This article was written by Adhya Parna of Poolesville HS
Democrats and Republicans. Liberal and Conservative. Libertarian and Authoritarian. If there’s one thing America is known for, it’s its fiery and polarizing politics. But, this focus conceals another enormous pit: the gap between those who are referred to as “politicals” and those who do not! And this political divide is like no other in the world.
Most Americans (about 80-85 percent) follow politics casually or not at all. Only 15-20 percent of Americans follow politics on a day to day basis (whom we call the “politicals”): the people who monitor everything from Trump’s “negative covfefe” to Amy Coney Barrett not prioritizing climate change.
At the start of the year, Stony Brook University asked U.S. citizens to name the country’s two most prominent issues. As expected, the data revealed strong partisan divides. For example, more Republicans cited illegal immigration as an issue. But on several other issues, the data found that America falls much less neatly into partisan camps. For example, Democrats and Republicans who do not follow politics as often both feel that low hourly wages are one of the most important problems facing the country. But for hard partisans, the issue is not common ground.
The partisan Republicans were most likely to say that drug abuse is the country’s most critical issue. However, less attentive Republicans ranked it second to last, and they were also concerned about the deficit difference and divisions between Democrats and Republicans.
Among Democrats, the politicals think the influence of wealthy donors and interest groups is an urgent problem. But less attentive Democrats are 25 percent more likely to name moral decline as an important problem facing the country—a problem partisan Democrats do not mention.
This gap between the politically lukewarm and devoted partisans exacerbates the perception of a hopeless division in American politics because it is the partisans who define what it means to engage in politics. When a Democrat imagines a Republican, they are not imagining a co-worker who mostly posts cat pictures and happens to vote differently; they are more likely imagining a co-worker she had to mute on Facebook because the Trump posts became unbearable, a study shows.
One can see this effect in a study with political scientists- James Druckman, Samara Klar- and Matthew Levendusky. A group of over 3,000 Americans was asked to describe either themselves or members of the other party. Only 27 percent of these people said that they discuss politics frequently; a majority considered themselves moderates. But nearly 70 percent of these people believe that a typical member of the other party talks about politics incessantly and is not moderate.
How can politics better match the opinions of a majority of Americans? The fact is, it’s not an easy problem to solve. Passionate partisans could have less voice in the news; featuring people who exemplify partisan conflict and extremist ideas elevates their presence in politics. This is particularly true of social media: what a vocal minority shares on social media is not the opinion of the public. Yet such political tweets, as the political communication scholar Shannon McGregor- finds, are increasingly making their way into news coverage as stand-ins for public opinion. And the major scandals that do break through? To many of them, that is “just politics.”
The polarization between the Democrats and Republicans fuels the political divide today. But, the true divide is between the “politicals” and the less zealous individuals who don’t stay with the latest political news. And as simple as that may seem, it is simply tearing the nation apart.
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