Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Why Democrats hate Texas and Republicans detest California

Blue donkey and red elephant facing off
kbeis/Getty Images

Klug served in the House of Representatives from 1991 to 1999. He hosts the political podcast “Lost in the Middle: America’s Political Orphans.”

A few years ago, a class of senior honors students at the University of Louisville learned firsthand the harsh reality of political stereotypes. They developed an ad for a hypothetical candidate running for Congress to get the reaction of 1,500 randomly selected people across the country. Two versions were created from the same script, using two different actors. One with a Southern accent, the other with the flat Midwestern delivery.

The students asked a couple of questions: Do you think this person is trustworthy, intelligent? Would you vote for this person? What political viewpoint would you ascribe to this person?

The students were taken aback when the Southern speaker got trashed.


“The feedback was harsh,” said Gracie Kelly, who helped run the project. “I have a Southern accent. The people we polled immediately assumed the candidate was conservative, didn’t support climate change and wanted very strict immigration policies. It was insulting. It did make me angry.”

We all use stereotypes, but in politics it amplifies our divisiveness, says DePaul University professor Christine Reyna.

“One of the most sophisticated things our brains do is categorize things. If I tell you something's a chair, you instantly know lots of things about it, right? And we categorize human groups, too. We categorize people by age, by gender, by race and by politics,” she said.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

Consider a few snapshots from across the partisan divide from a Florida State University study. On economic issues, Democrats said nearly 50 percent of Republicans belonged to the 1 percent, when it is actually closer to 3 percent. When asked what percentage of Democrats were gay, Republicans responded more than 40 percent. It's actually less than 5 percent.

I will never forget a contribution I received from a classmate at St. Rita’s grade school in Milwaukee. Scott Robideaux had penned a quick note that he attached to his check. “Hey best of luck. I can’t figure out who will be more offended my gay friends that I am supporting a Republican, or my Republican friends that I am gay.” Hard to believe decades later the same tension remains.

“When we talk about the other side, we talk with very negative traits,” says Brigham Young University assistant professor Ethan Busby. “We sort of say, ‘If I'm a Democrat, Republicans are bigoted and ignorant and selfish.’ And if I am a Republican talking about Democrats, I would say, ‘They're elitists who don’t understand people who go to church.’”

In our podcast episode on political stereotypes, the gang at Lost in the Middle thought it would be fun to frame the issue by examining why Democrats hate Texas and Republicans detest California.

Can a Washington bowling league get Congress to work together? by Scott Klug

We'll throw in the pizza and beer.

Read on Substack

Read More

Meet the change leaders: Scott Klug

Nevins is co-publisher of The Fulcrum and co-founder and board chairman of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund.

After a 14-year career as an Emmy-winning reporter, Scott Klug upset a 32-year Democratic House member from Wisconsin in 1990. Despite winning four elections with an average of 63 percent of the vote, he stayed true to his term limit pledge and retired in January 1999.

But during his time in office, Klug says, he had the third most independent voting record of any member of Congress from Wisconsin in the last 50 years.

Keep ReadingShow less
Ken Powley
Team Democracy

Meet the change leaders: Ken Powley

Nevins is co-publisher ofThe Fulcrum and co-founder and board chairman of theBridge Alliance Education Fund.

Ken Powley and Chris Newlon founded Team Democracy in early 2021. Its signature initiative is the nonpartisan Safe and Fair Election Pledge. The pledge is designed to create an important piece of common ground where Americans — including their elected representatives — can join together from opposite sides of the aisle in committing themselves to protecting the most essential guardrails of American democracy: safe and fair elections, and the peaceful transfer of power.

Keep ReadingShow less

Meet the change leaders: Pearce Godwin

Nevins is co-publisher of The Fulcrum and co-founder and board chairman of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund.

Pearce Godwin is founder of the Listen First Project and the #ListenFirst Coalition of 500 organizations bringing Americans together across differences to listen, understand each other and discover common interests.

He catalyzes the movement to save America from toxic polarization by shifting social norms from division, distrust, contempt and violence toward connection, understanding and belonging. Pearce manages large-scale, co-created endeavors such as Meeting of America and the annual National Week of Conversation to engage as many Americans of all backgrounds and beliefs as possible to turn down the heat and find a way forward together.

Keep ReadingShow less
Tim Walz speaking at a rally

The Dignity Index scored politicians, such as Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz, on their language.

Peter Zay/Anadolu via Getty Images

Bipartisan citizens panel issues new Dignity Index scores

UNITE, a nonprofit created to ease the country's political divisions, on Sept. 20 released the second round of scores from its national citizen's panel analyzing political speech. The latest results offer support for founder Tim Shriver's idea of a political "dignity strategy."

"When our political parties use the contempt strategy — demonizing their opponents to energize their supporters — it has an unintended effect," said Shriver, who founded UNITE in 2018. "It turns away the voters they need to win. The candidate that can treat the other side with dignity has a better chance of winning the swing voters who may decide this election."

Keep ReadingShow less
Donald Trump and Kamala Harris debating

"The contempt strategy demands that you look down on the other side, make fun of them, call them names, question their motives, attack their character and mock their values," writes Shriver, who argues that It's time to try something different.

Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post via Getty Images

The contempt strategy can change

Shriver is the chairman of Special Olympics, founder and CEO of UNITE, and co-creator of the Dignity Index.

On Sept. 17, I went on Fox News to talk about a “dignity strategy” that I designed with my Dignity Index co-creator, Tom Rosshirt. We think it could make a difference for any candidate willing to take it up. What do you think?

It is a late-game strategy that could help either candidate win the White House, but it’s something neither has tried before because it’s the absolute opposite of the typical political playbook.

Keep ReadingShow less