Amid deep US political division, pollsters see room for optimism

First, the bad news: Partisan divisions in the United States remain high, with two-thirds of voters saying politics has become less civil since the start of the pandemic. 

And despite President Joe Biden’s Inauguration Day promise to unify the country, 43% of voters say American politics has become less civil since he took office, with only 29% saying it has become more civil, according to the latest Georgetown Institute of Politics and Public Service Battleground Civility Poll. 

But at a Monitor Zoom Breakfast with reporters Thursday, the bipartisan authors of the poll were quick to highlight a hopeful sign: More than half of Americans – 58% – say they’re “optimistic about the future because young people are committed to making this country a better place to live for everyone.”

“We do see astounding levels of fear about division,” said Democratic pollster Celinda Lake, who has produced Battleground Polls with Republican pollster Ed Goeas since 1991. But, she added, “young people and older people and Democrats and people of color are incredibly optimistic about what youth can bring to the country.”

Mr. Goeas said he was “very optimistic that there’s going to be opportunities in the future to move this country to being more civil and believing in a more civil future.”

But, he warned, “we have to get out of this kind of trap we’ve fallen into of gotcha politics with the media, quite frankly, and also gotcha politics between Republicans and Democrats in their campaigns.”

And it’s worth noting that there were strong partisan differences among respondents on optimism about the future. Overall, 82% of Democrats, 51% of independents, and only 34% of Republicans agreed with the statement about being “optimistic about the future.”

Republicans and Democrats display striking differences even in the values they emphasize. For Republicans, the top choice, at 54%, was freedom, while only 13% of Democrats made that their top choice. Among Democrats, 31% said responsibility, followed by 25% who said respect. 

“You see how it’s playing out in the national debate over COVID response,” said Mo Elleithee, executive director of the Georgetown Institute of Politics and Public Service, which sponsors the Battleground Civility Poll. “The top two values - and there’s a huge partisan divide - are freedom and responsibility, with Republicans gravitating towards freedom and Democrats gravitating towards responsibility.”

One of the most eye-popping elements of the Civility Poll is the question asking respondents to rate the level of political division in the U.S., with zero meaning no division and 100 meaning “the edge of civil war.” The average response in the latest poll was 70.6. 

When Ms. Lake and Mr. Goeas did their first Civility Poll in April 2019, the average response to that question came in at 70.81. 

“We were flabbergasted at how high the numbers were, that people thought we were on our way to civil war and that that has persisted during all of the Trump years and into the Biden administration,” Ms. Lake says. “And of course, January 6th [2021] really reinforcing that notion – it’s hard to express how high these numbers are.”

In the January 2021 Civility Poll, which was in the field when rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol, the responses on the “civil war” question averaged 76 – a high for the six Civility Polls to date. 

“The youth are slightly more optimistic,” Ms. Lake says, discussing the latest Civility Poll. “But really across the board, there’s one thing that America is united about, and that is how divided we are.”

The recording of our Monitor Zoom Breakfast with Ms. Lake, Mr. Goeas, and Mr. Elleithee can be viewed below.