That’s the title of a new paper co-authored with Christina Biedny and Trey Malone that is forthcoming in the journal, Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy. We build off some previous work I’d published trying to measure political ideologies with respect to food to see how attitudes and perspectives have changed over time. Here’s the abstract:
“Many maintain that the US political climate has become more charged with partisan beliefs over the past decade, although little is known about whether this partisan divide can be observed in food policy opinions. This article aims to determine whether Democrat and Republican food policy opinions diverged between 2011 and 2018. We find evidence of the contrary; partisan public opinions on food and agriculture policies have actually converged, with both major parties exhibiting a preference toward heightened government intervention. Our results indicate that voters preferring more government intervention in food policies have become more numerous in the Republican Party for issues including animal welfare and affordable food. However, once we include Independents and other third parties in our sample, we find that the variance between food policy opinions has increased for many policies.”