Are Americans Hopelessly Divided Over Politics?

Partisan hostility is at an all-time high, but things are not quite as bad as they seem

Every new poll seems to bring more bad news about the state of American politics. Most recently, the Pew Research Center released a new survey showing Democrats and Republicans hate each other more this year than they did last. The report states: “Growing shares in each party now describe those in the other party as more closed-minded, dishonest, immoral and unintelligent than other Americans.” 

I’m not going to suggest that the American political system is in great shape, but things are probably not quite as bad as they seem. Why? Well, too often the political news and information are presented in ways that highlight division and exaggerate differences. Let me explain.

The Social Media Companies 

We live in an age of abbreviation. We communicate in characters stripped of essential meaning and fire it out as rapidly as possible. Complicated ideas and complex emotions are packaged into terse statements, emojis, or memes so they can be expediently delivered across social media platforms. They’re stripped of the nuance and context required to have constructive debates about complicated subjects.  

It's not only how we share our views online, but who is doing the sharing. Social media platforms like Twitter tend to be dominated by a small group of extremely active users. A recent Pew study found that 97 percent of all Tweets are posted by just a quarter of users. And these highly-active users have views that are not at all representative of the broader public. 

What Americans see when they log on to social media is a distorted view of public opinion, not an honest reflection of it. The worst part is, it’s all by design. On Facebook, the algorithm boosts inflammatory and divisive content.  

 The Pollsters 

It’s not just social media, pollsters play a role in all this as well. As someone who has dedicated his professional life to the study of public opinion, I strongly believe that polls are the best way of ensuring that the country’s leaders have at least some appreciation of what Americans actually believe and what they want. However, it is important to understand the ways polling may exaggerate our political divisions. 

First, all polling is necessarily reductive. 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. 

The other problem is that these types of survey questions often generate headlines because they are easy to summarize and share. Pew’s recent study on abortion attitudes garnered extensive news coverage, but many of the stories focusing on the extent to which Americans believed abortion should be legal or illegal.  

But American attitudes on abortion are not fully captured by questions that focus on legality. Another report conducted by sociologists at the University of Norte Dame found in conducting hour-long interviews among a sample of 200 Americans across the political spectrum that Americans are earnest and thoughtful when it comes to abortion and often conflicted. I don’t recall seeing any major news outlet cover this incredibly important piece of work. I wrote about the limitations of polling on abortion recently.  
 
Even if polls are the best available tools for measuring public sentiment, they often struggle to convey the ambivalence, conflict, and ambiguity endemic in human belief and behavior. 

The Political Media 

National political media is incentivized to promote conflict. The issues that receive the most attention are often those that are the most divisive.  

Political reporters would argue that they are providing critical information that allows voters to make informed decisions. Of course, they do, there is no argument there. Political reporters do incredibly important work, but they work within a highly-competitive system that is designed to attract attention in an effort to maximize profit. Often the best way to do this is to cover subjects that are controversial or divisive, and that elicit strong (often negative) emotions. It keeps us tuned in, and encourages us to keep scrolling.  

This is not new. What’s changed is that more of our political attention has shifted from local news and events to national issues. As political scientist Dan Hopkins has noted, the amount of time Americans are focused on local issues, candidates, and elections are shrinking. We are focusing much more of our time on national politics, which is far more divisive. 

Consequences 

Even if we’re not quite as divided as polls, or our newsfeeds might suggest that doesn’t mean the perception that we are is not problematic. New research suggests that these perceptions of difference are out of whack with people’s actual positions and beliefs. The research team, More in Common, found that partisans believe that their opponents are roughly twice as extreme as they actually are! 

A pair of researchers recently argued that these political misperceptions are primarily driven by the sheer amount of information we receive about how divided we are.  

“The constant attention to our differences is making us think that we are more polarized than we actually are. … By hearing so much about our differences, we overestimate them. Eventually, our misperceptions of how polarized we are, guide how we behave.” 

Eventually, our misperceptions about our political opponents become reality. It can lead us to adopt apocalyptic rhetoric, embrace uncompromising positions, and excuse egregious behavior among people who happen to share our politics. It also undermines support for democratic norms and processes. 

It’s not that political polarization isn’t real. It is real, and it matters. However, these real political differences are often exaggerated in ways that make it more difficult for us to seek consensus or find common ground. The best way to reduce political polarization is to first realize that we are not quite as divided as we think.