by Jeff Polet, director of the Ford Leadership Forum, Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation
One of the more satisfying parts of this job has been engaging in partnerships with other organizations and presidential centers and foundations dedicated to serving the public weal and strengthening democratic norms and practices. We have been especially engaged with the organization More Perfect, whose five “Sustainable Democracy Goals”1 respond to serious deficits in our social and governing systems.
To better understand the political landscape, More Perfect commissioned in December of last year a survey of 1005 registered voters. I don’t know much about the survey methods employed by Hart Research, who administered the survey, but the demographic breakdown indicates a representative sample.
I want to highlight what I think are some salient features of the findings:
- When asked about the things that concern them most, voters continue to put economic issues at the top of their list. “Reducing inflation” was by far their biggest concern, while “improving education” and “reducing divisions and the level of polarization” were at the bottom of the list. In some ways, I find this encouraging, because while economic problems such as the budget deficit are difficult to solve there are ways of getting traction on them, while I have yet to see anything close to a workable plan to improve education or reduce divisions. A story in the March 27th NYTimes was almost bone-chilling in its Jacobin invocation of the virtues of solidarity, while at the same time the authors were remarkably vague concerning how this might be accomplished, particularly since their idea of solidarity was so ideologically weighted. Economic problems are challenging, but they still yield themselves to basic math. Social problems, on the other hand, prove extremely resistant to government interventions, in no small part because of the intractable problems of human nature. I think voters understand the difference, but the poll also underscores that we expect the government to do a good job managing the economy but have very low levels of confidence in the government’s ability to manage social life. I find this reassuring, given the abundant evidence that government does a lot of things poorly and few things well.
- When asked which social institutions are most important in “defining who they are,” the vast majority of voters listed “family” as their top choice. Only 20% listed “political views” in their top three choices, although not surprisingly Democrats were almost twice as likely to do so as were Republicans. In what I regard as one of the most significant findings in the poll, slightly more than half of voters listed “faith” in their top three choices as an essential part of their identity. The two groups, by far, who acknowledged the centrality of faith were white evangelicals and black voters, suggesting the possibility of some sort of coalition emerging among them. (As an aside, I think we see evidence of such a confluence, but its development was halted by candidate and President Trump.) I was encouraged by the fact that only 32% listed “race or ethnicity” as an essential marker, although it should be noted that black Americans were 3x more likely to list it than were whites. Returning to the subject of faith, I think the poll indicates the most important development in America over the last 50 years, and that’s the decline of religious belief. If only half of Americans considered listing faith in their top 3 identity markers, this indicates that America is rapidly splintering into, not an infinite variety of sects, as had previously been the case, but into two main camps: a religious one and a non-religious one. It’s hard to predict what that division portends, other than the fact that the more religious people are the more likely they are to have children.
- While “only” 29% of voters listed “protecting and improving our democracy” in their top tier of concerns, 82% of respondents indicated they believed democracy in the US was not working as it should, or at all. On the other hand, 41% believed it was working pretty well at the state and local level, thus confirming one of the central contentions of this website: democracy does not scale well, and that it works best under conditions of transparency, accountability, participation, and when citizens are engaged in face-to-face interactions with each other. Paradoxically, the more we rely on broad systems of representation, the less represented people feel themselves to be. When asked what the main threats were at the national level, Democrats put Donald Trump at the top of their list while Republicans put “corrupt, self-serving politicians” at the top of theirs. Democrats were entirely unconcerned about “socialism, the far left, woke agenda” while 14% of Republicans expressed worry. Among independent voters, “corrupt, self-serving politicians” and “gridlock” topped their list of concerns. Democrats were 13x more likely to see Republicans as a threat to democracy than Republicans did Democrats. This could be a reflection on the objective state of affairs, or it could be an indication of the degree to which partisan beliefs affect our judgments. Only 6% of both Democrats and Republicans viewed “racial issues/tensions” as a serious problem.
- Furthermore, voters see the problems in our system of governance as flowing from the top down rather than emerging from the bottom. Our leaders are “irresponsible” and intent on dividing “people against each other.” The crisis in the general public exists mainly at the level of how “extreme voices drown out the voice of the average citizen.” Roughly 42% of Americans express concern about how our elections are run and how votes are counted, and since I have no baseline number to which I can compare this I’ll only say that that number is alarmingly high. For the record, Democrats and Republicans are almost evenly split on that question.
- Given the pessimism, we might wonder about American’s ongoing commitment to our political system. In one of the most concerning findings of the survey, only 31% of 18-34 year-olds list “being an American” in their top 3 identity markers, and only 34% acknowledge that while “our democracy needs improvement” it nonetheless “is still the best system of government there is.” To that question, only 43% of Democrats and 47% of Republicans assented, raising the obvious question of “if not democracy, then what?” The next slide in the study gives us the answer – and for those of us familiar with Plato, the one we would expect: if not democracy then an authoritarian autocracy. 52% of 18-34 year-olds believe “we need to move to a system that gives a strong leader the power to do what is necessary to get things done.” The more education someone has, the less likely that person is to agree with the statement. There was also a racial divide in the response, with blacks being about 50% more likely than whites to answer in the affirmative.
- Paradoxically, for no one can accuse the average American voter of intellectual consistency and coherence, 81% of voters also believe that it is “very/fairly important” that they take direct action to improve democratic norms and practices. At the same time, 80% believe that repairs should be effected by “elected officials” compared to the 55% who would place the burden on “the average citizen.” Why the difference? I think the clue lies in the fact that while 55% identified fixing our system as the obligation of the average citizen, only 40% felt they could personally do anything. This, too, touches upon a consistent theme we harp on here: that in a mass democracy, each citizen feels more powerless, helpless, and inconsequential, and will typically slough off his or her responsibilities to collective organizations with government at their apex. Still, 70% of voters are interested in “taking action” to improve our country, especially in light of our pending semiquincentennial. This “taking action” also has a distinctively localist aspect to it, with voters identifying volunteering in their community and supporting local non-profits as their preferred means. 38% indicated a willingness to work with people from the other party (men much more so than women).
Overall, the poll presents a picture of the average American as experiencing declining trust in government, greater division based on educational level and partisan affiliation, increased secularization, and significant generational differences. The views of 18-34 year-olds seem especially alarming to this 61 year-old, and if progress is going to be made, that’s the age group we need to focus on, and at the Ford Leadership Forum we are .
- 1.Universal civic learning, National service and volunteering, Bridging divides, Trusted elections and more representative and responsive government, Access to trusted news and information.