10.7910/DVN/U5FFYE Allamong, Maxwell Maxwell Allamong University of Houston Harvard Dataverse 2026 Social Sciences public opinion polarization text analysis machine learning The Journal of Politics Dataverse The Journal of Politics Dataverse Allamong, Maxwell Maxwell Allamong University of Houston 2026-02-05 2026-06-05 8647 8328822 84674838 404 2033840 8850 275 327616 2799 3954 727799 5243 3958 61185746 318 3386968 13295 119802 80146 4598 3814852 34080 625046 104491671 6533 530501 6469 71659 8981 35269 77885 4170 434002786 24268 1453 8407 465399 22148 518990 5073 12008 77902 568757 16262 20215 596512 21090 561 94076 2328822 851 53159 2615 37747816 52007637 54963 13023 2629 2231551 434357524 6519 12929 14612 424231 2556 644177 35159 6542 144364 245 5101 19787 79820 362 6388736 6604 9874 139482 232525 11953 4749 191349 21966 48239 253694 7023 29457 79820 6220 70453500 8106 88705709 62984591 77977109 5637 90621249 2133 139864 96635538 2278 563891816 27474 564611 55649501 2993553 49286 15619 5969 5190 34631849 205 112433427 10722 21403 2244 4458983 application/pdf text/tab-separated-values text/tab-separated-values application/x-tex text/tab-separated-values application/octet-stream application/x-tex application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet application/x-tex application/octet-stream application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet application/pdf application/octet-stream application/x-rlang-transport application/x-tex application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet application/postscript type/x-r-syntax application/pdf application/pdf application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet application/octet-stream application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet application/x-rlang-transport application/postscript text/tab-separated-values application/postscript application/pdf application/pdf type/x-r-syntax text/comma-separated-values type/x-r-syntax application/x-rlang-transport application/postscript application/x-tex application/pdf application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet text/x-r-notebook application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet application/pdf application/octet-stream text/comma-separated-values application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet text/x-r-notebook type/x-r-syntax application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet application/pdf type/x-r-syntax type/x-r-syntax text/comma-separated-values application/x-tex application/postscript application/x-tex text/tab-separated-values text/tab-separated-values application/postscript application/postscript application/x-tex application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet application/x-rlang-transport application/pdf application/postscript application/postscript application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet application/x-tex application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet application/postscript application/pdf application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet application/x-tex application/pdf application/pdf text/comma-separated-values application/x-tex application/vnd.ms-excel application/pdf application/postscript text/tab-separated-values application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet application/postscript application/octet-stream application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet application/pdf application/postscript application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet type/x-r-syntax application/postscript text/comma-separated-values application/pdf application/x-rlang-transport application/postscript application/x-rlang-transport application/x-rlang-transport application/x-rlang-transport application/pdf text/tab-separated-values type/x-r-syntax text/tab-separated-values application/x-rlang-transport application/x-tex application/x-stata-14 application/pdf application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet application/x-rlang-transport application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet application/postscript application/postscript application/pdf application/pdf application/x-rlang-transport application/octet-stream application/x-rlang-transport application/postscript type/x-r-syntax application/x-tex application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet 1.0 Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication. A canonical finding in American political behavior is that the mass public can be divided into four “levels of conceptualization” at which they think about politics: ideologues, group benefits, nature of the times, and no issue content. While few Americans conceptualized politics ideologically in decades past, continued party polarization and sorting raise important questions about whether—and if so, why—more people are thinking ideologically today. Combining thousands of open-ended survey responses from the American National Election Studies with a supervised machine learning approach, we find more ideological language today than the original 1960 analysis, particularly among Republicans, though ideology is still not the dominant framework for most. We then show that several factors growing alongside party polarization—such as sorted political identities and recognition of party differences—relate to ideological conceptualizations while partisan strength does not, suggesting that even today to be partisan is not necessarily to be ideological.