“
The Hidden Tribes of America,” a recently released study by More in Common, an international polling group, shows that the most hardline, politically active liberals and conservatives are white, well educated, and active on social media. These two political wings are consistently at odds with each other, while the report categorizes the rest of America as the politically disengaged “
Exhausted Majority.” Axios executive editor Mike Allen
spoke with Stephen Hawkins, one of the study’s co-authors, who said that liberal and conservative wings are “talking to each other too little, with too much suspicion and too little giving credit.” In an interview with Axios, Hawkins describes people at both ends of the political spectrum as “dogmatic” and “ideologically rigid.”
According to PRRI data released this month, Americans have grown more pessimistic over the past year about our ability to bridge political differences. More than six in ten (62 percent) Americans say they are pessimistic about whether Americans who hold different political views can come together to solve the country’s problems, while just 36 percent say they feel optimistic.
PRRI’s recent survey found that Republicans and Democrats are united on one thing, though—their pessimism about the country’s ability to bridge its political differences. Sixty-five percent of Democrats and nearly as many Republicans (60 percent) feel pessimistic about this topic.