How the stained-glass divide is straining American politics

New county-level findings on Americans’ religious affiliations show the two parties glaring across a deep chasm in America’s changing spiritual landscape. The religious fault line between the two sides is only deepening, adding another explosive dimension to the volatile separation between red and blue America. Whites who identify as Christians […] Read more »

Study Looks At What Motivates Trump Supporters

NPR’s Danielle Kurtzleben speaks with professor Lilliana Mason about a recent study she co-authored entitled “Activating Animus: The Uniquely Social Roots of Trump Support.” NPR News The OPINION TODAY email newsletter is a concise daily rundown of significant new poll results and insightful analysis. It’s FREE. Sign up here: opiniontoday.substack Read more »

The Christian Right Is in Decline, and It’s Taking America With It

The presidency of George W. Bush may have been the high point of the modern Christian right’s influence in America. White evangelicals were the largest religious faction in the country. “They had a president who claimed to be one of their own, he had a testimony, talked in evangelical terms,” […] Read more »

Trump’s Cult of Animosity Shows No Sign of Letting Up

In 2016, Donald Trump recruited voters with the highest levels of animosity toward African Americans, assembling a “schadenfreude” electorate — voters who take pleasure in making the opposition suffer — that continues to dominate the Republican Party, even in the aftermath of the Trump presidency. With all his histrionics and […] Read more »

Concern over crime is growing — but Americans don’t just want more police

Concern over crime has reached the highest point in four years amid a spike in killings in big cities and an uptick in violent crime, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll released Friday, and the percentage of Americans who say crime in the United States is “extremely serious” has […] Read more »

Biden is rated poorly on handling crime; alternative approaches win broad favor

The number of Americans seeing crime as an extremely serious problem in the United States is at a more than 20-year high, President Joe Biden is underwater in trust to handle it and broad majorities in an ABC News/Washington Post poll favor alternative crime-fighting strategies to address it. A sweeping […] Read more »