How Big is the Divide in American Politics?
My dad and I were discussing politics recently, lamenting the polarized state of the country as we head into the 2020 Presidential election. We wondered how much of this polarization was real, vs. amplified by the media and extremists on both sides. I decided to try to find out by writing and fielding a survey to understand the scope of the discord vs. the common ground that we hope exists in America.
I created the survey using Pollfish.com and surveyed 400 Americans across a representative demographic of those aged 18+. My dad paid for the survey and in exchange, I had to clean the garage, my room and his truck. I asked one political party identification question, 18 questions covering political issues and one question on the respondents’ view of where the country was heading and their own prospects. 39% of respondents were Democrats, 29% Republican and 32% chose “depends on the issue”. I think most of that group leaned Republican.
I designed the questions, which were presented in random order, so that the 3 or 4 answer choices (also presented randomly) offered a mix of left-leaning, right-leaning and “centrist” options. For example, while masks should not be a political issue, they sure seem to be on the news and on social media. I asked, “Should people wear masks during the Covid Pandemic?” Fortunately, this was an area of very strong agreement. Over 55% of people said, “Yes, 100% of the time in public”. 34% chose, “Yes, in public indoors and outside if in a crowded place” and only 11% said masks didn’t help. So, 89% of people were generally in agreement. Good start!
Another area of strong agreement was in legalization of marijuana. This one surprised me a little bit. 72% of respondents believed marijuana should be legal, with many believing it should be legal even for 18 year old adults. There was also very strong agreement on the daunting threat of climate change and imperative to address it (70%), the severity of and need to address income inequality through progressive taxation (85%), support for Voter ID laws (78%) and the overreaction of “cancel culture” running wild (75%). On Immigration, survey respondents exhibited a strong preference for legal immigration and a path to citizenship for children and others who have been in the US for several years. Only about 22% of respondents were what one might describe as “hawkish” on immigration. So of the 18 political issues questions, 7 of them or 39% reflected very strong agreement. That was encouraging!
Areas of moderately strong agreement included a question on removing “problematic” statues (or not): 18% wanted to remove any statue of a historical figure who owned slaves (even Jefferson and Washington), which was higher than I had thought. But 82% did not and instead drew the line at Confederate leaders (19%), placing a plaque for context (31%) or leaving them as is (32%). School choice and affirmative action also drew some level of agreement, although the overwhelming support for affirmative action (63%) was fairly split between favoring race-based vs. strictly income-based preferences. So adding these 3 to the 7 with strong agreement, 10 of 18 or 55% of topics showed strong or moderate agreement. I was hoping for a bit better than 55%, honestly.
Therefore, 45% of the topics exhibited strong polarization. I generally defined strong polarization as a topic where there was a close to 50/50 split, with neither side getting above 63%. I’ve included some screen shots of the survey results at the end of this post and plotted results on a graphic as well.
Not surprisingly given the outcry about Amy Coney Barret’s SCOTUS nomination, abortion was highly polarized, with 41% believing abortion should be illegal in all cases, or only in cases of rape or incest. There was also strong polarization on whether colleges should use standardized tests for admissions (56% in favor, 44% opposed) and Guns, with 59% feeling there should be no or few restrictions on guns, 16% believing guns should be banned altogether for civilians and 25% supporting only hunting rifles. I asked whether 16-year old transgender females should compete as girls in high school athletics and 45% said they should not.
Turning to the topic of racism, 51% chose one of the two “left” answers and felt America was systemically racist with half of those feeling that racist systems must be “torn down”, and 49% chose one of the two “right” answers, that indicated that Americans were generally not racist in today’s society. The most popular answer of the 4 by a slim plurality (29%) stated, “Americans are generally not racist, but there has certainly been historical racism and it is generally more difficult to be Black in America than Caucasian.”.
On policing, 40% chose one of the two options that described policing as systemically racist, while 60% supported police. The most popular answer by far (39%) stated, “I generally support police but am disturbed by certain incidents. Police need better training but also more support from the community.”
There were two results that made me sad. The first was on the founding of America. This question was split right down the middle, with half choosing the answer that took a dark view of our founding principles and held that America has always been systemically racist, and half choosing the other option that America was fundamentally good.
The second result that saddened me asked about the prospects for America and the respondent, with each of the 4 choices combining options for whether the country was heading up or down, and whether the respondent was confident in his or her prospects. 50% said the country is on a downward path and they didn’t feel good about their own prospects. Only 22% chose the option that said the country will prosper and I will prosper along with it.
On balance, I felt a bit disappointed in the results of the survey. It is deflating to see our country in such a state of bitterness and disagreement, driven in part by the lack of civil discourse in our nation today, polarized for-profit media companies and social media posts that play to an echo chamber and lack context. The country seems to be splitting apart rapidly. Bridges need to be built and reconciliation needs to occur. To fix this, we must all strive to make the United States united again. Some would say we were never “united”, but I don’t think that’s true. I don’t think we could have accomplished all that we have as a nation if it were. And while it’s unfortunate that Americans only seem to agree on 55% of the topics we researched, it is a base from which to start. I for one plan to do my part, in whatever small ways I can, to help us come together rather than continue to drift apart.
Examples of questions and survey results:
