You'll Never Guess Where Red and Blue Agree — BCB #106
Also: 2024 isn’t the most important election ever, and crowdsourcing a plan to fix American democracy.
Another reminder that Red and Blue don’t disagree as much as we think
In 2024, what do people across the political spectrum think a “good society” actually looks like? Recently, a few researchers analyzed more than 3.8 million tweets by over a million users to better understand where Red and Blue agree and disagree on the subject:
Results revealed a fairly high degree of ideological divergence: Liberals were more likely to raise themes of social justice, global inequality, women’s rights, racism, criminal justice, health care, poverty, progress, social change, personal growth, and environmental sustainability, whereas conservatives were more likely to mention religion, social order, business, capitalism, national symbols, immigration, and terrorism, as well as individual authorities and news organizations.
But there were also some key areas of convergence: “economic prosperity, family, community, and the pursuit of health, happiness, and freedom.” People also agreed on certain items regardless of ideological stereotypes, such as
a number of values that are typically associated with liberal as opposed to conservative priorities, such as need, change, progress, vision, and dream. This last observation, at least, may be consistent with the notion that ordinary citizens are often “operational” liberals (when it comes to specific issues and priorities), even when they identify as “symbolic” conservatives, who gravitate toward conservative, patriotic, and nationalistic labels.
This kind of Twitter study is obviously somewhat self-selecting—it’s a particular kind of person who chooses to tweet about what constitutes their values. But its authors argue that it’s a useful counterpoint to other studies which ask participants for closed-ended responses to specific questions. By contrast, they say, they were able to study how a huge number of everyday people communicate about their values in an unobtrusive way.
The idea that Blue and Red share many of their values is nothing new. We’ve written about the perception gap before, but it’s useful to encounter research that bears this out from a different angle. There’s ample evidence that everyone cares about family and economic prosperity. Despite their differences, Americans largely agree on many things. This is why, when people actually meet someone from the other side in person and talk to them, rather than making assumptions about what they consider important, they often get along just fine.
Americans aren’t uniquely concerned about the election, but they’re also not feeling great
If you read the news regularly, you’re probably seeing a lot of hand-wringing about how November’s election could be one of the most important in American history. But new polling data from the Survey Center on American Life indicates that most Americans don’t really think this is the case. Few Americans believe the 2024 presidential race is the most important of their lifetimes. In fact, more people said this of the 2004 election than do today.
This is good news, because almost any sort of escalation—refusing to hire people because of their politics, passing laws restricting people’s rights, or violently overthrowing the elected government, for example—can be justified on the basis that the other side is an existential threat. It’s not that the stakes aren’t high in 2024, but it’s good to keep things in perspective. As Beyond Intractability recently put it,
Unlike the True Believers who are convinced that the other side represents an existential threat to almost everything that they care about, moderates are conflicted about the issues and looking for compromise, rather than the victory of one side over the other.
Still, that isn’t to say that Americans are feeling great about the state of our democracy. The Survey Center’s polls also showed that 58 percent of Americans say that the country’s best days are behind it—a marked shift from 2020, when just 46 percent said the same.
The outlook is especially bleak among young Americans. 84 percent of Americans think achieving the American Dream is hard for people like them, and people ages 18 to 29 are more likely to feel this way than their older counterparts. Young men in particular are twice as likely as older men to say the American Dream is very difficult to achieve. Whoever is elected in November, this crisis of morale will be a serious issue to contend with.
Crowdsourcing a plan to fix American democracy
There seems to be consensus across the political spectrum that American democracy is broken. But what can we do to fix it? A group of researchers from Stanford and Dartmouth have kicked off an initiative, the Structural Democratic Reforms Project, that aims to crowdsource and develop ideas for reforms that could strengthen some of the key pillars of our democracy.
Our focus—both in terms of democratic principles and implementation mechanisms—is non-exhaustive. We have selected several democratic principles that most directly relate to key elements of democracy in a diverse society, such as democratic representation, voter participation, and/or electoral integrity, to focus our investigation. There are potential reforms grounded in other democratic principles that are important and worthy of study and action, and we encourage research in these domains.
We have also focused our investigation on several key implementation mechanisms that have the most direct implications for pro-democracy campaigning and voter-facing initiatives as a path to impact at the present time, including state/federal legislation, ballot initiative, or executive order.
They plan to execute this project in five stages. First they will crowdsource a set of ideas for reforms. Then they will have academics and experts evaluate these ideas. From there, they will survey the public’s support for the most viable reforms, do message testing to determine how to get the word out and drum up support, and finally announce their findings at a non-partisan conference.
Right now, they’re at step one, which means they’re actively soliciting ideas from experts and concerned citizens alike on how to improve our democratic institutions:
We're looking for as wide a range of reforms as possible. Anything that could be enacted via legislation, executive order, or ballot initiative to promote democratic principles. No idea is too big or small. Outside-the-box=good. Any & all perspectives are welcome!
Those interested are encouraged to submit ideas here or via email to democratic-reforms@stanford.edu.
Quote of the Week
People often say that history is a battle of ideas, but sometimes it is just a succession of moods.