Furor over America’s partisan divisions merits a warning about two political red herrings: Anyone who tells you the country is too divided to function is probably asking for campaign cash, and any politician touting grand, out-of-the-box reforms probably hasn’t fully explored what’s inside the box — especially if that box is a room full of American people.
As it turns out, that could be just the elegant solution a diverging America needs to pull political thought toward the middle.
Research conducted in September figuratively put America into one room — 526 nationally representative registered voters came together to discuss major issues of the 2020 election. The results are more than encouraging.
After three days of small group discussions led by neutral moderators and general sessions featuring experts and presidential candidates, the share of participants who said American democracy was “working well” doubled from 30% to 60%.
What’s more, opinions softened dramatically when participants were tasked with supporting policy proposals on hot-button topics. Extreme ideas were eventually scrapped and post-session surveys revealed a number of shifts among Republicans and Democrats.
Republican support for forcing undocumented immigrants to return to their home countries before applying to live and work in the U.S dropped by almost half, support for reducing the number of refugees allowed in the U.S. fell from 66% to 34%, and support for giving more visas to low-skilled workers more than doubled.
The same played out for Democrats debating government programs. Support for raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour fell from 89% to 59%, opposition to universal basic income rose by 21 points, and support for government-funded education bonds plummeted.
“Crucially,” researchers note, “proposals further to the right typically lost support from Republicans and proposals further to the left typically lost support from Democrats.”
The takeaway is obvious: Talking — civilly, honestly, authentically — with others elevates heated debate to a healthier environment where better outcomes are more likely to garner support. Who would have guessed face-to-face communication could be so effective?
Not Congress, whose 535 supposedly nationally representative members gather on the floors of their respective chambers perhaps a few times a year. They prefer to do their work in small offices or partisan lunchrooms.
And the Twitterverse doesn’t do the country any favors, where just 6% of political tweeters are responsible for 73% of all the tweets mentioning American politics, according to data from the Pew Research Center. Instead of putting America in one room, social media disguises a few people as America and gives them an outsize role in shaping public discourse.
Fortunately, the path to better conversations and a healthier democracy is, as researchers show, deceptively simple. Finding excuses to engage in political discussions, especially with those who hold opposing views, can soften the extremes and find consensus where none is believed to exist.
We have, of late, devoted a considerable amount of space to urging unity amid America’s divides. We aren’t ignorant to the reality of political division, and we don’t presume benign calls to “come together” will fix them. What the country believes, however, is what the country becomes, and dwelling in manufactured cynicism is a threat to democracy.
Fatalism must not replace a faith in progress and a hope for improvement. If research shows nothing else, it affirms America’s partisan wounds are curable.