Unwarranted Partisanship: An Exploration of Presidents' Political Rhetoric in SOTU Addresses
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.47611/jsrhs.v10i4.1908Keywords:
Partisanship, bipartisanship, State of the Union, president, political polarizationAbstract
Despite the rising prevalence of political polarization in society, there is a lack of understanding surrounding polarization’s implications and lasting impact on society. This paper uses political rhetoric in State of the Union Addresses, a nonpartisan context, as a means to measure the partisanship of United States presidents between 1966 and 2020. The method entailed a context analysis of the SOTU Addresses, frequency charts, and a two-way ANOVA test. Together, the steps in the method led to an understanding that partisanship in United States presidents has increased over time in a statistically significant manner. Furthermore, an increase in bipartisanship in the midst of increasing partisanship suggests that bipartisanship is not an effective behavior to combate partisanship. Perhaps embracing a non-partisan posturing approach to communication in government is the solution the United States needs to lessen the partisan divide.
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