For anyone who has paid even a little attention to the deliberate divisions in the 2024 presidential campaign, it should come as no surprise that results from a Gallup poll released Monday show that a record percentage of Americans believe the country is deeply divided on fundamental values.
Furthermore, the reasons for this division should also be clear. We will come back to this in a moment.
According to the Opinion polla whopping eight out of ten Adult Americans say the country is “deeply divided” on core values ahead of the November presidential election, while only 18 percent of respondents to this year’s survey believe the country is “united or agreed on key values.”
I assume that these 18 percent – regardless of their party affiliation – are living on the moon.
Here’s more, via Gallup:
Public skepticism about national unity is nothing novel. Polls conducted by Gallup and other institutes in the 1990s show that Americans mostly see the country as divided on core values. It was not until 2001 and 2002, after September 11, that Gallup found that most Americans perceived the opposite: Over two-thirds of American adults believed the nation was united.
The latest results are based on a Gallup poll conducted August 1-20. The question was first asked in the General Social Survey in 1993 and has been updated by various organizations since then, including in regular Gallup polls since 2001. The “most important values” are not defined by respondents, but left to their own interpretation.
Americans of all backgrounds hold similar views, with between 74 and 83 percent of key subgroups along gender, age, race, political affiliation and education perceiving the nation as divided in the current poll.
In most years, Democrats, Republicans and independents were similar on whether the nation was united or divided. However, in 2004, 2012 and 2016, there were significant party differences.
- Twice, Republicans were 15 percentage points more likely to view the country as united than Democrats: in 2004, when Republican George W. Bush sought and won a second term as president, and in 2016, after Republican Donald Trump’s surprise victory in the presidential election of that year.
- In 2012, after the re-election of Democratic President Barack Obama, Democrats perceived 18 percentage points more unity in the country.
In the four other years for which data on party identification are available, the average party difference was six percentage points, including four percentage points in the most recent survey.
Gallup also reported that different perceptions of national pride, trust in government, and trust in U.S. institutions were found under both Republican and Democratic presidencies, in mighty and frail economies, and in national Rises, triumphs and tragedies.
The observations in the above paragraph may seem confusing to some, but they are actually uncomplicated to explain. As an ancient axiom says, perception is more essential than reality.
While conservatives see Biden and Harris’ policy of de facto open borders as a national crisis, the Democratic Party sees it as an opportunity to permanently change America’s demographic composition – to their advantage.
While Democrats see ever-higher taxes as a way to burden the affluent and substantial corporations while redistributing wealth more fairly to those who do not deserve it, conservatives see lower taxes as more beneficial for economic growth and Americans in all Tax brackets – from lowest to highest.
The list of examples of “perception vs. reality” is endless.
Gallup Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey M. Jones also explained:
Today’s doubts about national unity are likely due to the tough presidential elections of recent years and the shifting partisan majority in Congress, which currently has a narrow Republican majority in the House of Representatives and a razor-thin Democratic majority in the Senate.
I do not agree with Mr Jones, but the Political differences that are miles apart The difference between the policies of Donald Trump and Kamala Harris – especially on the economy – contributes at least as much to the current divide as any other factor.
While Harris campaigned on the vague promise of an “opportunity economy,” Trump focused on ending “reckless government spending,” creating a level playing field for free trade, “unleashing” America’s natural oil and gas reserves to lower fuel costs and augment the country’s energy independence, and cutting or eliminating various taxes.
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How divided is America? The answer is complicated.
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The conclusion
As we have seen clearly since the Obama administration, the Democratic Party believes it benefits most from dividing the country – whether along economic or racial lines, on the thorny issue of abortion, so-called transgenderism, or any other issue it can exploit to spread lies about conservatism.
