Hoover senior fellow Morris Fiorina examines the myth of a polarized America with Hoover deputy director David Brady. The general public is often portrayed as bitterly divided on social, political, and economic issues, but new research shows that most Americans stand in the middle of the political landscape, preferring centrist candidates and holding moderate positions on charged cultural issues. It is the political parties and the media that have ignored this fact and distorted public perceptions.

Stanford’s Morris Fiorina, one of America’s leading political scientists, has published a new book titled, Disconnect: The Breakdown of Representation in American Politics. . . .

Democratic and Republican lawmakers are farther removed from each other than ever—but they’re also farther removed from the views of most ordinary voters. Hoover fellow Morris P. Fiorina explores this hollow political center.

“Nearly everything you read about [political] polarization . . . is wrong, or at least incomplete or misinterpreted,” remarked Hoover senior fellow Morris Fiorina. Fiorina, along with David Brady, deputy director and Davies Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and Tammy Frisby, research fellow at the Hoover Institution, sat down the day after the Florida primary to talk about American politics and the 2012 election. Stepping back from the blow-by-blow coverage of the presidential campaigns, Brady, Fiorina, and Frisby discuss how underlying conditions and both continuity and change in American politics are shaping the Republican primary, the prospects for the November 2012 general election, and races for seats in the 113th Congress.

The term the “vital center” was coined of course by Arthur Schlesinger Jr. 60 years ago. . . .

A scholar disputes the notion that the American electorate is deeply polarized. . . .

Members of Congress — with the possible exceptions of Senator Robert C. Byrd and Representative John D. Dingell — come and go...

The first thing I need to do is convince you something has changed. American politics offers the comforting illusion of stability. The Democratic and Republican Parties have dominated elections since 1864, grappling for power and popularity the whole time.