Article Highlights
- A recent study suggests that much of partisan disagreement on facts is just cheap talk.
- The researchers find that if people are given a chance to earn monetary rewards for providing correct answers on factual questions, the partisan gaps found in polls sharply narrow.
- These findings imply that concerns about polarization may be overblown, and that Americans can actually agree on much more than opinion polls suggest.
We often hear that the U.S. electorate is more politically polarized than ever, a claim that is supported by poll data. For example, a recent Gallup poll shows that President Barack Obama has a 90 percent job approval rating among Democrats, compared to only 8 percent among Republicans. In contrast, in 1996, President Bill Clinton had an approval rating of 23 percent among Republicans and 86 percent among Democrats.
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In other words, voters with different partisan affiliations hold vastly different political opinions, and those differences seem to be growing.
And it's not just that Republican and Democratic voters have starkly differing opinions. They also seem to disagree – along predictable party lines – on the facts. For example, polls suggest that Democrats are more likely than Republicans to overestimate the fraction of Americans who are pro-choice on abortion. And Republicans are more likely than Democrats to assert that Obama is a Muslim who was not born in the United States.
The full text of this article is available on US News & World Report’s website. It will be posted to AEI.org on Wednesday, July 31, 2013.
