Evidence of increasing polarization among ordinary citizens
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In recent years, we witnessed an unexpected rise in the partisan behavior of policy-making elites. Beginning in the mid-1970s and accelerating in the 1980s and 1990s, party conflict among members of Congress and between the president and Congress increased considerably (Bond and Fleisher 2000; Fleisher and Bond 1996; Ornstein, Mann, and Malbin 2000; Rohde 1991). The party conflict among elites became so intense that Republicans in Congress were determined to remove President Clinton from office even though polls repeatedly showed that such a move did not have popular support.