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It has often been stated that in the United States the left tends to be less united than the right on issues related to identity politics such as race, gender, and religion. This article presents evidence that this asymmetry in partisan alignment over identity politics is changing over time. Looking at various measures of public opinion shows that the left's agreement on issues related to identity politics has either caught up with the right or that the gap is diminishing. The article considers various possible explanations for unity on these issues – including personality distribution, party homogeneity, and message infrastructure – and shows that partisan spillover in the context of polarization helps explains the closing of the gap in unity between the right and the left. In an era of polarization, Democratic affiliation induces warmer feeling toward stigmatized coalition partners. Groups that may have joined the Democratic party on a single group interest claim (race, gender, religion, class) will gradually move toward greater acceptance of other group interest claims supported by the party. These findings have implications for the oft-stated strategic claim that the left needs to focus on class redistribution over identity politics if the left does not want to be fractured. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Big data, enhanced behavioral profiling, and information analytics will tend to have a leveling-down effect on the negotiating power of workers against management, and against other more privileged workers. The article looks specifically at the bellwether case of baseball in the wake of the Moneyball revolution–the increasingly sophisticated quantification of baseball players’ contributions. The analysis shows that although major league teams are increasingly relying on the lower paid to produce baseball wins, the share of salary the lower paid has commanded relative to their contribution has declined in the era of Moneyball. Information has allowed baseball teams to wring more out of lower-paid baseball players more efficiently, by identifying to management highly productive substitutes. The article compares the situation in baseball to other labor markets, and concludes that transparency of data analytics is an insufficient solution to the “leveling down” effect of big data on wages. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Sociologist Peter Berger once said that if India is the most religious country and Sweden the least, then the United States is a nation of Indians ruled by Swedes. In terms of use of religious rhetoric by politicians, however, the United States actually comes closer to being a nation of Indians ruled by Indians, while Australia a nation of Swedes ruled by “Swindians,” and Canada a nation of “Swindians” ruled by Swedes. This article provides evidence for these claims and assesses theories as to what causes greater use of religious rhetoric by politicians. Size of the religious population and the rights revolution are not decisive in determining whether politicians heavily use religious rhetoric. The article argues that the politicization of religion is related to coalition-building incentives with Catholics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]