Political feeds can give us the impression that the world is filled with people we don't like. We're immersed with every someone-somewhere-did-something story of the other side being awful. Our intuitions fail to represent an example of 1 among a 340,000,000 others with proper proportion.
To get a better handle on what the general population really looks like, read report Hidden Tribes: A Study of America's Polarized Landscape
They identify 7 groups outlined by their core beliefs, alongside percentage of the population that group consists of. Progressive Activists, traditional conservatives, and Devoted conservatives are identified as wings. I find the finer grain of detail beyond the usual left-right spectrum helpful and reassuring.
Wings - (8%) Progressive Activists: younger, highly engaged, secular, cosmopolitan, angry.
(11%) Traditional Liberals: older, retired, open to compromise, rational, cautious.
(15%) Passive Liberals: unhappy, insecure, distrustful, disillusioned.
(26%) Politically Disengaged: young, low income, distrustful, detached, patriotic, conspiratorial.
(15%) Moderates: engaged, civic-minded, middle-of-the-road, pessimistic, Protestant.
Wings - (19%) Traditional Conservatives: religious, middle class, patriotic, moralistic.
Wings - (6%) Devoted Conservatives: white, retired, highly engaged, uncompromising, patriotic.
But despite these stark differences, this study also finds reasons for hope. America’s political landscape is much more complicated than the binary split between liberals and conservatives often depicted in the national conversation. In particular, we find, among the seven tribes, an “Exhausted Majority,” whose members do not conform to either partisan ideology. The Exhausted Majority contains distinct groups of people with varying degrees of political understanding and activism. But they share a sense of fatigue with our polarized national conversation, a willingness to be flexible in their political viewpoints, and a lack of voice in the national conversation.Read the full report. It's long but interesting throughout.
