Indeed, we find that contemporary polarization is not only real — the
ideological distance between the parties has grown dramatically since
the 1970s — but also that it is asymmetric — congressional Republicans
have moved farther away from the center than Democrats during this
period. In two figures below, we plot the mean first dimension
DW-NOMINATE scores of the two parties in the House and Senate from 1879
to the present. Since the mid-1970s, Republicans have moved further to
the right than Democrats have moved to the left. This rightward shift is
especially dramatic among House Republicans, from a mean of 0.22 in
1975 to 0.67 in 2012.
To be sure, political polarization is not entirely asymmetric.
Congressional Democrats have moved slightly to the left during this
period, but most of this is a product of the disappearance of
conservative Southern “Blue Dog” Democrats. But the northern Democrats
of the 1970s are ideologically indistinguishable from their present-day
counterparts, with average scores around -0.4.
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