After hitting a new high last month, mentions of immigration as the most important problem facing the U.S. increased further to 27% in July. … In the latest survey, 42% of Republicans, 20% of independents and 20% of Democrats mention immigration. CONT. Jeffrey M. Jones, Gallup Read more »
Trust and Distrust in America
Trust is an essential elixir for public life and neighborly relations, and when Americans think about trust these days, they worry. Two-thirds of adults think other Americans have little or no confidence in the federal government. Majorities believe the public’s confidence in the U.S. government and in each other is […] Read more »
It May Not Seem That Way, but Politicians Often Do What Voters Want
Do politicians care what voters want? New evidence may suggest they don’t — and many voters are skeptical, too. A 2018 survey by the Pew Research Center reports that less than half the country says elected officials care what ordinary people think. In reality, policy outcomes at the state, congressional […] Read more »
Trump Lost the Citizenship Debate, but He’s Still Corroding Our Politics
Does Donald Trump present a threat to American democracy, or is the system restraining him? As last week’s debate over the Census citizenship question illustrates, the answer is often both. That’s why it’s so difficult to reach a consensus about the nature and magnitude of the danger he poses. CONT. […] Read more »
Politicians Don’t Actually Care What Voters Want
We like to think that politicians care about what their constituents want. If voters in a legislative district have certain views about, say, the legality of abortion, we assume that their representative’s decisions will be shaped, or at least influenced, by those views. To a large extent, democracy depends on […] Read more »
The Purple Project for Democracy: Revitalizing civic understanding
… Amid obsession with science, technology, engineering and math and endless standardizing testing, social studies has been marginalized in public schools and civics education is on a milk carton. American students don’t know about the Bill of Rights, the three branches of government, where laws come from, the role of […] Read more »