… The lack of scholarly consensus on mass-level religious polarization is, at least in part, a product of poor measures of issue polarization. In our recent and upcoming research to be published in Political Behavior, we introduce a new way of measuring issue polarization and then analyze how religious identities impact issue polarization. We find sizeable differences between key religious groups on cultural issues like abortion and same-sex marriage, but little evidence of religious polarization on most non-cultural issues.
The concept of issue polarization implies “deep” disagreement, meaning that individuals view their own position on the issue as the only morally acceptable one and see opposing viewpoints as evil, degenerate, or corrupt. However, the traditional questions asked on widely used surveys like the American National Election Study (ANES) and General Social Survey (GSS) only ask respondents about their own opinion on the issue; they do not enable researchers to differentiate between individuals who view those with opposing views as legitimate and well-intentioned and individuals who view those with opposing views as illegitimate.
We introduce a new way of measuring issue polarization based on the logic of the feeling thermometer difference that has become the standard measure of affective polarization (that is, polarization in feelings toward the two major parties). CONTINUED
Jeremiah J. Castle (Metropolitan State U. of Denver) & Kyla K. Stepp (Central Michigan U.), Religion in Public