopting more extreme views. But other scholars are equally
insistent that it reflects the fact that voters are simply better
sorted into parties so that most conservative voters are now
Republican and most liberal voters are now Democratic—
something that was far from true in earlier eras. This chapter
unpacks those debates and explores their implications for the
debate about whether it is the elites or the voters that are to
blame for polarization.2 Several conclusions about voters
4 Polarization
are noteworthy. The first is that the partisan polarization or

sorting of voters occurred considerably later than the polar-
ization of the political elites and activists. This suggests that
the polarization we observe from the elites is probably not
a simple reaction to changes among the electorate. Indeed it
is more plausible that the positions and partisanship of the
voters are a reaction to the polarization of elected officials and
other elite actors. Second, despite the widely held belief that
voters are polarized along a set of hot button social issues,
such as abortion and gay rights, political scientists have rou-
tinely found that positions on economic and social welfare is-
sues better predict the partisanship of voters. There are sharp
disagreements, however, to the extent to which preferences on
social welfare issues are in turn derived from differences in ra-
cial attitudes. Finally, I discuss the related concept of affective
polarization that focuses on the increased salience of partisan-
ship as a social identity. As a consequence of heightened party
identification, citizens now show considerably more animus to
supporters of the other party. I discuss the roles of ideological
and policy polarization as well as the partisan sorting on other
social identities in the rise of affective polarization.
Chapters 5 and 6 focus on the possible causes of congres-
sional polarization. In doing so, I try to distinguish those
causes that might have plausibly triggered the initial rise
in polarization in the late 1970s from those factors that may
have exacerbated or amplified those trends once polarization
began. The causes discussed in chapter 5 include several of
what we might call “macro” explanations. The most promi-
nent of these is the realignment of southern white voters from
the Democratic party to the Republican party in the decades
following the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights
Act. I explain about how the racial politics in the pre–Civil
Rights era reduced polarization on many issues, while the
racial politics in the post–Civil Rights era have worked to
reinforce it. Then I consider large-scale economic and social
change as explanations as well as important developments
Introduction 5
in the media environment, including cable television, the

Internet, and social media. In particular, I discuss how these
changes might have upset the less polarized political system as
it existed in the middle of the twentieth century, and in some
cases how those explanations might help us to understand the
earlier era of polarization from the 1870s to the 1920s. Finally,
I also discuss the role of legislative institutions and leader-
ship in creating and exacerbating polarization. Of particular
interest are the effects of the intense competition for majority
control of Congress.
Chapter 6 engages prominent debates about how certain
features of our electoral system, such as gerrymandered
legislative districts, partisan primary nomination systems,
and the private campaign finance system, may increase po-
larization in Congress and state legislatures. The evidence
I present, however, largely rejects the idea that these insti-
tutional features are major triggers of increased polariza-
tion. Importantly, districting was less legally constrained,
primaries were more partisan, and campaign finance was less
regulated during the era of low polarization than today. But
I give careful consideration of the extent to which these elec-
toral features may have exacerbated some of the trends we
have seen. The evidence of exacerbation, however, is not very
strong in the case of redistricting and primaries, but there
is mounting evidence of a substantial effect of campaign fi-
nance. But contrary to common concerns about the role of
business and corporate contributions in the aftermath of the
Citizens United decision, the real culprits are ideologically-
minded individual donors whose numbers have increased
dramatically over the past couple of decades. I also tackle
whether major reforms, such as proportional representation
or single-transferable voting, would mitigate the polarization
of elected officials. While such reforms merit serious consid-
eration, we should beware of unintended consequences re-
lated to how such reforms would work with other parts of
our constitutional system.
6 Polarization
Chapter 7 delves into questions related to the impact of

polarization on policy outcomes and governance. The focus
is on how polarization has affected the level and quality
of policymaking in the legislative, executive, and judicial
branches. The heart of the problem, I argue, is a decline in
the capacity of Congress and other legislative bodies to
solve problems. While Congress’s decline might create
opportunities for other actors, such as presidents and judges,
to assert influence and power, good policymaking in our con-
stitutional system requires a well-functioning lawmaking and
oversight body.
The volume concludes with a discussion of the 2016 election
and the Trump presidency. In many ways, Donald Trump’s as-
cendancy seems to contradict many of the trends outlined in
this book. His election campaign was anything but that of an
orthodox conservative. He ran on rewriting trade deals long
supported by Republican presidents and legislators. He prom-
ised to protect Medicare and Social Security from the sorts of
reforms that have been staples of the GOP agenda for decades.
One of his signature proposals was a massive increase in
spending on infrastructure, despite his party’s long- voiced
opposition to larger deficits. Even his tough-on-immigration
stance and support for the “Wall” challenged the orthodoxy
of establishment Republicans, including the party’s previous
president and nominees. On many of these issues (but not
immigration), President Trump might have found common
ground with congressional Democrats. Yet as of this writing,
nothing remotely bipartisan has happened since Trump was
inaugurated.3
Instead, the outcomes of the Trump era have been entirely
Republican orthodoxy. The major legislative achievement was
a large tax bill. While a revenue-neutral restructuring of the cor-
porate tax system would have garnered significant Democratic
support, the bill morphed into an exercise in tax cutting and
deficit increasing. The “reform” part of the bill meant the elim-
ination of deductions relied on by Democratic constituencies,
such as the deduction for state and local taxes. The other major
Introduction 7
achievements of Trump’s first two years in office were the suc-

cessful confirmations of Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh to
the Supreme Court after the GOP-led Senate eliminated the
filibuster on Supreme Court nominations. But Gorsuch and
Kavanaugh are the sort of Federalist Society–backed jurists that
would have been on the shortlist of any Republican president.
And the GOP Senate’s refusal to hold hearings on President
Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland in 2016 shows that
they certainly did not need Donald Trump to stiffen their spine
to play hardball on Supreme Court nominations. So in the end,
the Trump presidency may be an example of the more things
change the more they stay the same.
2
WHAT IS POLITICAL
POLARIZATION?
Commentators use few words to describe the American po-

litical scene as frequently as they use the word “polarized.”
But unfortunately, the terms polarized and polarization have
taken on such a wide variety of meanings among journalists,
politicians, and scholars that they often confuse, rather than
clarify, the problems that our political system faces. So one of
my main tasks in this volume is to be more precise in the termi-
nology in hopes of better explaining contemporary American
politics. The formal definition of polarization is derived from
that of polarity, which is the “state of having two opposite or
contradictory tendencies, opinions, and aspects.”1 There are
usages of polarization that span almost all possible political
“tendencies, opinions, and aspects.” The public has variously
been described as polarized over cultural norms and practices,
religion, attitudes toward subgroups, policy preferences, and
partisan attachments. In some cases, the definition is stretched
to encompass social and political divisions involving more
than two groups—such as when polarization is used to de-
scribe conflicts among social, ethnic, and racial identities.
This book, however, focuses on a much narrower set of
definitions of polarization. I focus on those political phe-
nomena where the public and its leaders have become increas-
ingly divided. These areas include preferences over public
policy, ideological orientations, and partisan attachments. The
What Is Political Polarization? 9
primary reason for this narrowing is that policy, ideological,

and partisan polarization are those areas that have received
far more attention from political and other social scientists and
therefore have a set of arguments and findings that I believe
“everyone needs to know.” Of course, there are links between
cultural and social polarization that are important for under-
standing political polarization so I do not completely neglect
these other forms of conflict.
Let me unpack the various forms of polarization: policy,
ideological, and partisan. I start with policy polarization.
A simple definition of policy polarization is a process where
extreme views on some matter of public policy have become
more common over time. As an example, consider attitudes
toward government policies related to abortion. To simplify
the discussion, let’s assume that voters are asked to eval-
uate three distinct policies related to abortion access. Under
policy 1, abortion is legal under all circumstances and is not
restricted in any way. Under policy 2, abortion is legal in most
circumstances but restricted in some others. Policy 3 holds that
abortion is illegal under all circumstances. We would say that
policy preferences over abortion were polarizing if support for
the two most extreme policies (policies 1 and 3) were growing
over time relative to the centrist policy 2. Thus, polarization
is distinct from uniform movements of attitudes in either a
pro-or anti-abortion direction. We would not say opinion is
polarizing if support for policy 3 was increasing while sup-
port for policy 1 was decreasing. Another implication of this
example concerns how we measure polarization. When policy
preferences are very polarized, the two extreme attitudes will
have more support than the middle one. In the terminology of
statistics, the distribution of polarized opinion is bimodal, as
there are two distinctive, most common answers. Alternatively,
we say opinion is unpolarized or centrist if it is unimodal, in
that the centrist policy 2 is the single most common position.
Polarization may also be related to how much variation there is
in policy positions. In statistical terms, the variance of opinions
10 Polarization
represents the typical deviation of individual opinions from

the average (or mean) opinion. In a situation of low polariza-
tion, most voters choose the same policy position and so the
statistical variance is low. In the extreme case, where voters
are equally divided between policies 1 and 3, the variance is
quite large.
In addition to analyzing polarization on specific policies,
political scientists often discuss it in terms of broader ideo-
logical differences among voters. For now, let us think of ide-
ology as a general orientation to politics and governance. In
the United States, we often imagine ideological orientations
falling on a continuum from liberal positions to conservative
ones and orient them so that they range from “left” to “right.”2
Conceptually, ideological polarization is similar to policy po-
larization. If most voters fall toward the ideological center,
we’d say there is little ideological polarization. But to the ex-
tent to which liberal and conservative ideologies become more
common relative to those of the center, we’d call that polari-
zation. As before, we can identify polarization statistically by
looking to see whether ideologies have become more bimodal
or more variant in the population.
Figure 2.1 may be helpful in understanding what political
scientists mean by polarization. The figure shows two curves
representing different distributions of ideological orientations.
The solid line represents what we might call a centrist distribu-
tion of preferences. In this case, the most typical position is one
of moderation. Extreme liberal or conservative views are quite
rare. The dashed line, however, represents a more polarized
distribution. It is clearly bimodal in that the most common
positions are distinctly conservative or liberal. Now moderate
views are relatively less likely and extreme liberal or conserva-
tive views are no longer rare.
While these figures present polarization solely in terms of
the distribution of ideological preferences, researchers often
focus on how the positions of voters and politicians vary across
political parties. Consequently, we can use partisan polarization
Frequency
Liberal Moderate Conservative

Ideology
Centrist Polarized
Figure 2.1: Centrist and Polarized Distributions of Preferences Solid figure shows a
hypothetical centrist or unimodal distribution of ideological orientations. The dashed line shows
a polarized or bimodal distribution.
to refer to situations where polarization is organized around

parties. Most often, scholars use party polarization to de-
scribe situations where the policy and ideological differences
between members of the Democratic and Republican parties
have grown. However, as I soon discuss, this usage is contro-
versial because it conflates two distinct trends about voters.
Partisan ideological differences may grow either because
there is ideological polarization between the liberals who
tend to be Democrats and the conservatives who tend to be
Republicans. Or partisan differences could increase without
ideological polarization if there is a tendency over time for
liberals to move into the Democratic party as conservatives
move into the Republican party. These different trends and
12 Polarization
patterns have important implications for how we interpret the

increased divergence of opinions across the parties and the
likely consequences of those changes.
2.1 What is the difference between partisanship and

polarization?
The terms polarization and partisanship are often used in-
terchangeably, but such usage often obscures important
differences. As discussed earlier, polarization generally refers
to differences on policy issues, ideological orientations, or
value systems, while partisan polarization may refer to these
differences across members of different parties. Partisanship,
however, can be more general in that it may refer to any par-
tiality one feels toward one’s own party regardless of whether
polarized preferences and attitudes are the source. In recent
years, many scholars have argued that the rise in partisan con-
flict is best thought of as a rise in general partisanship that is
unrelated to rising ideological or policy polarization. Many
explanations have been offered as to why high levels of parti-
sanship can persist even without underlying polarization. With
respect to Congress and political elites, Frances Lee argues that
the intense competition for majority control of the US House
and Senate induces high levels of intra- party competition
and inter- party conflict, which she dubs “teamsmanship.”3
Given the importance of majority control in setting policy and
allocating patronage, this instrumental form of partisanship
has been an important feature of American politics throughout
its history. But in the current era of partisan parity, it has be-
come much more salient.
Others have argued that partisanship at the mass level is
less instrumental and is instead based on strong psycholog-
ical attachments and social identification.4 From this perspec-
tive, the observed rise in political conflict in the United States
is a reflection of the strengthening of “in-group” loyalties and
“out-group” animosities. While partisan polarization might
underpin these rising animosities, many scholars argue that

differences on policy positions across the parties are caused
by partisanship, as party loyalists adopt the positions favored
by their own party.5 In chapter 4, I report on the research that
has sought to explain the rising salience of partisanship and
partisan identities.
2.2 What is the difference between mass and elite polarization?

Any discussion of polarization, its sources, and its consequences
should distinguish between elite and mass polarization. Social
scientists use elite polarization to refer to divisions among of-
fice holders, party officials, policy intellectuals, and activists.
Alternatively, mass polarization refers to that associated with
normal voters and citizens. While most people assume that elite
and mass polarization are closely related, that is often not the
case. As long as the political elites are not perfectly representa-
tive of the electorate or not responsive to ordinary voters, we
could observe increasing political conflicts among elites that
are not mirrored in the broader public. The politics of abortion
are a good example of this pattern. Elected politicians tend to
take polarized views on the subject. Most Republican leaders
have adopted a pro-life position that provides for abortions
only in exceptional circumstances, such as when the life of the
mother is in jeopardy.6 Many Democratic officeholders take
the near-opposite position that there should not only be few
if any restrictions on the practice but that abortion services
for the poor should be supported by tax dollars. A plurality
of voters reject these positions, however, preferring instead
that abortion be available in most circumstances but accepting
restrictions based on term. Support for public funding is low.7
While voters’ views on abortion correlate with their partisan
identification, large numbers of Democratic voters are pro-life
while many Republican voters are pro-choice.8
Alternatively, society could become quite divided, but an
elite consensus could persevere. A good example of this might
14 Polarization
be the Vietnam War. Attitudes about the continued conflict in

Vietnam became polarized in the public well before the bipar-
tisan elite consensus in favor of US involvement broke down.
By May 1967, the American public was evenly divided over
the question of whether it was a “mistake” to send troops to
Vietnam, but the leadership of both parties remained com-
mitted to the war until after the Tet Offensive in 1968.9
As I discuss in c hapters 3 and 4, polarization of political
elites and the masses began at very different times and have
followed distinct trajectories. Specifically, the current era of
elite polarization appears to have begun in the mid-to-late
1970s, while similar changes in the mass public do not emerge
clearly until the 1990s. Given these differences, distinguishing
between elite and mass polarization is crucial for under-
standing the underlying causes and the likely consequences.
2.3 What is partisan sorting and is it different from polarization?

In discussions about polarization, it is often noted that
Democratic and Republican voters have increasingly di-
vergent opinions on many matters of public policy. For ex-
ample, in a recent report, the Pew Research Center notes that
the gap between Democrats and Republicans on the value
of open immigration has grown markedly.10 Eighty-four per-
cent of Democrats agreed that “immigrants strengthen the
country with their hard work and talents,” whereas only 42%
of Republicans shared this view. This 42-point gap grew from
only a 2-point gap in 1994.
There are two logical ways in which such a partisan gap
in views on immigration can emerge. The first is voter polar-
ization. It might be the case that partisans have increasingly
taken the extreme positions. Democrats may have increas-
ingly adopted very pro-immigrant positions while Republican
voters have become much more anti-immigrant. These changes
of voter attitudes lead to the large partisan gap on the question
about the contributions of immigrants.
But it is also possible that opinions about immigration have

not polarized. Perhaps voters have just sorted into parties so
that voters with pro-immigration attitudes now overwhelm-
ingly identify as Democrats while immigration restrictionists
have migrated into the Republican party. Such a pattern of
party sorting can account for the increased differences across
partisans even if the distribution of immigration attitudes in
the population remains unchanged or moves uniformly in one
direction or the other. In this case, it is clear that attitudes have
shifted in a pro-immigration direction. Roughly 30% agreed
that immigrants strengthened the country in 1994. In the 2017
survey, 65% did. So the most likely cause of the partisan gap
is sorting.
Partisan sorting can arise in two different ways. First, voters
can choose parties based on their agreement with the party’s
position on salient issues. In the immigration example, an anti-
immigrant Democrat might recognize that the Republican
party has increasingly adopted positions closer to her own,
and therefore she decides to switch her party allegiance. I call
this ideology-driven sorting. Since party switching is relatively
rare,11 ideology-based sorting is probably most pronounced
for new voters entering the electorate. A new anti-immigrant
voter in 1994 may not have recognized an important differ-
ence between the parties on immigration, but one entering the
electorate in 2017 clearly would. Those who see immigration
as a sufficiently important issue might use these differences in
deciding which party to support.
The second mechanism is that partisans may decide to
adopt the policy positions of their preferred party. So an anti-
immigrant Democrat might alter her views about immigra-
tion to correspond to the dominant viewpoint of her party.
The same might be true for pro-immigrant Republicans. This
party-driven sorting mechanism is probably most pronounced
in those cases where voters do not have strong views about im-
migration and are therefore susceptible to persuasion and so-
cial pressure from other partisans and party elites. To the extent
16 Polarization
party is an important social identity, many voters may simply

decide that maintaining that identity requires supporting their
party’s dominant view.
Throughout the remainder of the book, I try to distinguish
between conclusions related to voter polarization and those
related to sorting. But in many cases, it is not clear which
of the mechanisms is responsible for the diverging views of
partisans. I describe such findings as partisan divergence, which
of course can be caused by either polarization or sorting.
2.4 What is belief constraint and ideological consistency?

Many scholars of public opinion are interested in another con-
cept closely related to polarization. Ideological consistency is the
propensity of a voter to have either all liberal, all moderate,
or all conservative views. Since the seminal work of Philip
Converse, this phenomenon is also called belief constraint,
which Converse defines as “the success we would have in
predicting, given initial knowledge that an individual holds
a specified attitude, that he holds certain further ideas and
attitudes.” For example, if we could predict a person’s posi-
tion on tax cuts from her position on free trade or from that on
gay rights, we’d say that those beliefs exhibit constraint and
that the voter is ideologically consistent.
While the concepts are distinct, increases in ideological con-
sistency and belief constraint have manifestations that are sim-
ilar to polarization and sorting. A consistent liberal is not only
likely to have liberal views across the board but is also likely
to only support liberal politicians and is therefore likely to join
the Democratic party. They disagree strongly with consistent
conservatives. However, if beliefs were less constrained and
consistent, the typical voter might support liberal positions
sometimes and conservative ones at others. She might be
likely to split her votes between Democratic and Republican
politicians. Moreover, pairs of opposed partisans are more
likely to agree on at least some issues.
Chapter 4 reviews the evidence about the ideological con-

sistency of voters and how it has changed over time.
2.5 Who is polarized—the public or the politicians?

As I stressed earlier, it is important to distinguish between
mass and elite polarization. This is true not only because they
are distinct phenomena, but because the evidence points to
a much weaker relationship between polarization at the two
levels than many people presume. The academic consensus
that political elites have polarized over the past forty years is
quite strong and is bolstered by both qualitative and quanti-
tative evidence. Noteworthy are qualitative accounts, which
often combine historical research and participant observa-
tion.12 There are also several excellent histories of the intra-
party battles among partisan elites that culminated in our
polarized party system.13
As I explain in some detail in c hapter 3, the starting point
for many quantitative studies of polarization is the robust ob-
servation of rising partisan differences in roll-call voting be-
havior in Congress. The bipartisan coalitions of the 1950s and
1960s have given way to the party-line voting of the twenty-
first century. Also discussed in chapter 3, similar patterns of
elite polarization have been documented for state legislatures,
the judiciary, and large campaign donors. Both the quantita-
tive and qualitative evidence suggest that the late 1970s were
a turning point. To be sure portents of the intra-and inter-
party conflicts that led to polarization and sorting were in play
much earlier, but the predominance of the liberal wing of the
Democratic party and the conservative wing of the Republican
party was not cemented until the late 1970s.14
The extent to which the mass public is polarized is a topic
of somewhat more vigorous academic debate that is taken up
in detail in chapter 4. Longitudinal studies of voter opinion
generally do not provide much evidence of polarization or
significant sorting until the 1990s.15 Consequently, it is hard to
18 Polarization
sustain claims that mass polarization is the primary cause of

elite polarization given that elite polarization precedes it by
about fifteen years. Yet it does not appear that the centrist, un-
sorted electorate placed too many constraints on the efforts of
the parties to reorganize themselves along ideological lines.
The comparison of the 1964 and 1980 presidential elections
is instructive, if imperfect. In both cases, a very conservative
Republican candidate challenged a Democratic president from
the moderate wing of the party. In the first instance, Barry
Goldwater lost forty-four states plus the District of Columbia.
In the second, Ronald Reagan won forty-four states. While
there are many differences in the context of the two elections,
it seems clear that the electorate was far more tolerant of a
conservative message in 1980, despite the apparent lack of
polarized public opinion.16
The debates about the magnitude and timing of mass po-
larization focus on how to interpret the increased difference
between Republican and Democratic voters in terms of gen
eral ideological orientations and specific policy preferences.
One school of thought, led by Morris Fiorina, argues that these
differences can be explained almost entirely by the ideological
sorting of voters into the parties.17 Fiorina and his coauthors
often point to the fact that most voters remain fairly moderate
in their expressed policy positions.18 Moreover in studies that
produce estimates of voter issue positions that are comparable
to legislator positions, representatives are generally found to
take positions that are considerably more extreme than those
of their constituents.19 Since voters do not seem to increas-
ingly take on extreme positions, the partisan differences are
likely caused by sorting, with liberal voters aligning with the
Democratic party and conservative voters aligning with the
Republican party.
This sorting interpretation has been challenged by Alan
Abramowitz who observes that while many citizens are
moderate, those most likely to participate in politics increas-
ingly take extreme policy positions.20 The greater the level of
engagement the more polarized are the preferences. Highly

informed voters also appear to be polarized. While some
moderate voters have chosen middle- of-
the-
road positions
for substantive policy reasons, many others are uninformed,
unengaged, or apathetic, checking off the middle position on
surveys due to the lack of an opinion. Of course, at very high
levels of voter engagement and sophistication, the lines be-
tween elite and mass begin to blur.
Despite the lack of evidence that voter polarization causes
elite polarization, it is clear that both voter sorting and the po-
larization of the engaged electorate can reinforce if not exacer-
bate elite party divisions. Even if voters are merely sorted into
parties, the incentives for parties to take positions that appeal to
supporters of the other party will diminish—leading to greater
partisan polarization and greater incentives for voters to sort.
2.6 Why is polarization bad?

Very few people use the word “polarization” to describe a
healthy state of political affairs. It is almost always used as a
near-synonym for dysfunctional conflict. But at the same time,
we might imagine situations in which polarization were too
low. If there is little polarization among the public, we might
worry about the costs of conformity. Few citizens will chal-
lenge current practices and conventions, and there would be
little impetus for social progress and reform. For example, the
American electorate of the 1950s demonstrated a very high de-
gree of consensus on the issues that were on the public agenda,
but this consensus left issues related to the rights of African
Americans, ethnic minorities, women, immigrants, and the
LGBTQ community largely unaddressed.
Polarization among political elites and the parties is also not
unambiguously bad. Indeed, the consensus among political
scientists is that democracy works best when parties provide
the voters with distinct menus of policy positions. Some de-
gree of polarization is necessary for political representation and
20 Polarization
accountability. When the parties do not take distinctive positions,

voters lack a clear choice with regard to policy. Moreover, heter-
odox parties reduce the usefulness of partisan cues as to which
candidates to support. But when parties are distinct and co-
herent, voters can better register their views through their vote.
Additionally, when parties push different policies, voters know
who to hold accountable when a policy approach fails. These
arguments, known as Responsible Party Theory, were summed
up nicely in the American Political Science Association’s report
from its Committee on Political Parties in 1950:
In a two-party system, when both parties are weakened or

confused by internal divisions or ineffective organization
it is the nation that suffers. When the parties are unable
to reach and pursue responsible decisions, difficulties ac-
cumulate and cynicism about all democratic institutions
grows. An effective party system requires, first, that the
parties are able to bring forth programs to which they
commit themselves and, second, that the parties possess
sufficient internal cohesion to carry out these programs . . .
On the other hand, . . . a coalition that cuts across party
lines, as a regular thing, tends to deprive the public of a
meaningful alternative. When such coalitions are formed
after the elections are over, the public usually finds it dif-
ficult to understand the new situation and to reconcile it
with the purpose of the ballot. Moreover, on that basis
it is next to impossible to hold either party responsible
for its political record. This is a serious source of public
discontent.  21
In sum, without some differentiation of the political parties,

it would be almost impossible for the typical voter to have any
influence over the direction of public policy. But as I discuss in
chapter 7, there is considerable evidence that the level of polar-
ization among the elites and the public is well to the warm side
of the Goldilocks point.
2.7 What have we learned?

Polarization has become a catch-all word used to describe
almost any form of political conflict and disagreement. But
understanding the causes of political dissensus requires dis-
tinguishing polarization from many other sources of partisan
conflict. While partisanship, partisan sorting, and ideological
consistency may be closely related to polarization, it is im-
portant to identify them as distinct phenomena. For example,
the extent to which conflict reflects polarization or sorting has
implications for the extent to which conflict is bottom-up from
the voters or top-down from the elites.
It is equally important to consider who is polarized—elites
and elected officials or regular ordinary voters. It is entirely
possible that one group but not the other is polarized. The
question of the extent to which elites are polarized is taken up
in the next chapter, while voter polarization is considered in
chapter 4.
Finally, it is important to remember that polarization is not
always a bad thing. If the parties did not offer distinctive public
policy positions, voters could hardly be in a position to influ-
ence public policy through their votes. We might also be wary
of those calls to reduce polarization in the public that would
involve repressing certain viewpoints. To riff on Madison in
Federalist 10, there are two methods of removing the causes
of polarization: the one, by destroying the liberty which is
essential to its existence; the other, by giving to every citizen
the same opinions, the same passions, and the same interests.
Clearly, the first is worse than the disease, and the second is
unlikely to happen given the diversity of American public
life. But unfortunately, as I discuss in chapter 7, Madison’s
constitution may not provide the needed relief in controlling
polarization’s effects.
3
ARE PARTISAN ELITES
POLARIZED?
One of the signature achievements of Barack Obama’s pres-

idency was the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in
2010. Because the bill received almost no Republican support,
its passage required a very complicated set of parliamentary
maneuvers to get through the House and the Senate and onto
the president’s desk. The Republicans did not accept this de-
feat lightly. They immediately began calling for the “root and
branch” repeal of the ACA and supported challenges to its
provisions in court. After taking control of the House in 2011,
the GOP voted dozens of times for repeal despite the fact that
the repeal could not pass the Senate and would have been
vetoed by President Obama.
That the Affordable Care Act would become such an ob-
ject of partisan division is somewhat ironic. Its most promi-
nent provision was the so-called Individual Mandate, which
required all citizens to buy insurance or pay a fine. This pro-
posal, however, had originated at the Heritage Foundation, a
right-of-center think tank. Moreover, it had been the center-
piece of GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s health in-
surance reforms in Massachusetts.
Following the Republican takeover of the Senate in 2014 and
Donald Trump’s election in 2016, the Republicans finally had
an opportunity to repeal the ACA. But it was also an opportu-
nity for the Democrats to withhold any support for reform and
Are Partisan Elites Polarized? 23
force the Republicans to push their legislation through the eye

of a procedural needle. When GOP unity broke and Senator
John McCain went famously “thumbs down” on the ACA re-
peal, the GOP had to settle for removing the mandate through
its tax cut/reform legislation. This partial repeal was expected
to lead to higher premiums and lower rates of coverage.1
The response to the demise of the individual mandate
of many Democratic activists and officials has not been
to campaign for the restoration, strengthening, and other
improvements to the ACA. Instead, increasing numbers of
progressives now want to replace the ACA with a single-payer
health plan similar to Medicare—the so-called Medicare-for-
All option.2
The saga of the ACA contains many of the elements that
have marked the polarization of American political and policy
elites: bitter partisan division, the willingness to play proce-
dural hardball rather than negotiate, and the abandonment of
centrist policy ideas such as the individual mandate. And the
end result of this clash—like so many others—may be ineffec-
tual and counterproductive policies.
Yet it is reasonable to question whether such conflicts
are unique to our time and reflect anything other than the
normal give-and-take of American politics. One can always
point to some intense ideological or partisan struggle of the
past to argue that American politics has always been rough
and tumble and divisive. While these episodes undoubtedly
show that there was never a time in our history that we were
governed by cool, dispassionate deliberation among citizen-
scholar-statesmen, argument by example is not very helpful
in establishing broader historical patterns and developments.
To capture those trends, we require much more systematic
evidence.
Unlike voters who have been regularly asked questions
about their policy views and partisanship, the lack of such
information precludes direct assessment of the polarization
of the views of elite partisan actors. Thus, scholars have had
24 Polarization
to use a wide variety of other data to learn about elite par-

tisan conflict and its sources. One important source of infor-
mation is legislative roll-call voting that has the advantage of
covering thousands of legislators over large swaths of history.
But the inferences from roll-call voting are not always direct,
so some claims about elite polarization remain somewhat
contested. Recent efforts, however, to measure elite polariza-
tion from other sources have been very helpful in clarifying
some arguments and dispelling others.
Because the use of roll-call votes to measure polarization
raises a wide variety of methodological issues, I dedicate a
substantial part of this chapter to discussing the strengths and
weakness of various measures. Because no measure of elite
polarization is perfect, I highlight those results that hold up
across a wide variety of measures. A slightly more technical
discussion of some of the issues raised appears in Appendix A.
3.1 How do we measure elite polarization?

As previously noted in c hapter 2, congressional roll-call voting
has been a very important source of measuring elite polariza-
tion. Given that every member of the US House and Senate
casts hundreds of public roll-call votes per year on a wide va-
riety of public policy matters, the congressional voting record
provides a window into how partisan and regional political
conflicts have evolved over time.
One of the simplest ways in which roll-call votes can be
used to measure polarization is to compute party voting scores.
A legislator’s party voting score is simply the percentage of
votes she casts that agree with those of a majority of her party.
At an aggregate level, a party vote is a roll call in which a ma-
jority of one party votes against a majority of the other party.
Thus, a plausible measure of congressional polarization is the
percentage of roll calls that can be classified as party votes.
Figure 3.1 shows the percentage of roll-call votes in each
congressional term where one party voted against another.
0.9
Percentage of Party Votes 0.8
0.7
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
1877 1897 1917 1937 1957 1977 1997 2017

Year
House Senate
Figure 3.1: Party Voting in the US Congress Figure shows for each term and chamber the
percentage of roll calls in which a majority of one party voted against a majority of the other.
These measures go back to 1877, the first congressional term

after Reconstruction following the Civil War.3 Although the
party voting measures are noisy and bounce around from term
to term, some clear patterns and trends are evident. First, levels
of partisan voting are highly correlated across the House and
the Senate. As party voting rises in one chamber, it also tends
to rise in the other. Second, party voting rates were high in the
late nineteenth century and then began falling through much
of the twentieth century. But party voting turned sharply up-
ward in the mid-to-late 1970s—the period in which political
scientists generally agree that our contemporary polarized
party system emerged.
While figure 3.1 reveals much about the history of polariza-
tion in Congress, a significant limitation of party voting meas-
ures is that they are hard to decompose into each individual
26 Polarization
legislator’s contribution to polarization. Consider an example

from recent years. The current Republican conference in the
House has roughly three factions—a moderate one, a main-
stream conservative one, and an extremely conservative Tea
Party faction. Sometimes the moderates and mainstream
conservatives vote against the Tea Party. Sometimes the Tea
Party and the mainstream conservatives vote against the
moderates, but we rarely see the moderates and the Tea Party
gang up on the mainstreamers. The result might be that a mod-
erate and a Tea Party member have the same party voting score.
Yet clearly, the Tea Party member contributes much more to the
polarization of Congress as a whole than does the Republican
moderate. A second concern with party voting measures are
that they may be heavily influenced by the composition of the
roll-call vote agenda. For example, if a particular congressional
term witnesses a lot of procedural party-line votes, it may ap-
pear more partisan, even if there is a substantial amount of
bipartisanship on more substantive votes.
Given these concerns with party voting measures, political
scientists have developed many other measures of roll-call
voting behavior to assess polarization. The earliest alternative
approach involved the use of interest group ratings. Interest
group ratings of legislators have been compiled by a very di-
verse set of advocacy groups, most notably the Americans for
Democratic Action, the American Conservative Union, and the
League of Conservation Voters. Many of these ratings go back a
long time. Though precise details differ across interest groups,
these ratings are generally constructed in the following way:
1. An interest group identifies a set of roll calls that are im-

portant to the group’s legislative agenda.
2. The group identifies the position on the roll call that
supports the group’s agenda.
3. A rating is computed by dividing the number of votes
in support of the group’s agenda by the total number of
votes identified by the group.
For example, suppose an interest group chooses twenty

votes. A legislator who votes favorably eighteen times gets a
90% rating, and one who supports the group five times gets a
25% rating. From these ratings, it is straightforward to compute
polarization by comparing the average score of Democrats
with the average score of Republicans.
Clearly, the use of interest group ratings has many
advantages. First, the scores directly relate to the policy
concerns of the groups that compile them. The League of
Conservation Voters scores are based on environmental
votes while the National Right to Life Committee chooses
votes on abortion, euthanasia, and stem cell research.
Second, groups often focus on substantively and politi-
cally important votes. By contrast, the party vote meas-
ures and the statistical models discussed next use all or
almost all votes. Clearly, the expertise of the interest group
in identifying key amendment or procedural votes adds
considerable value to the measures. Third, interest group
ratings can distinguish between party extremists and party
moderates in a way that party vote scores cannot.4 Finally,
interest group ratings are easy to understand. A rating of p
means that legislator x supported group y’s position p per-
cent of the time.
But the use of interest group ratings to measure legislative
polarization has a number of drawbacks:
1. The ratings can be lumpy. Since relatively few votes are

used, scores can only take on a relatively small number
of values. For example, if a group only uses twenty votes,
there are only twenty-one unique scores. So legislators
with very different policy preferences may end up with
the same score.
2. It is difficult to compare interest group ratings over time.
The scales of any interest group rating depend on the
exact votes chosen over any legislative session. Since the
nature of the congressional agenda changes, we should
28 Polarization
not confidently conclude that a score of 80% in one year

is the same as a score of 80% in another year.5
3. Interest groups often choose votes to create the appear-
ance of polarization.6 The goal of many groups is to
create interest group ratings that clearly distinguish be-
tween their friends and their enemies. Thus, they will not
choose votes where those two groups agree. The result is
an “artificial extremism” that amplifies any measure of
polarization.
One of the first important studies of congressional polari-

zation was conducted by Keith Poole and Howard Rosenthal.
They used a statistical model designed to incorporate multiple
interest group ratings and address some of the problems listed
above.7 Poole and Rosenthal found that beginning in the mid-
1970s, American politics at the congressional level became
much more divisive. More Democrats staked out consistently
liberal positions, and more Republicans supported the menu
of conservative ones. The primary evidence in that study,
which focused exclusively on the Senate, were the ratings is-
sued by interest groups such as the Americans for Democratic
Action (ADA), the League of Conservation Voters (LCV), and
the United States Chamber of Commerce.
To overcome some of the limitations of interest group ratings,
political scientists have developed methods to estimate the
positions of legislators on an ideological scale. These methods
assume that legislators make their choices in accordance with
the spatial model of voting. In the spatial model, each legislator
is assumed to have a position on a liberal-conservative dimen-
sion. This position is termed the ideal point. The ideal point
is directly analogous to a rating if the interest group is either
more liberal or more conservative than all of the legislators.
Just as the 435 representatives and 100 senators are assumed
to have ideal points, analysts allow each roll call to be
represented by yea and nay positions on the liberal-conservative
scale. For example, a proposal to move the minimum wage
Another random document with
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A NORTH COUNTRY NIMROD.
As a lad of 18, John Crozier was already well known as a keen

sportsman, as good with his rod in the becks and rivers here about, as he was
with his father's hounds, and fond of wrestling as he was of hunting. At that
day the pack numbered only six couples. They were kept at the farms all
through the year, and were trained to meet at the sound of the Master's horn.
The old Squire would often tell how he would stand on Kiln Hill, blow a
blast, and watch the beauties racing across the meadows to his call. John
Peel, in those days, was still hunting on the other side of Skiddaw, and John
Crozier remembered the last time he saw him was under Wanthwaite Crags,
where, after a long day's run, he invited the old veteran, who was on his
white pony, to come home to supper. 'Nay, nay, John,' said Peel, 'I'se
freetened o' gettin' neeted (benighted),' and so went back on his way to
Ruthwaite supperless. 'But I'll see thee again,' he added—who knows they
may again have met.
The first thing the young Master did was to improve the breed of his
hounds, and this he accomplished by getting a strain from John Peel's
kennels. How much of Ruby, 'Ranter, Royal, and Bellman, so true,' spoken
of in the song, still runs in the blood of the Blencathra pack, I know not.
Other strains since then have been introduced, but a hardier pack never
breasted a mountain side, and there is not one of them who would not carry
on the line himself, if his fellows failed, to the death.
John Crozier once received the following note: 'To J. Crozier, Esq.,
M.F.H., from Isaac and Edward Brownrigg, of Brownrigg. This hound
(Darling) brought a splendid dog-fox, and after a very exciting hunt
ultimately caught it in our house field. About an hour afterwards other five
dogs came. After being fed they left, but this one would not leave. We intend
having the fox preserved.' After carrying on the hounds at his own cost for
30 years, 'the Squire,' as he was always called, at the request of his
neighbours, allowed them to become a subscription pack, in the year 1870.
There was a general feeling in the dales that it was not fair to allow all the
burden to be upon one man, and on the conditions that he would remain
Master, and in case of the hunt ceasing, the hounds should be returned to
him. A treasurer and secretary were appointed, and the Blencathra Hunt
went on merrily as before.
The Master was fortunate in his huntsmen. Joseph Fearon, of honoured

memory, was succeeded by Isaac Todhunter, who carried the horn for 25
years. Isaac Todhunter handed it on to John Porter, who for a like time kept
up the best traditions of the pack, which Jem Dalton carries on to-day. The
names of these past huntsmen, with other members of the hunt, are inscribed
on the stone of memorial raised in the Threlkeld Churchyard at the charges
of the Squire and a few friends; and that pillar in the King's dale—for of this
dale John Crozier was truly king—if it does nothing else, goes to prove that
the following of the foxes in the Lake District adds years, even as it adds
cheer, to the lives of the dalesmen. Thus, for example, one sees that many of
the hunters were fourscore years before they were run to earth; one was 89,
another 91, another 95, and a fourth 98.
Up till the past two years the old Master of the hunt presided at the
annual hunt dinner, but it was known that his health was failing, and though
each week up to the end he kept in touch with all the doings of his pack, he
did not leave his house. Still week by week members of the hunt would go
up and have a 'crack' with him—always to be received with the same
courteous inquiry, 'Well, how about your wives and families, are they well?
That's right. Is any news stirring? What about the House last night?' He took
the keenest interest in politics up to the end, and that came, not
unexpectedly, at two o'clock on a quiet starlit morning, Thursday, 5th March,
1903.
I could not wonder that my old friend the yeoman had said it was a dark
day for Threlkeld, for he had lived among his own people, and loved them to
the end. How they loved him may be gathered from the fact that two days
before he died, a casket containing a book in which every householder in the
parish had entered his name, with an illuminated address, full of affection
and gratitude, for the friendship towards them of a long life, was brought to
the house. 'Ya kna,' said my friend, 'they knew t' aid Squire was house-fast,
and they likely thowt 't wad cheer 'im up a laal bit.' He never saw it, for it
was thought he was too ill to be 'fashed' with it, and he is beyond all earthly
cheering now; 'the Hunter is home from the Hill.'
On the following Monday there was such a gathering together of the

dalesmen from far and near as had never been seen in Threlkeld Church, or
Threlkeld Churchyard. They sang one of the old Squire's favourite hymns.
They bore the coffin to the grave with the veteran's hunting cap and crop and
the brush of the last fox killed by his pack upon it, and before and after the
service they talked of him kindly, as Cumberland folk ever do of the dead;
they spoke of him, not only as the oldest Master of Foxhounds in the land,
but as a man who entered into all the social enjoyments of the country-side,
and whilst on terms of close intimacy, almost familiarity, with the
companions, retained their regard, and in some things set them a good
example.
For in an age when the gambling spirit was abroad, it will be
remembered that John Crozier never bet a penny in his life. 'I did yance
think o' betting a hawpeth o' snaps,' he once said in the vernacular; 'but I
kind of considered it ower, and I didn't.' It will be remembered of him, too,
that he was against the use of bad language in the field, and that he never
would allow, if he could help it, a bit of scandal or 'ill gien gossip.' If he
heard one man running down another or passing an unkind judgment, or
setting an unkind tale 'agate,' he would jerk out, 'There, noo, thoo mun let
that hare sit'—and it sat. 'Ay, ay,' said an old friend as he turned away from
the graveyard, 'tho' he said nowt about it, he was a kind o' a religious man,
was varra partial to certain hymns, and had his favourite psalms, that he wad
gang off quietly to his bit summerhoose most mornings, and tek his prayer
book with him. They say t' housekeeper, after her master's death, found t' aid
beuk laid open on summerhoose taable, I suppose.'
But as they left the churchyard they all in memory saw the old Master in
his sealskin cap, with the lappets about his ears—squarely built and strong,
with his alpenstock in hand, as the prefatory verse tells:
But I think I see him stand,

Rough mountain staff in hand,
Fur cap and coat of grey,
With a smile for all the band
Of the sportsmen in the land,
And a word for all the merry men who loved his 'Hark away!'
And as they thought of what he has been to them for the last 65 years in the
Threlkeld vale, they admitted the truth of the following words:
Last hunter of your race!

As we bear you to your place,
We forget the hounds and horn,
But the tears are on our face,
For we mind your deeds of grace,
Loving-kindness, late and early, unto all the village-born.
A WINTER-DAY ON DERWENTWATER.
If November is the month for cloud effect, December certainly is the

month for marvellous dawns and eventides. Then it would appear as if by
some generous intent to give the minds of men unwonted tranquillity and to
impress all the dwellers in the vales with the thought of perfect restfulness,
the sun seems to prepare for his rising a heaven of cloudless silver washed
with faintest gold. All the heavy ragged companies of the night-wrack seem
withdrawn, and very slowly, while Helvellyn stands lilac-grey against the
silver dawn, the sun rolls into sight, kindles the cones of Grisedale and
Grasmoor, and bids the heavy dew upon the valley meadows rise up in finest
lines of delicate gossamer lawn.
Yesterday, though we had little wind in the valley, one could hear the
humming and the roaring of what seemed a tempest in middle heaven, but at
night-time heaven and earth were still, and the seven stars in Orion and the
Pleiads, 'like fireflies tangled in a silver braid,' shone clear, and we felt that
the Frost King had come in earnest. There was no snow on the hills this
morning; the leaves at one's feet tinkled as though they were made of iron; I
met schoolboys with rosy faces and skates upon their shoulders going off to
Tewfit Tarn—the little tarn upon the ridge dividing Naddle from St. John's in
the Vale, that always gives our skaters in the Keswick neighbourhood their
first winter happiness. Down to the lake I went, and standing at Friar's Crag,
saw that part of it was burnished steel and part black ebon water. It was
incredible that one night's frost should thus have partly sealed the lake from
sight.
A WINTER'S DAY ON DERWENTWATER.
I was bound for Brandelhow to meet the woodman to discuss the felling
of certain timber, and through the ice pack, if it were possible, I must needs
go. Coasting along round the island, I soon found myself in a narrow inlet of
water that stretched half across the lake; tiny spikules of ice that seemed like
floating straws were right and left of me in the still water; here and there
little delicate fans of ice were passed. These miniature ice-islands were the
nuclei round which the freezing mixture would crystallise. Forward across
towards Lingholme I steered, and suddenly should have been brought up
sharp had not the boat, with good way upon it, crashed right into the ice-floe
and shown me how unsubstantial a thing this first ice-covering of the lake
was. With every stroke of the oar the boat forged its way with marvellous
sound of crash and gride, and one remembered how the Ancient Mariner had
heard those 'noises in a swound,' and was able to summon up something of
the roar with which the great ice-breakers or steam rams on the Neva crash
their way up and down the river to keep the waterway clear for the Baltic
shipping. But in a short time the difficulty of rowing became doubled, and if
it had not been that one saw clear water ahead one would hardly have
ventured forward. Meanwhile in the wake of one's boat one saw how swiftly
the little ice-elves repaired the damage one had done by bringing back to its
own place and rest each fragment one had displaced, and piecing over with
exquisite exactness the breach that one had made.
Now the way was clear, for by some mysterious reason, known only to
the water-gods, the shallower the water became as one went shoreward the
freer it was of ice. It may have been mere fantasy, but it seemed as if the
water so near to freezing was semi-fluid, viscous; always right and left of
one swam by the little ice spikules, and the ice fans, with irridescent beauty,
floated and shone hard by. Presently another crash was heard, and an ice-
belt, only a yard wide, but stretching fifty or sixty yards along, was crashed
through, another and another, and so, with alternate noise and silence, one
made one's way to Victoria Point, and ran the boat ashore at Brandelhow.
Beautiful as that woodland is in early spring, it seemed that to-day there

were more beauties still. The bracken was silver-dusted with frost and shone
gold in the sunshine, and the green velvet of the mosses upon tree-trunk and
ground only heightened by contrast the rich russet of the fern. I climbed to
the russet seat on the rocky knoll above; there, sitting, I watched the
gambolling of five squirrels and listened to the crackling as their sharp teeth
made short work of the cones and fir-tufts. All these little merry feasters had
put on their winter coats, and were much less red of hue than when I
watched them last in August. They had put on their winter tails also. I saw
none of that curious white flaxen colour which the squirrel in September
seems so proud of, as, with a wave of his brush, he dashes out of sight.
There, as I watched these miracles of motion and alertness, I thought of
Ruskin—how lovingly he had described them. Here was one leaping on to a
twig that bent with just enough of swing in it to allow the little fellow to fly
through the air to the next bough. Here was another, now running along the
sturdier bough that bent not, now dropping five or six feet into a dark-green
tuft, now sitting cosily in a forked branch to munch his midday meal, now
racing for pure joy and mischief after his brother up a long tree-trunk, the
tail sometimes bent in an arch above the tufted ears, again thrown out
straight, and now bent and undulating—truly a balancing-pole, if ever one
was needed by such expert gymnasts. Children of perfect knowledge of the
woodland boughs, fearless as birds and swift as monkeys, the happy family
rejoiced in the winter sunshine, as free of care as the cloudless sky above
their heads. I moved, and the jay clanged and screamed from among the
alders below me, and in a moment the happy family had vanished out of
sight, and one saw what an intercommunion of alarm against strange comers
birds and beasts must surely have. Dropping down from this happy mount—
and truly it has been called Mons Beata—I made my way through crackling
fern across the chattering little brooklet to the second rocky height further to
the southward. Blencathra lilac-grey and Walla Wood purple-brown and
High Seat tawny yellow were reflected with such fidelity in the flood below
one that the beauty of two worlds seemed to be given me. The tranquillity of
the far-away fells was brought right across the flood to one's feet, a couple of
wild duck dashed into the water, and with the ripplings of their sudden
descent they set the whole fellside trembling. Looking now towards Cat
Bels, one marvelled at the extraordinary beauty of the colour. Never was
such bronze and gold seen to make the sky so blue, as one gazed up to the
hummock of Cat Bels; whilst, between our rustic seat and the high road, the
woodland hollow was filled with colour of gradation from silver-grey to
purple-brown, and here and there a beech tree full of leaf or a Scotch fir
green and blue gave emphasis to the general tone of softest harmony.
Passing on through the larches upon the little height, I gained a third seat,
and here the chief charm was the outlook up Borrodale. Immediately in the
foreground were young Scotch fir; beyond them the lake glinted in silver
through leafless birches. Away up Borrodale, with every variety of lilac
melting into purple-grey, ridge beyond ridge, one saw the bossy outliers of
the Borrodale ranges stand up in sunny calm; one felt the deep tranquillity of
Glaramara and of nearer Honister, the only sound a distant cockcrow from
the far-off Ashness farm and the quiet inland murmur of Lodore. The glory
of the vale was the wonderful Castle Hill, with its echo of old Rome upon its
head, that stood black-purple against the further lilac haze. But as one sat
there in silent content a school of long-tailed tits came quavering by. They
found abundant food, it would seem, in the Scotch firs close beside me, and
what the squirrels had done before to open one's eyes to their miracle of
movement these long-tailed titmice did again, for one here, as I sat and
watched their happy quest for food. Such balancing, such joyousness, such
fiery energy, such swiftness of sight, such whispering of heart's content
would have made the saddest man glad and the dullest marvel. As I rose
from that seat, with a long look up Borrodale, I could not wonder that our
Viking forefathers had called it the Vale of the Borg or Castle, for that Castle
Hill in Borrodale must surely have seemed to them a giant's hold, the fittest
place for some high fortress-camp, as it had seemed to the Romans of an
older day.
If the first height one had ascended was rightly called 'Mons Beata,' and
the seat one had last left was placed on a hill that might be called Mons
Blencathrae, which gave such fair prospect of Blencathra, surely this fair
mount might be called 'Mons Borgadalis,' or the Mount of Borrodale.
I heard a whistle, and to my answering hulloa came a shout. The forester

was waiting for me away up there on the highest point of the woodland, not
far from the main road and above the Brandelhow mines. Descending swiftly
and making my way through the frosty undergrowth, with rabbits scuttling
here and there and a soft-winged owl lazily fluttering from a bough above
my head, I was suddenly aware by the scent that hung upon the fern that a
fox had passed that way. But it must have been in the early morning or 'Brer
Rabbit' would not have been about and the jay would have been screaming,
and, making the best of my way up to the forester, we soon forgot all about
bird and beast in our honest efforts to let in light and give fair outlook to the
wanderers who should hither come for rest and thought in succeeding
summers.
It is not an easy matter to open up a woodland view—the branch of every

tree must be questioned, the joy of 'part seen, imagined part' must be had in
mind,—but the work was done at last. We sat down for rest on the woodland
seat on the fourth rocky eminence on Brandelhow. It is a seat within only a
few yards of the high road, yet so screened from it that it is hardly seen; but
it is a hill with so fair a prospect that indeed I think angels might pass the
little wicket in the wall and visit those who rest here unawares. There is no
better name imaginable for this high resting-place than 'Mons Angelorum.'
As I thought thus the great sun rolled beyond the hills and all the vale lay
darkened. Cat Bels and Brandelhow went black and grey, while still across
the lake Walla and Blencathra lay in full sunshine; but at that moment,
unthought of before, there rose a band of angels all along the riverside, and
tiny cloudlets swam up into shadow, and again from shadow into sun. The
Mount of the Angels was this height rightly called.
'It is likely getting late,' said the forester, 'and if you do not start soon
you'll happen hardly get through the ice to-night.'
Down to the boat landing in Victoria Bay I went, and as I went the
woodland filled with a mysterious light. I thought of St. Francis and the
visions he had seen at Al Verna; the sun was beyond the hills, it had faded
now even from Walla Crag, but the light from Brandelhow seemed to leap
up from the ground, the larches so dim and dead before gleamed into gold;
the red bracken at my feet burned like fire; it was an enchanted woodland;
the magic after-glow was the enchanter.
MONS BEATA, BRANDELHOW.
I pushed off from the shore, gained the ice-pack, crashed through it but
not without difficulty, and won the dark, clear water beyond. The sun had
sunk between Robinson and Grisedale, a dark cloud-bar had filled the
heavenly interspace, but there in the gap it seemed as if beneath its heavy
eyebrow the eye of God was keeping watch and ward above the quiet land.
One had often seen at the seaside the sun sink and the slender pillar of
golden light reach downward to the shore, but never had I seen such a
magnificent golden roadway laid upon shining water for happy dreams of
tired men to follow the flying day, as I saw that eventide upon the silver ice
and the darkling flood of tranquil Derwentwater.
WORDSWORTH AT COCKERMOUTH.
It was a difference that arose on the American question, between Sir

James Lowther and his law agent and steward, a certain John Robinson, in
the year 1766, that was the prime cause of the fact that Wordsworth, the
poet, was born here. For John Robinson resigned his stewardship, and young
John Wordsworth, then only 24 years of age, 'a man of great force of
character and real human capacity,' was appointed in his place to be 'law
agent and steward of the manor of Ennerdale.' To that post, which he
occupied for the next 18 years, the young man came from the Penrith
neighbourhood, bringing with him as his girl wife a certain Ann Cookson, a
mercer's daughter, who could boast, through her descent on her mother's side
from the Crackanthorpes, of Newbiggin Hall, an ancestry that flowed from
as far back as the time of Edward III. She was thus well suited to marry the
son of the land agent of Sockbridge, near Penistone, who traced his descent
through a long unbroken line of sturdy Yorkshire yeomen away in the
Penistone neighbourhood, as far as to the time of the Norman Conqueror.
They took up their abode in the substantial house now occupied by Mr.
Robinson Mitchell, then lately builded by one Sheriff Luckock. It bears date
1745-46, and is to-day unmarred and unmodernised, remaining much as it
was when John Wordsworth became its tenant. We know little of this young
John Wordsworth, but he must have been a man 'tender and deep in his
excess of love,' for when, after twelve years of happy married life here in the
old manor house beside the Derwent, his wife died from consumption,
caught, as we are told, by being put into a damp bed in the 'best room' when
on a visit to friends in London, he never seemed to recover his spirits, and he
himself died six years after her, in the year 1783, on the 30th December, and
lies buried at the east end of the All Saints' Church. He lost his way on the
fells when returning from some business engagement at Broughton-in-
Furness, and was obliged to stay out all night; the chill from exposure
brought on inflammation of the lungs, and his strength, sapped by deep
domestic sorrow, could not bear up against it. The orphans whom he left,
Richard, William, Dorothy, John, and Christopher, four of whom were
remarkable in after life, were then removed to the care of their uncle
Cookson at Penrith, and Cockermouth knew them no more. We have been
allowed, from William Wordsworth's autobiographical notes and his poems,
to glean something of those early days. The poet tells us:
Early died
My honoured mother, she who was the heart
And hinge of all our learnings and our loves,
Nor would I praise her, but in perfect love!
We can in fancy see her in earnest converse with Mr. Ellbanks, the teacher of
the school by the churchyard, talking about William's 'moody and stiff
temper'; we can hear her say 'that the only one of the children about whom
she has fears is William; and he will be remarkable for good or evil.' We may
note her pinning on the child's breast the Easter nosegay, for the young lad is
to go up to the church, to say his catechism. Daffodils I expect the flowers
were: years after, in the ecclesiastical sonnets Words worth, speaking of this
act of his mother's, writes:
Sweet flowers at whose inaudible command

Her countenance phantom-like doth reappear.
Or we can see the father, book in hand, hearing the lad recite the long
passages of Shakespeare, and Milton, and Spenser which were insensibly to
mould his ear to music, fire his imagination, and make a poet of him.
But when I think of Wordsworth in those childish days I do not go off to

the ancient school by the church to hear him stumble through Latin verbs.
He was not as happy there as he was at Mrs. Birkett's, the dame's school at
Penrith; there was no Mary Hutchinson to keep him company; and he
learned, he tells us, when he went to Hawkshead at the age of ten, more
Latin in a fortnight than he had learned the two previous years at
Cockermouth. No, rather when I want to see the little William Wordsworth
at his happiest, I go with him into the old Manor House Terrace garden by
the Derwent's side, and see him with his sister, that sister 'Emmeline,' as he
called her, chasing the butterfly, or hand in hand peering through the rose
and privet hedge at the sparrow's nest, 'wishing yet fearing to be near it.'
Or, follow him with his nurse, he a child of only five years of age,
bathing and basking alternate, all the hot August day in the shallows of the
mill pool, and leaping naked as an Indian through the tall garden ragwort on
the sands, and clapping his hands to see the rainbow spring from middle air.
Or I go with him by the river, 'winding among its grassy holmes,' whose
voice flowed along his earliest dreams—that Derwent he could never forget
—away to the Castle-hold of the barons of old time, Waldeof, Umfraville,
Multon, Lucies, and Nevilles, and watch him peering with look of awe into
the dark cellar and dungeons, watch him chase the butterfly through the grim
courts or climb after the tufts of golden wallflower upon its broken
battlements.
But happiest of all was he when with his story book he lay full stretched,
as he describes in the Prelude, upon the sun-warmed stones and sandy banks
'beside the bright blue river,' and there feasted his little heart on fairy tale
and filled his soul with scenes from wonderland.
Wordsworth was never unmindful of the home of his birth. He left

Cockermouth for schooldays at Hawkshead when he was a boy of nine, and
though in the holidays, for the next five years, he paid an occasional visit to
the place, his chief vacation associations were with Penrith. The Poet's
connection with this town ceased at his father's death in 1784, when he was a
lad of fourteen; but he never forgot it. From nature and her overflowing soul
here in his childhood days he had received so much that all his thoughts
were steeped in a feeling of grateful remembrance of it. He visited the home
of his childhood occasionally to refresh his heart with a cup of
remembrance, and we find a note of a certain visit in Dorothy's letter to Mrs.
Marshall. Writing in September, 1807, she says:—'W. and M. have just
returned. They were at Cockermouth, our native place you know, and the
Terrace Walk—that you have heard me speak of many a time—with the
privet hedge, is still full of roses as it was thirty years ago. Yes, I remember
it for more than thirty years.'
In 1836 he interests himself in a scheme for building a new church. He

writes to his friend Poole, of Nether Stowey, for assistance to this object. He
tells him that Cockermouth is in a state of much spiritual destitution, nearly
6000 souls and only 300 sittings for the poor. Wordsworth cared for the poor.
'I have been the means,' he says, 'of setting on foot the project of erecting a
new church there, and the inhabitants look to me for much more assistance
than I can possibly afford them, through any influence that I possess.'
As a Keswick parson, I gather with pride further on in that letter, that it

was the fact of the new church of St. John's having been built there that
spurred him on; and that he hopes Cockermouth will do as Keswick has
done, and thus excite other towns to follow so good an example.
It is interesting to note that the Cockermouthians of that day were not of

one mind in the matter, or the Poet had been misled as to native church
feeling; for the inhabitants having a windfall of £2000 given them by the
Lord of Egremont that year, to spend as they pleased, preferred a new market
place to a new church, and the old Poet writes:—'This was wanted, so we
cannot complain.'
But Wordsworth was disappointed and grieved too at the spirit of

unkindness shown by some of the people of his native town to his good Lord
Lonsdale. I have had access to a MS. letter of Wordsworth's, which shows
that the Church-building project fell through, as far as he was concerned, by
reason of what he considered the unfair treatment of an offer of help, made
by the then Lord Lonsdale to the town, in connection with the church
accommodation needed.
So far as I know this was the last public work he attempted to do for the
place that gave him birth. But at least we cannot regret that his last effort
was in a cause near to his heart, the cause of the religious interests and life of
his fellow Cumbrians, the cause of reverence, worship, and godly fear, of
'pure religion breathing household laws,' the cause of the worship and praise
of Almighty God, here in his native place.
The seed he sowed, though it lay dormant, did not fall on barren ground;
and in a real sense the present All Saints' Parish Church may stand as a
monument to the immortal Poet, who then, as ever, championed 'in perilous
times the cause of the poor and simple,' and did what he might in his day for
church life and piety in the place of his nativity, Cockermouth.
MOUNTAIN SILENCE AND VALLEY SONG.
Once more the Heavenly power makes all things new.
This was the line from Tennyson's poem that kept ringing in my ears, as on
the mid-most day of April I wandered out and away across the vale to the
skirts of Skiddaw.
Opens a door in Heaven;

From skies of glass
A Jacob's ladder falls
On greening grass,
And o'er the mountain walls
Young angels pass.
Before them fleets the shower

And burst the buds,
And shine the level lands,
And flash the floods,
The stars are from their hands
Flung thro' the woods.
No, no! this last couplet was untrue; the anemones had not yet opened their
delicate shells, and the blackthorn buds were only dimmest seed-pearls of
yellowish lustre. But as I gazed from the fence halfway up Latrigg and
watched the Greta flashing, and the great plain fresh-enamelled with the first
faint green of spring, a Jacob's ladder was let down from above Scafell and
Glaramara, and all the angels that ever came on earth to fill men's hearts
with April jollity came trooping downwards. They took on various forms.
Some of them became tortoise-shell butterflies that lay in sunny content
upon the moist woodland path. Others sailed out of blue air and became
glorious peacock butterflies upon whose underwings in blue and black one
clearly saw the head and face of human kind sketched in with lustrous
powdery pencillings. Other angels ministered to the pink coral glumes of the
sycamore; others, again, daintily untwisted the leafage of the wild rose in the
hedge; others delighted to unfold the tufts upon the elder. But the angels that
seemed to be busiest were those that made the vivid emerald of the 'dog's
mercury' contrast with the faded red of the bracken in the woods, and where
the purple birches showed against the flowering larches added moment by
moment a deeper, ruddier purple to the trees' beauty and a finer flash of
green to the surrounding wood to set the purple off.
But all the gifts of the angels of that April morning seemed as nothing
when compared with the joy of the sight of one single angel of the spring—
he a lustrous-backed swallow who flashed from steel-purple into black and
from black to steel-purple, and disappeared from sight behind the larches. I
had known of his coming, for a swift-eyed shepherd had seen one of his kind
in the valley as early as April 1, but April 13 to the 15th was marked in my
calendar as swallowtide, and I had not expected sight of him till this week.
Here he was, glossy with African sun, and full of silent message that
summer was sure. The chiffchaff would be a-trill and the cuckoo would be
calling for a mate within the week. Ah, swallow! swallow! flying north!
How much of hope and happiness you bring. Then as I moved through the
larchen grove, I heard the titmice whispering that they too were glad, they
too felt reassured by sight of the swallow, and one walked on in a kind of
consciousness that man and swallow and budding larches were more akin
than one had believed, until the joyousness of spring found the selfsame
echo in such divers hearts, and that indeed the over-soul was one, the music
and the melody one voice. Yes, Wordsworth sang truly when he wrote:
One impulse from a vernal wood

May teach us more of man,
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the sages can.
I met a child halfway up Latrigg braiding her hat with larch flower. Truly
no rubies ever seemed so rich and rare as these which the simple village
child had twisted in her hat; her sister had a handful of primroses she was
taking to her father in the neighbouring cottage, for he was but slowly
recovering from pneumonia, and the child knew by instinct that a breath
from a primrose posy would do more for him than all the 'doctors' bottles' in
the world.
'You have been up Skiddaw betimes,' I said.
'Ay, ay, sir; you see they've gone to "laate" Herdwicks to-day for
lambing-time, and I went up to the Gale with the dogs.'
Herdwicks! Lambing! What did it all mean? Only that those great brown
slopes of Skiddaw which till this day have been vocal with flocks and alive
with sheep, will by this eventide be as silent as the grave. For between April
10 and April 20 the shepherds know that the Herdwicks will become
mothers of their springtide young, and so they will go forth to the fells and
upland pastures, to bring their woolly charges down from the mountain
heights to the safety and the food and care of the dale-farm enclosures. I
overtook the shepherds at the 'Gale,' and went with them. Soon the dogs
were seen scouring the fell-side, now disappearing from sight, now coming
back to get a signal from their master. A wave of the hand to left or right was
all that was needed, and away they went, and slowly and surely they seemed
to be able to search out and bring into a close company the Herdwicks from
all the heathery waste and grey-bleached mountain hollows.
Then began the home-bringing. Very tenderly and gently did the dogs
urge the sheep, heavy with young, down the fell-side slopes. Now and again
the shepherd cried, 'Hey, Jack!' and away the collies flew back towards him.
'Ga away by!' and away again the collies flew in a great circle out beyond
and behind the sheep. The sheep were a little hustled and came on too fast.
Then the shepherd whistled and held up his hand, and the dogs sat like
stones till he whistled and waved his hand again. So down from Lonscale
and across the gulfy Whitbeck the sheep came. The dogs dashed off to
where, through a great carpet of ever-lucent moss, the main fountains break
from the hill. They slaked their thirst, then came back slowly to urge the
flocks homeward and downward toward the Shepherd's Cross, and so over
the Gale to the Lonscale Farm. We stopped at the Cross, and a tall, 'leish,'
handsome man, with fair hair and the grey Viking eye, said in solemn
undertone, 'Fadder and brudder cud hev been weal content to be wid us on
sic a day as this, I'se thinking.' And the mist gathered in his eyes, and he said
no more, but just went homeward with the sheep. Ah, yes, that Shepherd's
Cross tells of men—father and son—who spent their whole lives in
following the Herdwicks on the sides of Skiddaw and Lonscale Fell;
wrought for their sheep, thought of them by day and dreamed of them by
night, and were as proud, as ever David was, of what they looked upon as
the finest life a man need care to live, the mountain shepherd's round of love
and toil.
I waved adieu, and up beyond the huts to 'Jenkin' I went. The red fern
had been washed into faintest ochre, the heather had grown grey with winter
storm, but everywhere beneath the blanched grass one felt new life and
tenderest first flush of April green was astir; and as one looked down from
'Jenkin' into the circle of the deep blue hills and the Derwent's perfect mirror,
one saw that though the larches were still brown there was an undertone of
something, neither brown nor green, that flooded not only the larch woods
but the great Latrigg pastures also, and betokened that the spring was even at
their doors, and that the fells would soon rejoice with the emerald valley
below. Gazing at the vale of Crosthwaite, where still all the trees seem
winter white, one was astonished at the darkness of the hedgerows that
divided the meadows, and one saw the new fallows shine and swim like
purple enamel upon the green flood of the springtide grass. 'Jenkin' was
reached, but not until many swathes of lingering snow, black with the smoke
of the blast furnaces of the coast and of Lancashire and Yorkshire mills, had
been passed. Here at 'Jenkin top' we found two men hard at work 'graaving'
peats for the Coronation bonfires on June 26.
'Well, how goes the peat-graving?' said I, and a ruddy-faced Norseman

from a Threlkeld farm said, 'Aw, gaily weel, sir; but I'm thinking we mud
hev nae mair kings upo' the throane, for this job will finish t' peat moss, and
peats are hard to finnd within reach o' Skiddaw top. You see,' said he, 'it's
lost its wire, and peat widout wire in it is nae use for makking a "low" wid.'
I saw that what he called 'wire' were the rootlets of the ancient
undergrowth of years gone by, the matted texture of primeval springtides,
and, stooping down, he broke a peat across and showed me the wire. 'You
kna,' he continued, 'we shall just leave peats ligging here, and thoo mun send
up scheul-lads to spreead them in a forthnet's time. Then they mud coom oop
a week laater and shift 'em and turn them, and then a week laater they mud
coom and foot 'em. That is if thoo want 'em in fettle by Coronation-daay, for
they are ter'ble watter-sick noo.'
'Foot them?' I said. 'What do you mean?' And the shepherd took a couple
and leaned them one against another, and showed me how thus a draught of
air passed between the peats and ensured their drying. 'Well, good-daay,
good-daay. But we mud hev nae mair kings to be crooned,' said he; 'for peat
moss ull nobbut howd oot for this un, I'm thinking.'
I bade farewell, and down to the valley I went, noting how doubly near
and blue the hills and vales all seemed to grow, as one passed down beneath
the veils of haze which had lent both greyness and distance to the view.
Again I saw the swallow skim; again I watched the gorgeous butterflies, and,
with a wand of palm-flower that had just lost its gold, and the rosy plumelets
of the larch in my hand, I made the best of my way homeward, through air
that throbbed and thrilled with the voice of thrush and blackbird, and felt the
deep contrast between these silent flockless slopes of Skiddaw, and the
ringing singing valley at his feet.
INDEX
Adelaide, Queen, 46.

Ambleside, 18, 22, 44, 53.
Angler, Complete, 120.
April song, 81.
Arnold, Dr., 19, 50.

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2 What Is Political Polarization? 8

2.1 What is the difference between partisanship and polarization? 12

3 Are Partisan Elites Polarized? 22

3.1 How do we measure elite polarization? 24

3.5 What issues divide Congress the most? 41

4 Is the Public Polarized? 50

4.1 How is it even plausible that the public is not polarized? 51

5 What Are the Causes of Polarization? 69

5.10 Is the media responsible for polarization? 88

6 How Does Electoral Law Affect Legislative

6.1 How much does polarization reflect geographic sorting? 101

7 What Are the Consequences of Polarization for

7.1 Why does polarization impact congressional policymaking

7.6 Has the American judiciary and legal system changed as a

8 Is the Trump Presidency a New Normal or More

APPENDIX A HOW ARE LEGISLATOR IDEAL POINTS

APPENDIX B HOW DO WE MEASURE POLARIZATION IN

B.7 What are some limitations of using surveys to measure

The years that I have been studying the polarization of

and income inequality that we would explore in more depth

The months following the election and inauguration of Donald

The second chapter begins with foundational questions,

1920s to the 1950s when partisan polarization fell dramatically.

are noteworthy. The first is that the partisan polarization or

in the media environment, including cable television, the

Chapter 7 delves into questions related to the impact of

achievements of Trump’s first two years in office were the suc-

Commentators use few words to describe the American po-

primary reason for this narrowing is that policy, ideological,

represents the typical deviation of individual opinions from

Liberal Moderate Conservative

to refer to situations where polarization is organized around

patterns have important implications for how we interpret the

2.1 What is the difference between partisanship and

underpin these rising animosities, many scholars argue that

2.2 What is the difference between mass and elite polarization?

be the Vietnam War. Attitudes about the continued conflict in

2.3 What is partisan sorting and is it different from polarization?

But it is also possible that opinions about immigration have

party is an important social identity, many voters may simply

2.4 What is belief constraint and ideological consistency?

Chapter 4 reviews the evidence about the ideological con-

2.5 Who is polarized—​the public or the politicians?

sustain claims that mass polarization is the primary cause of

engagement the more polarized are the preferences. Highly

2.6 Why is polarization bad?

accountability. When the parties do not take distinctive positions,

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

2.5 Who is polarized—the public or the politicians?

In a two-party system, when both parties are weakened or