… Americans are living through an unusual political moment. Their political institutions are the most divided they’ve been since the period after the Civil War, according to some political science research. But how divided are Americans themselves?
By some measures, around half of the population is either disengaged or has ideologically inconsistent views. Together, 54 percent of Americans either hold a roughly equal mix of conservative and liberal positions or say they don’t follow the news most of the time, according to an Upshot analysis of 2017 data from Pew Research. …
“We are just not seeing the polarization among the masses that people imagine,” said Sam Abrams, a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, who surveyed a nationally representative sample of Americans with NORC at the University of Chicago last year. “People who watch MSNBC and Fox are a loud but small minority. They are not representative of most Americans.”
These Americans are easy to miss. They are less likely to post about politics on social media, and they may be less likely to cross paths with the politically engaged in person. They are more likely not to vote. CONT.
Sabrina Tavernise & Nate Cohn, New York Times