Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

The truth is that our citizens are not polarized

Democrats, Republicans and independents
erurobanks/Getty Images

Anderson edited "Leveraging: A Political, Economic and Societal Framework" (Springer, 2014), has taught at five universities and ran for the Democratic nomination for a Maryland congressional seat in 2016.

There are two problems with the conventional wisdom about polarization in American society. The first is that it mistakes widespread conflict with one master battle between conservatives and liberals. The second is that it overlooks a large percentage of Americans who do not identify with either the Democrats or the Republicans.

The result of these two mistakes is the ongoing, misleading narrative that the people of the United States are engaged in a red vs. blue war, a division that is roughly parallel to the division between the North and the South prior to the Civil War.


Consider the first mistake. There is no doubt that there is an enormous amount of conflict in the United States. After all, we have 330 million people, making us the third largest country by population in the world. We are, moreover, a very diverse country, with an increasingly large nonwhite population.

Experts say that by 2050 we will be a majority-minority country, where Hispanics, African Americans, Asian Americans and other non-Caucasian Americans will be the majority of the population. We also have considerable diversity from the standpoint of religion and class. We are the furthest thing from a homogeneous society.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

With so much diversity there is bound to be a lot of conflict. But it does not follow from the fact that we have a lot of conflict that the conflict is divided into two groups of people who are divided along party lines.

For example, we have a great deal of conflict over issues of gender, which involves males in conflict with females, and both males and females in conflict with those who are transgender or nonbinary.

The conflict between males and females may arise within individual families, where we still have a divorce rate in the range of 40 percent. But the conflicts within families hardly line up with political conflicts, as couples frequently belong to the same party: Couples in ghettos have conflicts, just as couples in the working class, middle class and upper class have conflicts.

Likewise, we have Americans who favor abortion rights but are strong Second Amendment advocates. Admittedly, you are more likely to find Republicans being pro-life and pro-gun and Democrats being pro-choice and pro-gun control, but many people do not fit neatly into either party.

The second mistake overlooks the 40 percent of Americans who identify as independents, according to a recent Gallup poll. They definitely do not line up with either party on all of the issues. They may be 50-50 or they may have views that are not clearly embraced by either party. Someone may support a family policy that offers child care subsidies or a tax credit for a stay-at-home parent, but since neither party supports this policy the person in question doesn't side clearly with either party.

Pew has also reported since 2014 that the two parties have become more partisan but there is a group in the middle (as much as 40 percent of the public) that has "mixed views."

If you review the mountains of data available from Gallup, Pew and other organizations that do polls and surveys, you will see that there is a massive amount of conflict in the country on policies, but there is also a large group of citizens who don't fit neatly on either side of many of the major conflicts. The parties are clearly very polarized, but the evidence shows that about 40 percent of the public is not polarized.

What is eminently clear is that there is a clear two-sided conflict in our national politics, where we have a 50-50 Senate and a near even split in the House of Representatives. Washington has little room for a middle position. Legislating, or not legislating, does require that you be on the red side or the blue side, recognizing that each side has its own factions.

The picture that emerges is one where everyone feels conflicted about many policy issues, but only about 60 percent of the country fits nicely on the red side or the blue side. Our conflicts therefore do not add up to a polarized country; they add up to a conflicted country in which well more than a third of the people do not have representation in Washington, which is extremely polarized. Surveys report that these Americans are less politically engaged, which is probably a result of having no one who will listen to them.

The upshot is that the media and the politicians tell us that we have a divided society — they keep each other in business — and those who identify with the Democrats or the Republicans believe what they hear. The 40 percent of Americans who do not identify with either of the two major parties, however, know that this national narrative is seriously mistaken.

There has been a great deal of necessary discussion about how our democratic institutions, especially the electoral process itself, are under threat. A problem that pre-dates this threat to our democracy is the decadeslong deception about how polarized we are.

We're not. There just isn't much motivation for either the media or the politicians, their staff and their consultants to speak to the 40 percent who are not a part of a red vs. blue war.

Read More

America’s Liz Truss Problem

Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Liz Truss speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the Gaylord National Resort Hotel And Convention Center on February 20, 2025 in Oxon Hill, Maryland.

Getty Images, Andrew Harnik

America’s Liz Truss Problem

America is having a Liz Truss moment. The problem is that America doesn’t have a Liz Truss solution.

Let me take you back to the fall of 2022 when the United Kingdom experienced its own version of political whiplash. In the span of seven weeks, no less than three Prime Ministers (and two monarchs, incidentally) tried to steer the British governmental ship. On September 6, Boris Johnson was forced to resign over a seemingly endless series of scandals. Enter Liz Truss. She lasted forty-nine days, until October 25, when she too was pushed out the black door of 10 Downing Street. Her blunder? Incompetence. Rishi Sunak, the Conservative Party’s third choice, then measured the drapes.

What most people remember of the Truss premiership is the Daily Star wager that a head of lettuce would last longer than Truss. The lettuce won. But Truss’ stint as Prime Minister—the shortest ever, I should note—holds some lessons for America today.

Keep ReadingShow less
Dictionary definition of tariff
Would replacing the income tax with higher tariffs help ‘struggling Americans’?
Devonyu/Getty Images

Trump's Tariff Chaos: Strategy or Stumble?

Few would argue with the claim that President Trump’s tariff policy is chaotic.

In early April 2025, Trump announced sweeping tariffs on all U.S. trading partners, including a 10% blanket tariff and higher rates for specific countries like China (145%) and Canada (25%). Just a few days later, however, he rolled back many of these tariffs, citing the need for "flexibility".

Keep ReadingShow less
Competitive Authoritarianism Comes for Civil Society

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to members of the media before boarding Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House on April 3, 2025 in Washington, DC.

Getty Images, Andrew Harnik

Competitive Authoritarianism Comes for Civil Society

The following is reposted with permission from his Substack newsletter, The Art of Association.

I make a point of letting readers know when I change my mind about matters that bear on the ongoing discussion here at The Art of Association. I need to introduce today’s newsletter about what the second Trump Administration entails for civil society with just such an update.

Keep ReadingShow less
USAID flag outside a building
A USAID flag outside a building.
J. David Ake/Getty Images

A Profound Distortion of Humanity’s Purpose on Earth

In the comments section of his New York Times column titled “Musk Said No One Has Died Since Aid Was Cut. That Isn’t True,” Nick Kristof wrote: “I think that President Trump and Elon Musk thought the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) would be an easy target and could be a practice run for raiding something harder, like Medicaid. In reporting this story, I tried to put human faces on the aid cuts and appeal to readers' consciences, but I wonder whether it's more effective to appeal to the public's sense of self interest? Which arguments do you think are most effective in reaching people and changing minds?”

As a citizen advocate who has spent more than 40 years working to improve USAID, waves of grief keep coming over me due to the reckless and shameful dismemberment of the agency. Attempts by Musk and Trump to shut down USAID amount to vandalizing America’s soul.

Keep ReadingShow less