We Are Not As Polarized As We Think
Many years ago, a raccoon decided to make its winter home in our family's attic. We became aware of it when we heard odd noises above our then four-year-old daughter Charlotte's bedroom. Equipped with a flashlight, I climbed up into our unfinished attic to investigate. I glimpsed the trespasser as it scuttled out through a hole it had made underneath our roof. I walked over to size up the breach, hanging on to the rafters and stepping carefully on the ceiling joists. Alas, I lost my balance and fell through a layer of insulation and thin drywall above our two-story foyer. Using up one of my nine lives, I managed to grab hold of a joist as I fell and proceeded to pull myself back up through the hole I had punched in our ceiling. We hired a handyman to repair the foyer and close the gap where the raccoon was getting in. Apart from my pride, all was well – or so we thought.
It turns out Charlotte was somewhat traumatized by the incident, and understandably so. It was not every day she heard her father yelp in alarm, then grunt a series of words she hadn't heard me say before. And she witnessed the lower half of my body crash through the ceiling over the foyer, dangling and kicking frantically. My wife and I tried to reassure her once I came back down, covered in bits of insulation and plaster dust, that daddy was alright, and we'd fix things so the raccoon would not come back. But all Charlotte knew was that thing up in the attic had nearly killed her father! Later that week, she brought home a drawing she had made at her nursery school. It depicted me grappling with a towering, grizzly bear-sized beast, its fangs and claws bared. Only she had drawn it with masked eyes and a long, ringed tail.
The raccoon story and Charlotte's drawing have become part of our family's lore. They come to mind when I encounter someone who misperceives and exaggerates the nature of something they are convinced threatens them and what they hold dear. A raccoon is not a grizzly bear, but it can quickly become one in a child’s imagination. And when it comes to politics and partisanship in our polarized age, especially amid the fever pitch of this presidential election, we also have fertile imaginations. To reassure ourselves, let's go up into the attic of our partisan minds and see what we are dealing with, using some recent social science and survey data as our flashlight. It turns out that those who spend a lot of time practicing, reading, and writing about politics have a particular need for this corrective illumination.
Consider the findings of a recent study by political scientists Douglas Ahler and Gaurav Sood, "The Parties in Our Heads: Misperceptions About Party Composition and Their Consequences." The authors draw on survey data to show we tend to stereotype the people affiliated with the parties – especially those in the other party. For example, Republicans think 38% of Democrats identify as LGBTQ, and Democrats themselves believe 29% do, when in fact only 6% of Democrats so identify. Similarly, Republicans think 44% of Democrats are union members, and Democrats think 37% are, but in reality, only 11% of Democrats belong to a union.
As for stereotypes of Republicans, 44% of Democrats think those identifying with the GOP earn over $250,000 per year, and 33% of Republicans think this of their co-partisans, when in fact only 2% of Republicans have incomes above that threshold. Likewise, Democrats think 44% of Republicans are over 65, and Republicans think 38% are, when in reality only 21% of Republicans are 65 or older. The authors note that respondents of all political stripes who report following the news closely are more apt to fall prey to these stereotypical biases.
Reflecting on their findings, Ahler and Sood hypothesize that widespread misperceptions of parties, especially among the in-party members for the out-party, fuel partisan polarization and skew people's views of the parties’ priorities. Mistakenly believing, for example, that "a third of Democrats are atheistic or agnostic, or that half of Republicans are evangelical, may lead one to believe that cultural issues like school prayer are far more important to the parties than they actually are." The authors go on to hypothesize that "people associate a narrow set of policy demands with each party-stereotypical group and think these groups have sway over the party's agenda. This is liable to fuel more resentment and cynicism about the motivations of party elites."
These hypotheses were buttressed last year in a report entitled, "The Perception Gap: How False Impressions Are Pulling Americans Apart," by the nonprofit group More In Common. The perception gap refers to the difference between the percentage of those identifying with a party who hold a particular belief and the estimate of how many do by survey respondents who don't belong to that party. For example, 85% of Republicans surveyed by More In Common believed that "properly controlled immigration can be good for America," while the Democrats surveyed estimated that only 52% did, leading to a perception gap of 33%. Along similar lines, 79% of Republicans surveyed believed that "racism still exists in America," while Democrats estimated only 51% did, a perception gap of 28%.
Republicans had their own perception gaps of Democrats' positions. For example, 85% of Democrats disagreed with the statement that "most police are bad people," while Republicans estimated that only 48% would disagree with it, leading to a perception gap of 37%. Likewise, 82% of Democrats believed, "I am proud to be American, though I acknowledge my country's flaws," while Republicans estimated only 54% did, a perception gap of 28%.
Several bullets from the topline summary of "The Perception Gap" are worth reprising here:
"On average, Democrats and Republicans believe that 55 percent of their opponents' views are extreme, but in reality only about 30 percent are.
Americans with more partisan views hold more exaggerated views of their opponents.
Consumption of most forms of media, including talk radio, newspapers, social media, and local news, is associated with a wider Perception Gap. For example, people who consume news "most of the time" are almost three times as inaccurate as those who consume it "only now and then".
Higher education among Democrats, but not Republicans, corresponds with a wider Perception Gap. For example, Democrats who hold a postgraduate degree are three times as inaccurate as those who did not graduate high school. This may be due in part to lower friendship diversity, as higher educated Democrats (but not Republicans) are more likely to say that "almost all" of their friends share their political views.
The wider people's Perception Gap, the more likely they are to attribute negative personal qualities (like 'hateful' or 'brainwashed') to their opponents.
Overall, Americans' views are more similar to their political opponents' than they realize."
In a recent paper entitled, "The Illusion of Affective Polarization," a group of scholars affiliated with Northwestern University's Institute for Policy Research call into question the conventional wisdom that, "deep levels of affective polarization—the tendency of ordinary partisans to dislike and distrust those from the other party—is a defining feature of contemporary American politics." They argue this conventional wisdom is based on two illusions: "Americans misperceive the extremity and engagement of the opposing party (i.e., a perceptual illusion) and, as a result, the standard measures in the literature perpetuate the misperception by overstating the extent to which partisans dislike one another (i.e., a measurement illusion)."
Surveys used to assess the degree of polarization among respondents are typically set up in ways that have them presuming the members of the out-party being assessed are, per the prevailing stereotypes, both extremely partisan in their views and highly engaged in politics. But most Americans hold more moderate ideological views and are less engaged in politics. The scholars note that, "reported affective polarization depends on how out-partisans are described. Of particular importance is the frequency of political discussion: people have much less animosity toward an out-party member who rarely discusses politics than one who frequently discusses politics. Similarly, people have distinctly less animosity toward moderate, rather than extreme, out-partisans."
In short, when people are asked to describe how they feel about the typical American in the out-party, instead of the caricature residing in our media-induced stereotypes, we view them much less negatively. A powerful implication of the Northwestern paper is that informing people about the actual views and levels of political engagement of those in the out-party – at least those who (like most Americans) hold more moderate opinions and aren't highly engaged in politics – reduces dislike and distrust.
From this vantage point, the fundamental divide in our politics may not lie between the parties. It may fall instead between those who are highly engaged in political activity, including news consumption, and everyone else. As Stanford's Morris Fiorina has helpfully pointed out, a relatively small and stable proportion of Americans fall into this politically activated category.
"In 2016 about 10 percent of the eligible electorate made a campaign contribution—to any campaign at any level, the same figure as in the 1950s. Despite media hype about Obamamania in 2008 and Trump rallies in 2016, less than 10 percent of the eligible electorate attended any kind of campaign meeting or rally in those years, the same figure as six decades ago. As for people who knock on doors or make phone calls for campaigns, we are talking about two to three percent of the eligible electorate, the same small proportion as in the Eisenhower era."
Fiorina notes similar patterns in media consumption. The New York Times currently reports 6.6 million subscribers globally, and the Wall Street Journal 3.5 million, numbers equivalent to approximately 2% and 1% of the U.S. population, respectively. In the quarter ending in September, his best ever, Sean Hannity attracted an average of 4.5 million viewers nightly, or 1.3% of the population, while Rachel Maddow attracted 3.3 million, or 1%. For the sake of comparison, in the 2019-20 ratings season, there were 80 TV shows, starting with NBC's Sunday Night Football at #1 (averaging 19.99 million viewers) down through the History Channel's Curse of Oak Island at #80 (averaging 4.65 million viewers) that outpaced Hannity's record-breaking average nightly audience.
If you've read to this point, the odds are that you, like me, are in the politically activated category. As the studies above show, we are more prone to believe our fellow Americans think about and participate in politics with the same ideological fervor and activism as we do, which they decidedly do not. As a result, we are more apt to misapprehend and overestimate the degree to which the country is polarized. One remedy for our blind spots is to reflect on data that demonstrates the political divisions among our fellow citizens are not as deep and wide as our imaginations and media lead us to believe. I wrote this post to remind myself of this reality in the run up to the election. Racoons are not grizzly bears. We needn't be afraid of them.
