The reason some of us think partisans are needlessly hyperventilating about the awfulness of the “other” side is that too many partisans are indeed needlessly hyperventilating.
A new survey sponsored by a group called More in Common shows that the more politically attuned Americans are, the more likely they are to falsely attribute extreme views to the other side. Repeat: falsely.
As in the movie Cool Hand Luke, “What we’ve got here is failure to communicate.” Or, as More in Common calls it, what we have is a “perception gap.”
To quote the More in Common announcement of its survey results, “Americans have a deeply distorted understanding of each other. … Overall, Democrats and Republicans imagine almost twice as many of their political opponents as reality hold views they consider “extreme”. Even on the most controversial issues in our national debates, Americans are less divided than most of us think. This is good news for those worried about the character of this country. The majority of Americans hold views that may not be so different from your own.”
For example, Democrats wrongly think most Republicans are blind to the existence of racism. On average, Democrats guessed that only about half of Republicans believe “racism still exists in America,” but in reality, about 80% of Republicans recognize that racism continues. Similarly, Republicans think more than half of Democrats believe that “most police are bad people,” but actually, less than 20% think that way.
The only people who guessed correctly that both sides have views relatively close to each other were those who are “politically disengaged.” In other words, if you pay less attention to politics, you tend to think better of the view of others, and you’re also better informed about them.
This is instructive. If those who follow politics think ill of the other side, they won’t even bother to try to work with them. Somehow, some way, people more involved in the process at least need to make the attempt to find common ground.
It is particularly instructive that higher education levels tend to coincide with greater levels of misunderstanding about the beliefs and motives of others. This is especially true on the Left. As writer Yascha Mounk, analyzing this survey, noted at the mostly liberal Atlantic magazine, “Perhaps because institutions of higher learning tend to be dominated by liberals, Republicans who have gone to college are not more likely to caricature their ideological adversaries than those who dropped out of high school. But among Democrats, education seems to make the problem much worse. … And [Democrats] with a postgrad degree have a way more skewed view of Republicans than anybody else.”
The solution to all of this is obvious, even if difficult to achieve. All of us, especially those cloistered in our self-satisfied bastions of academia or our political activist echo chambers, should leave our little bubbles and find ways, especially nonpolitical ways, to engage with and socialize with those of other persuasions.
Because if you don’t agree that all of us Americans are in this together, well, you’re a jerk who should be shunned. Or, wait, scratch that. Instead, let’s have some coffee and a conversation.
