Why Americans are so divided

Listen to President Obama’s speech live on KIRO Radio at 5 p.m.

The big immigration announcement will once again see Americans choosing sides.

Reinforcing a clear political trend, “Red counties are becoming much darker red, and blue counties are becoming much darker blue,” explained Shanna Pearson-Merkowitz teaches political science at the University of Rhode Island.

Her research finds the reason we are more polarized – is because the parties have been re-branding themselves. Creating clearer identities, with a lot of help from Fox on the conservative side and MSNBC on the liberal side.

“There are all of these arguments that people are moving because they don’t want to be near other people who think differently than themselves but it seems to be that people are just figuring out where they fit,” she said.

Democrats brand themselves as the party of social change and income equality, so they naturally appeal to the Starbucks crowd. Republicans became the party of low taxes and less government so they naturally appeal to the Walmart crowd.

Shanna’s research also finds that conversions are rare. People tend to pick a party in their 20’s, and then never change.

None of which would seem to bode well for fixing our paralyzed Congress. But there IS one thing that might help. What Shanna has noticed is that when politicians of either party find themselves in tight races – they have an epiphany.

“Tight elections, whoever wins is good for the system because it means that elected representative whether Democrat or Republican, has to think about both parties back in his or her district,” said Shanna.

Which means we as voters can fix the system ourselves – by watching the opinion polls, and then, whenever it seems like a politician is about to win in a landslide – just vote the other way.