We're Not as Polarized as You Think

**Michael Smerconish** (0:00)
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**SPEAKER_2** (0:34)
Ditch the clowns on the left and the jokers on the right and join Michael Smerconish right here in the middle.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:40)
This is The Smerconish Podcast for Independent Minds.

**Michael Smerconish** (0:45)
A pair of political scientists, one from Harvard, one from Tufts, over the last two decades have led the most extensive survey ever conducted of how Americans vote and why.
And their findings show that the two America, oh, there are two Americas, everybody's over here, or they're over here, that portrait of our country overly simplifies politics in ways that are misleading and confusing. They say yes, there's a small number of groups that are highly polarized. Most of America, though, is better described as a richly varied mosaic of many different groups, each of which has its own political character.
Yes, please tell me more. Stephen N. Saliba here, he's from Harvard. Brian Schaffner, he's from Tufts, penned an essay that ran in the New York Times a week ago under the headline, Maybe We're Not That Polarized After All. I want to hear more. Brian Schaffner is the Newhouse Professor of Civic Studies in the Department of Political Science, the Tisch College of Civic Life at Tufts University. He's the co-director of the Cooperative Election Study. Professor Schaffner, thank you so much for being here.

**Brian Schaffner** (2:08)
Thank you very much for having me on.

**Michael Smerconish** (2:10)
I am really intrigued by the fact that you went to Trump voters, and you went to Harris voters, and you said, what was the most important thing that happened in your life during the past year, and what did you find?

**Brian Schaffner** (2:28)
Yeah, it was just sort of a question we threw on because we're a little sick of just sort of getting the same political questions and the same answers to the same political questions. We wanted to know a little bit more about like, who these people are that we're talking to every year. And I mean, what we found when we look at the responses to that question in particular, is just like remarkable similarities. So despite the fact that we might be voting for different candidates or parties or taking different positions on issues, the things that are actually going on in our lives are things like death, losing a family member, sickness, dealing with surgeries or getting sick or having a family member get sick. And then economic stuff like selling a house or running into a difficult time or whatever. Those are the top three in the exact same order for both Harris voters and Trump voters.
And we sort of like looked at the actual text of these responses and it's just like, you would never be able to tell who's who from how people are answering that question.

**Michael Smerconish** (3:28)
So what does that tell you?

**Brian Schaffner** (3:31)
Well, I think one thing it does is I think we are in this sort of bubble where those of us that follow politics are kind of basically made to dislike the other side so much that we cease to see their humanity. And I think what the answers to this question in particular does for me at least is restore some of that humanity. It kind of says, okay, this is not just about who's voting for Trump, who's voting for Harris and so on. These are real people with real problems and the real problems that people have on a day-to-day basis have very little to do with actually their politics.

**Michael Smerconish** (4:09)
Let me quote from your piece. We've been interviewing Americans about politics through the Cooperative Election Study for two decades, more than 700,000 respondents in all.
Over the past few years, we started doing something new. We asked a question that wasn't about politics at all. What is the most important thing that happened in your life during the past year?
We did this because we were tired of seeing our respondents merely as data points, fueling an increasingly tired conversation about political polarization. We wanted to do something that would help us see them as human beings, learn about their triumphs, their struggles, even the more mundane happenings in their lives. We didn't realize how surprising our findings would be. For Trump voters, the three most common answers were a medical issue, something related to household finances, and the death of a family member or friend. And for Harris voters, the three most common answers were the same three in the same order, and the parallels were striking. What is the cooperative... Let's get into the weeds a little bit on this. What's the cooperative election study?