View From Down Under

Recently came across a paper by Eric Lawrence, John Sides, and Henry Farrell (from George Washington University).  (H/T The Monkey Cage).

From the abstract:

We find that blog readers gravitate toward blogs that accord with their political beliefs. Few read blogs on both the left and right of the ideological spectrum. Furthermore, those who read left-wing blogs and those who read right-wing blogs are ideologically far apart. Blog readers are more polarized than either non-blog-readers or consumers of various television news programs, and roughly as polarized as US senators.

The study discusses how blog authors of similar political persuasion tend to reinforce each other’s beliefs and push further from the center, with something similar occurring among blog readers.  Only 6% of those who read political blogs read both right and left wing blogs.  The remainder, 94%, read only left wing or right wing but not both.

Which fits in with a few earlier comments on polarization of the US electorate, but suggests the View From Down Under is unlikely to appeal to the majority of blog readers.

Which is fine by me.

UPDATE:  There is also a cool chart in the study showing how liberals watch PBS Newshour and conservatives watch Fox News.  We all knew that, but the graph is well presented.

A recent poll suggests that 52% of Republican believe that ACORN stole the election for Barack Obama in 2008, and only 27% of Republicans believe he won the election legitimately (and an amazing 21% not sure).  Among Democrats, 86% believe Obama won the election legitimately.   Although the wording of the poll is, in my view, suggestive and designed to deliver this result, the numbers are still quite dramatic.

Before we dump on  Republicans, we should remember that in 2001, 79% of Democrats believed George W Bush did not win the 2000 election “fair and square”, and 28% believed he “stole” the election.  Among Republicans, 85% said Bush won fair and square.

Any rational person would admit that there were more grounds to be suspicious of the final result in 2000 than in 2008.  Nevertheless, it does illustrate the polarization of thinking between Republicans and Democrats.

It also suggests that both Democrats and Republicans fail to accept that any intelligent human could disagree with them, and if an election proves different then it must be that the results have somehow been rigged.  Only an election that delivers the outcome they want will be seen as legitimate.

Viewed from down under, they sound like spoiled little children.