The Fix political blog at The Washington Post starts out to debunk a study which found relatively low levels of political polarization. In the process they present unsurprising data which shows we truly are very polarized.
I particularly like a graphic entitled "Democrats and Republicans More Ideologically Divided than in the Past." It shows the distance between the values of median members of the two parties at 10 year intervals: 1994, 2004, and 2014.
Between 1994 and 2004 the values difference stayed largely constant. During the most recent decade the values difference between median Democrats and Republicans have become nearly four times as great as just ten years ago: Democrats have become more liberal, Republicans have become more conservative.
I expect most liberal Republicans became Democrats and most conservative Democrats became Republicans. The consequence is less variability among members of either party, greater ideological consistency.
