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From Prius To Pickup: Identifying The Political Divide In America

Cover of Prius or Pickup book
Courtesy Marc Hetherington and Jonathan Weiler

What is your go-to coffee spot? What car do you drive? What is your favorite TV show? A new book examines how the answers to these and other simple questions could explain America’s growing political divide. 

Political scientists Marc Hetherington and Jonathan Weiler use surveys and research analysis to determine how Americans’ political perspectives have become enmeshed with their worldview and behavior. They argue that many Americans have reached the point at which being on the left or right is no longer an opinion but an identity.

Host Frank Stasio speaks with Hetherington, the Raymond Dawson professor of Political Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Weiler, director of undergraduate studies and a professor of global studies at UNC-CH about their book  “Prius or Pickup?: How the Answers to Four Simple Questions Explain America’s Great Divide” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt/ 2018).

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Laura Pellicer is a digital reporter with WUNC’s small but intrepid digital news team.
Longtime NPR correspondent Frank Stasio was named permanent host of The State of Things in June 2006. A native of Buffalo, Frank has been in radio since the age of 19. He began his public radio career at WOI in Ames, Iowa, where he was a magazine show anchor and the station's News Director.
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