We're Not as Divided as You Think
While partisan hostility is high, we are not as divided as polls and social media suggest, according to data from Daniel Cox, Director and Founder of the Survey Center on American Life.
Data aside, Cox's argument for why this is true makes sense. Let's take Cox's example of Twitter. Most people are not on Twitter, and of those Americans who are, the vast majority of them do not tweet. So when you see or read a tweet, you are not necessarily getting a view broadly held by many Americans. Instead, you are seeing a view held by an extremely niche group of people that likely does not represent your neighbor next door, even if both your neighbor and the tweeter voted for the same guy for president.
Now let's bring data back in and talk about polls. Cox, who acknowledges that he finds polls incredibly useful, points out that polls are reductive by design. "We often force respondents to choose between two extreme options and to tell us which one better represents their view. This is an effective way of gauging which side of a debate someone is on, but it often pushes people to select a more extreme position than they would otherwise. American opinion is not dichotomous, but we're often required to measure it that way." Cox then points to the recent example of polls conducted around abortion and how inept they are conveying the ambiguity people feel when the poll asks if abortion should be illegal or not. Just because someone says yes, does not mean they are for late-term abortions, but how can you capture that in that one polling question?
Cox also points out a study that shows that our national interest in local politics has waned over time while our attention to national politics has increased significantly. This shift matters because national politics is much more divisive and may make it seem like you and your neighbor have very little in common. However, you and your neighbor can likely unite over many issues, from who would make a good school board member to what should be done about traffic in your town.
And here is the big kicker: "research team, More in Common, found that partisans believe that their opponents are roughly twice as extreme as they actually are!" How can we live in a country where people believe their opponents are twice as extreme as reality? Simple, we no longer take the time to listen honestly and get to know one another. We see cars in front of us with bumper stickers for the candidate we didn't vote for and assume they hold the worst views of that candidate. However, if it's true that the binary choices of polls are reductive, in that case, it should also be accurate and fair to say that the binary choice of political candidates is also reductive. This means that the way we combat polarization is not going to require millions of dollars to have a nationwide restorative circle. Instead, we all need to practice getting to know each other. To hold to the truth that deep down, most Americans want what they believe is best, and while we might disagree on the methods, that does not mean we are not striving for the same goal.
And we must do away with buying into the idea that our most extreme voices represent most Americans. Even as I type this, the voice in my head is saying, "Okay, but what about people who say X extreme opinion? Surely they're all bad?" And while that may be true, how many people hold that opinion? The data suggests that the answer is much smaller than our limited social media, polls, and news media suggest. For that, we should be thankful.
4 Other Things:
1) Bonnie Kristian, writing for The UnPopulist, has a thought-provoking argument as to why we should not expect J.D. Vance to pivot away from the anti-democratic, pro-Trumpism stances he embraced to win the Ohio Republican primary for Senate. Kristian argues that, like Thomas Massie before him, Vance understands that the positions he took to win the nomination were necessary to his winning. In Massie's words, people look for "for the craziest son of a bitch in the race." While I would not put it so inelegantly as Massie, once you pivot to giving the people what they want regardless of your principles, it is hard to come back from it and keep your seat.
2) The Atlantic has a round-up of reader responses to Tim Alberta's June story on how politics has poisoned the evangelical church. Many of them are heartbreaking for those of us who have or still belong to the evangelical movement. Perhaps the most heartbreaking is Joel Sams' comment about how he lost his father to Covid.
3) Homa Hosseinmardi, an associate research scientist in computational social science at the University of Pennsylvania, reports on a study that may shock you. According to Hosseinmardi, cable news plays a more prominent role in polarization than social media. Their study found that people who consume news through TV are three to four times more polarized than those who get news from online sources. TV viewers also tend to stay within their partisan silos, and Hosseinmardi reports that trends show this siloing is getting worse.
4) On Twitter, Rob Willer announced a new white paper from the Strengthening Democracy Challenge that is incredibly promising. In short, Willer and Strengthening Democracy have found many ways to effectively treat polarization in ways that lead people to become less polarized. One such method exposed partisans to a video of the instability in areas where democracy collapsed and ended with footage from the insurrection at the Capitol on Jan 6th that was found to reduce partisan animosity and support for violence.