First Cat Willow Biden and Finding Common Ground
You can always count on the media to oversimplify and dramatize the liberal/conservative divide for profit. But what if Americans aren’t as deeply — or hopelessly — polarized as we’re portrayed?
According to the Pew Research Center,¹ Americans are far more nuanced than just liberal or conservative. Neither the Democrats nor Republicans are a unanimous monolith because Americans are not an either/or binary. Within each party, voters have varying perspectives on seemingly defining issues such as government size, immigration, abortion, and gun control.
Pew’s research categorizes voters from Progressive Left on the liberal end of the spectrum to Faith and Flag Conservatives on the far right by offering a 16-question political typology quiz.
Some of the quiz questions are oversimplified. How do you define “big government?” “Increased trade” and “decreased prices” oversimplify enormously complex international markets. “Do corporations make too much profit?” Shouldn’t the question be “Do corporations pay their fair share of taxes?”
The results reveal that even hot-button issues like abortion and gun control don’t command partisan-based unanimity as starkly as the media reports.
“Republicans are divided on some principles long associated with the GOP: an affinity for…
