In this podcast Russell Roberts, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and EconTalk host, talks with Morris Fiorina, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Wendt Family Professor of Political Science at Stanford University, about the state of the US electorate and recent election results. Fiorina argues that, although the Republican and Democratic Parties are more extreme than in the past, there has been only modest change in the character of the US electorate.

Hoover Institution fellow Morris Fiorina says we are in an extended age of "unstable majorities" because neither the Republican Party nor the Democratic Party is popular enough to get and hold enduring legislative power. The result is a historically rare period in which control of the White House and each house of Congress regularly flips back and forth between the two parties.

As a result of ideological sorting, political parties are far more polarized today than they were before. Democrats have shed their conservative wing and Republicans have shed their liberal wing. Majority control of Congress continues to flip back and forth because each party is polarized, responds to their political base, and alienates moderates and independents in the middle.

The political scientist Morris Fiorina calls these seemingly ephemeral coalitions “unstable majorities.”

Morris Fiorina, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Wendt Family Professor of Political Science at Stanford University, argues that Americans are far less polarized than the media and political pundits would have you believe.

Morris Fiorina, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Wendt Family Professor of Political Science at Stanford University, discusses the cycle of overreach and backlash in our politics.

Morris P. Fiorina, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, discusses collective representation in US politics