Who has more diversity of thought: Democrats or Republicans? (Sorry Independents)

September 10
10 mins

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1. 🧠 Dias et al. (2025), “American partisans vastly under-estimate the diversity of other partisans’ policy attitudes.”
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/political-science-research-and-methods/article/american-partisans-vastly-underestimate-the-diversity-of-other-partisans-policy-attitudes/CD71B9D75D10CFA0A9A07501E1CCD81A#article

2. 👥 A few corporate-focused diversity of thought resources (Scott E. Page was my Ph.D. advisor so bias alert):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_E._Page

    📘 1. Page (2007; 2025 second edition), The difference: How the power of diversity creates better groups, firms, schools, and societies

    📗 2. Page (2019), The diversity bonus: How great teams pay off in the knowledge economy

    📄 3. Page & Hong (2004), “Groups of diverse problem solvers can outperform groups of high-ability problem solvers”
    https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.0403723101

3. 📊 Democrats tend to be more diverse along many (not all) standard demographic/identity dimensions: Pew research
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/04/09/the-changing-demographic-composition-of-voters-and-party-coalitions/

4. 🎓 Republicans tend to be more diverse along education (depending on how you measure it!): More Pew
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/04/09/partisanship-by-race-ethnicity-and-education/

5. 📰 Older work on diversity of Democrat vs. Republican news consumption: Pew again!
https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2014/10/21/section-1-media-sources-distinct-favorites-emerge-on-the-left-and-right/

6. 📱 More recent shifts in news consumption: rise of online, proliferation on the right

    🌐 Rise of online:
    https://www.odwyerpr.com/story/public/23818/2025-10-28/shifts-political-news-consumption.html

    ➡️ Proliferation on the right:
    https://www.mediamatters.org/google/right-dominates-online-media-ecosystem-seeping-sports-comedy-and-other-supposedly

7. 📲 Chang et al. (2025), “Liberals and conservatives share information differently on social media”
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40697192/

8. 🕸️ Lüders et al. (2023), “Attitude networks as intergroup realities: Using network-modeling to research attitude-identity relationships in polarized political contexts.”
https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bjso.12665

9. 📊 American National Election Studies (ANES) data on:

    ⚕️ 1. Abortion
    https://electionstudies.org/data-tools/anes-guide/anes-guide.html?chart=abortion_by_law

    🌎 2. Immigration
    https://electionstudies.org/data-tools/anes-guide/anes-guide.html?chart=immigrants_should_be_decreased_increased

    🔎 3. Guns
    https://electionstudies.org/data-tools/anes-guide/anes-guide.html?chart=gun_purchase_control

10. 🤔 Other background on ways we misunderstand each other:

    📄 1. Ahler (2014), “Self-fulfilling misperceptions of polarization”
    https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1017/S0022381614000085

    📄 2. Enders & Armaly (2018), “The differential effects of actual and perceived polarization.”
    https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11109-018-9476-2

    📄 3. Ahler & Sood (2018), “The parties in our heads: Misperceptions about party composition and their consequences.”
    https://repository.lib.fsu.edu/islandora/object/fsu:605549/datastream/PDF/view

    📝 4. Garton et al. (working paper; not peer-reviewed yet, but just to explore some of the latest/current/ongoing research), “Partisans overestimate their side’s intolerance.”
    https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-7579935/v1


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