Hours before the first debate between President Barack Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney, a showdown that will focus on domestic issues, a new national survey indicates that Americans have undergone some major changes on the basic questions concerning the size and role of the federal government. [cont.] CNN Read more »
Low information or high morality?
… [T]he assumption here is that even “low-information voters” will vote their economic interest if they get enough true economic facts and figures about their self-interest thrown at them. There is reason to doubt this. I recall a conversation I had with Richard Wirthlin, Ronald Reagan’s chief strategist. In Wirthlin’s […] Read more »
The Antisocial Contract
… Conventional wisdom has it that in politics there are values issues and economic issues, with “values” conservatives and “fiscal” conservatives to match. Yet this distinction obscures as much as it reveals. When we cast culture-war issues solely in terms of religious or moral values, we miss their deep entanglement […] Read more »
Americans Are Losing Confidence in the Nation but Still Believe in Themselves
America’s values are in upheaval, triggered by the advance of technology, prolonged pessimism, and a loss of confidence in major social, political, economic, and religious institutions, according to a poll [conducted by phone and online] of more than 2,000 Americans commissioned by The Atlantic and The Aspen Institute for the […] Read more »
Dysfunction begins with the parties
The latest impressive study of Trends in American Values from the Pew Research Center is filled with frightening findings. It sketches a portrait of a country divided less by issues than by partisanship. Moreover, it suggests (my interpretation, not Pew’s) that many of these divisions have not bubbled up from […] Read more »
Partisan Polarization Surges in Bush, Obama Years
As Americans head to the polls this November, their values and basic beliefs are more polarized along partisan lines than at any point in the past 25 years. Unlike in 1987, when this series of surveys began, the values gap between Republicans and Democrats is now greater than gender, age, […] Read more »