Following Up: Why Many of America’s Widest Divides Aren’t What You Think

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college-educated, Democrats, education, Following Up, Gallup, healthcare, inequality, minorities, non-college, opportunity, partisanship, polling, polls, race relations, Republicans, whites

“An anxious and divided nation cast its first votes,” the headline in the Washington Post moaned this morning.

As yesterday’s RealityChek post reported, though, some impressive evidence came out last week showing that the nation isn’t all that anxious, or fatally divided in the most general terms, after all. At the same time, diving into that evidence’s internals shows no shortage of divisions – only many of the dividing lines are pretty surprising.  (See the PDF linked at the bottom where it says “View complete question responses and trends.”)

For not only is the most important division by far the partisan split between Democrats and Republicans. It’s a gap that tends to be considerably wider than those between groups where divides in the last few years are supposed to have been especially and worrisomely gaping – between blacks and whites, between rich and poor, between the better educated and the less well educated.

For me, the big takeaway is that when Americans are in political moods, they get carried away by their emotions, with Republicans feeling awfully chipper about the state of the nation, and Democrats correspondingly gloomy. When they’re not preoccupied with politics, Americans seem more level-headed – and their outlooks are sunnier. But the unexpected findings scarcely stop there!

For example, let’s look at the internals of the headline satisfaction finding, which shows Americans’ feelings about the quality of their lives. A lofty 84 percent of all Americans told Gallup that they’re satisfied on this score, and 37 percent said they were “very satisfied.”

Republicans were the most satisfied Americans by a wide margin – an astonishing 96 percent called themselves satisfied, and 60 percent considered themselves “very satisfied.” The least satisfied group? Democrats. Their satisfaction levels were 77 percent satisfied and only 25 percent very satisfied.

But here’s what really grabbed my attention – and should grab yours. Keep in mind that the various groups of respondents overlap considerably (for example, both Democrats and Republicans include the wealthy and the poor, and the college-educated and the high school grads; and the both the wealthy and the poor include those identifying with both political parties).

The Democrats’ satisfaction levels were lower than those for non-whites (79 percent) and for Americans with a high school education or less (84 percent). That doesn’t sound very consistent with the notion that non-whites and those with relatively modest education levels are feeling especially downtrodden lately. But these readings definitely point to special degrees of unhappiness among Democrats. So does the fact that the “very satisfied” results for both these groups (31 percent and 34 percent, respectively) topped those for Democrats as well.

The partisan divide is even bigger, in both absolute and relative terms, for satisfaction levels regarding whether working hard can get a person ahead in America these days. In toto, 72 percent of respondents were satisfied and 43 percent were very satisfied with this situation. Non-whites’ overall satisfaction and very satisfied levels weren’t too far off those figures (71 percent and 37 percent, respectively). And the figures for those holding a high school degree at most were notably higher (77 percent and 51 percent, respectively).

But the Democrats’ results were completely in the dumps (only 47 percent and 19 percent, respectively).

Also interesting – non-whites, and Americans lacking college degrees are all more convinced than the college grads (68 percent) about the payoff of working hard, with respondents with a high school degree or less expressing the highest (77 percent) satisfaction level.

Satisfaction levels are much lower in absolute terms (43 percent overall) over the distribution of income and wealth in America – which should surprise no one. But again, those lacking a high school degree were more satisfied, and by a wide margin (49 percent), while the least satisfied (also by a wide margin) were the Democrats (21 percent).

The least educated were also more satisfied with the current rich-poor gap than college graduates (40 percent). But on this issue, non-white satisfaction levels were lower than the average (38 percent).

Gallup respondents were even less satisfied with the availability of healthcare in the United States, with only 37 percent expressing such views. Yet a familiar pattern emerges from the internals. The biggest gap was between Republicans (53 percent satisfied) and Democrats (27 percent). These also represented the highest and lowest levels of all the groups examined.

In addition, non-whites (41 percent) were more satisfied than whites the overall total (37 percent), and much more satisfied not only than the Democrats but than college grads (31 percent). The same held for Americans without high school diplomas (also 41 percent satisfied).

Finally, let’s look at a particularly explosive issue – race relations. Or at least it’s supposed to be particularly explosive. But according to the Gallup survey, there’s much more dissatisfaction than polarization – except among Democrats and Republicans.

Overall satisfaction levels are low – coming in at 36 percent. But the widest gap by far is between followers of the two parties, with 51 percent of Republican identifiers declaring themselves to be satisfied compared with only 24 percent of their Democratic counterparts. (Actually, Gallup also measured satisfaction levels according to political ideology – liberals, moderates, and conservatives. I’ve left these findings out due to the assumption because these results closely track the political parties’ results – which include independent voters. But according to this gauge, the conservative-liberal gap is somewhat wider, at 52 percent-17 percent.)

Most significantly, this partisan divide is far wider than the racial divide, with 35 percent of whites expressing satisfaction with the state of race relations and 39 percent of nonwhites so stating. Also doubtless significant: The next-least-satisfied group is college graduates, of whom only 28 percent expressed satisfaction. Further, their “very satisfied” levels (3 percent) were by far the lowest along with the Democrats’. And they were only one-third the nine percent “very satisfied” levels of non-whites.

Is the country indeed anxious?  To some extent, sure.  Is it divided?  That’s where the answer gets especially complicated.  And this complex picture indicates that, especially in this presidential campaign year, all Americans should beware of pundits and others bearing sweeping generalizations. 

Im-Politic: A Moral Quandary Surrounding American Morals?

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abortion, Gallup, gay marriage, Im-Politic, marijuana, moderates, morals, polling, public opinion, social conservatives, social liberals, Trump, values

This’ll be one of those posts where I confess I just don’t know what the heck is going on. But the info seems so compelling – and possibly contradictory – that it can’t be ignored.

The first half of the puzzle comes from Gallup’s new finding that a large (81 percent) of Americans judge the country’s moral values to be “only fair” or “poor,” and that 77 percent believe that this problem is getting worse. Although I know there will be many who are tempted to respond with something to the effect of “Ah, Trump,” keep in mind that these numbers haven’t changed dramatically since the company began asking such questions in 2002. (Somewhat greater shifts – for the worse – are evident since the early 1990s, when Gallup’s questions were somewhat differently worded.)

Another intriguing result: More than a third of respondents rated the state of U.S. morality as “fair” – which isn’t necessarily negative. In fact, combining the 36 percent of Americans taking this view with the (dwindling) share who view it as “excellent/good” (17 percent) sums to a majority that’s arguably pleased with the nation’s ethics. And these sub-categories (called “internals” by polling insiders) have remained broadly stable over the last decade and a half as well.

Less intriguing: Over the last year, self-identified social liberals have become much more concerned about America’s morals, with the share perceiving a worsening spurting from 58 percent to 71 percent. Social moderates became markedly more pessimistic, too, and that definitely looks like a Trump effect. So does the less dramatic drop in the share of those considering themselves as social conservatives telling Gallup that moral decay intensified during that time.

But here’s where the real mystery comes in. Another Gallup survey, taken just a few weeks ago, reported “Americans Hold Record Liberal Views on Most Moral Issues”. Give the company credit: It’s recognized the apparent paradox: “Even liberals, who seemingly should be pleased with the growing number of Americans who agree with their point of view on the morality of prominent social issues, are more likely to say things are getting worse than getting better.”

Gallup offers two possible explanations, but I don’t find them especially convincing. The first, after all, assumes (at least logically) that social liberals believe that many Americans who have swung their way on gay marriage, marijuana legalization, abortion, and the like are still insensitive (at best) toward racism and poverty. Or even have become more so. The second assumes that liberals believe that these same, increasingly tolerant Americans keep displaying “lack of respect or tolerance for others,” or are getting even coarser.

Nor am I persuaded by another possible explanation that could well be proposed by social conservatives: that although they increasingly support more liberal moral positions and views, deep down inside, liberals and moderates recognize them as dangerous and therefore perceive American morals to be declining.

So I’m left in the dark, but certain something important is taking place within the national psyche. What do all of you think?

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Where the Experts are Blowing it Again

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foreign policy, grand strategy, interventionism, national interests, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, polling, public opinion, responsibilities

It’s long been clear to me that Main Street Americans have much better instincts than their country’s bipartisan foreign policy elites about what goals U.S. foreign policy should be seeking. The main reason seems to be that, even though few of the hoi polloi can name the leaders of many countries or even find these lands on maps, unlike the specialists they recognize intuitively that the United States is an fundamentally, even existentially, secure country.

In other words, the mass public isn’t big on the details, but understands the big strategic picture – that their country is separated from the greatest actual or potential military threats by thousands of miles of ocean, is richly endowed with all manner of economic resources, and that these priceless advantages should be fully exploited and maximized, not ignored or squandered.

The elites have the big picture completely wrong. They’ve mastered many details, but mistakenly believe that the United States is a fundamentally weak, insecure country, acutely sensitive to all manner of overseas troubles, and heavily and inevitably dependent on global prosperity for its own well-being.

The gap between the public’s bedrock foreign policy confidence and the elite’s state of constant alarmism was just illustrated once again by a new POLITICO poll of voters in so-called election battleground states. Consistent with a pretty longstanding pattern, solid majorities oppose more U.S. ”involvement” (the form wasn’t specified) in today’s hot spots, and in several cases, pluralities oppose even the current, modest level of involvement. (One key qualification – the poll predated the downing of the Malaysian airliner over eastern Ukraine.)

More surprising, and much more heartening, was respondents’ emphatic rejection of the claim that “As the world’s moral leader, the U.S. has a responsibility to use its military to protect democracy around the globe.” Only 22 percent agreed, versus 67 percent endorsing the view that “U.S. military actions should be limited to direct threats to our national security.”

These results are heartening because they signal strong public opposition to a basis for foreign policymaking strongly endorsed by liberal and conservative elites alike, but with almost no potential to produce either a sensible list of national foreign policy objectives and even less potential to foster the national consensus needed to pursue such goals successfully.

Here’s why: In my post of June 5 I argued (pretty cogently, I think!) that basing foreign policy on a concept of national interest (i.e., “selfish” considerations) was vastly superior to basing it on moral considerations. One of my main reasons: However difficult it always is to generate widespread agreement on policies that will make America safer, freer, or wealthier, it’s bound to be easier than generating agreement on policies that reflect the better angels of nature. Concrete policy benefits, costs, and risks, after all, are possible to measure with reasonably objective indicators. Granted, Americans broadly agree on many fundamental moral precepts. (It’s hard to imagine our society cohering at all if we didn’t.) But inherently subjective definitions of morality become even more subjective when applied to policy issues – and, I’d venture, international policy issues.

Basing U.S. foreign policy on a definition of America’s international responsibilities will undoubtedly be even more difficult. To start, such responsibilities can’t logically be identical with a definition of U.S. interests, since responsibilities are obligations individuals or collectives are supposed to assume apart from their interests. If the two were substantially identical, why would anyone bother spelling out responsibilities? So we’ve just reentered the realm of the highly, and maybe impossibly, subjective.

A further complication: Individuals and collectives can surely take responsibilities on themselves, and often do. But definitions of responsibilities can often include the expectations of others. That would seem to add yet another layer of fiendish complexity. Even more vexing, the expectations of other countries, in particular, can be self-serving at best and at worst contrary to U.S. interests.

None of this is to say that ideas regarding America’s international responsibilities – whether originating domestically, abroad, or some combination of the two – should never influence U.S. foreign policy, just as I would never insist that moral considerations be outright banned from foreign policymaking. A sovereign people by definition have every right to make such choices.

But if you agree with me that America is existentially secure and prosperous, you’ll join with me in thanking the nation’s lucky stars that its representative form of government creates a strong check on the misguided, gratuitously interventionist impulses of our supposed foreign policy experts — and therefore on the leaders they unfortunately still influence.