It's really just a problem with how people self-identify. You have moderates and independents that might "come out of their shell" and over-exaggerate the effect.
It's multi-variate. There is, to some extent, a widening of partisan attitudes between men and women, there are fake-moderates, and to a certain extent, noise and issues with self-identity measurements.
And obviously, these contexts vary between nations.
I appreciate this. I’m trying to assess if this changes the story. The fact that we’re revealing fake moderates seems important. Persuasion and self discovery are different ways to describe very similar rhetorical events.
When I say “fake moderates”, it’s not really unique to one ideology or the other. The majority of independent voters are practically ideologues themselves and behave like so - they just don’t report it that way.
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It's really just a problem with how people self-identify. You have moderates and independents that might "come out of their shell" and over-exaggerate the effect.
And obviously, these contexts vary between nations.