Efforts to bring the country back together must collectively achieve massive scale, impacting at least 85 million Americans (and probably more). It may seem daunting, but the right efforts can plausibly achieve this goal.
These efforts include what is sometimes called “depolarization” or “bridge-building,” though initiatives must go well beyond today’s overwhelmingly conversation-based methods to achieve this scale. Structural reforms are another key element.
In terms of America’s democratic stability, the most pressing need for these efforts comes from dramatic misperceptions of the threat posed by everyday Americans from the other political party. Americans are much less supportive of breaking democratic norms than the other side believes, think members of the other party dehumanize them more than twice as much as in reality, and overestimate the share in the other party supportive of political violence by more than 10x.
This is coupled with both short-term and long-term increases in “affective” (emotional) polarization.”
These misperceptions and negative emotions are widespread among the American public. Thus, any efforts to deal with them must also be widespread.
A low-end estimate for the number to target is over 85 million when looking at the number of 2024 voters, divided by political affiliation who have a “very unfavorable” view of the other party.**
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Add in some non-voting adults, soon-to-be voting teenagers, those with only unfavorable (instead of very unfavorable) views of the other party, and so on, and the target audience quickly blows past nine digits to over 100 million.
How can we meaningfully affect this many people?
Americans’ views of each other can change via either the information environment or conversations. The information environment offers much more obvious avenues for scale, though messaging about conversations can contribute.
Messaging and stories in the information environment from various sectors can directly correct negative misperceptions of each other. See social media content from Builders and All We Share, the goals of Bridge Entertainment Labs, and top-performing video interventions from the Strengthening Democracy Challenge led by Stanford. One of the authors, James, is Co-Founder and Executive Director of More Like US, which offers guidance for those in the Arts.
Messaging can also encourage conversations, as seen in videos produced with NFL players as part of StoryCorps’s One Small Step, or can give memorable conversation guidance, like the ABCs of Constructive Dialogue from Urban-Rural Action. However, many Americans may not want to engage in time-consuming conversations with uncertain benefits.
Messaging must be coupled with structural reforms to reverse the perverse incentives in electoral systems, news media, social media, and among special-interest groups that often reward demonization of others with money, fame, and power. Electoral structural reformers play an important role, as do key initiatives to try to change advertising flows for news, like the partnership between Ad Fontes Media and The Trade Desk or efforts of the Council for Responsible Social Media.
Meanwhile, conversation workshops are decently effective at reducing political divides among participants, but sufficient scale seems impossible. A daily workshop for 20 new people in each state would take well over 200 years to reach the low-end target of 85 million…a single time.
Attitudinal change on this scale may seem overwhelming but recognize that massive societal perspective changes are possible. Take interracial marriage, support for which was 4% in 1958 but is now at 94%.
We can change attitudes about each other across politics at society-wide scales. We need to start now.
** As of writing, there were 155.2 million 2024 voters, Pew found political affiliation around Republicans (32%), Democrats (33%), and Independents (35%), and YouGov found 74% of Democrats and 68% of Republicans had a “very unfavorable” of the other party, along with a low of 29% of Independents very unfavorably viewing Republicans. Multiplication across leads to a target audience of 87.4 million.
James Coan is the co-founder and executive director of More Like US. Coan can be contacted at James@morelikeus.org
Imre Huss is a current intern at More Like US.
