Groups That Americans Say Hold The Most Power - And Groups They Want To Have That Power

 

These charts are from the YouGov Poll -- done between May 14th and 17th of a nationwide sample of 2,170 adults, with a 2.8 point margin of error.

Net Favorability Of U.S. Groups And Movements

 

The chart above is from a YouGov Poll -- done between October 14th and 16th of a nationwide sample of 1,131 adults, with a 4 point margin of error.

Satisfaction With How Groups Are Treated In The U.S.

 

The charts above are from the Gallup Poll -- done between June 2nd and 26th of a nationwide sample of 1,402 adults, with a 4 point margin of error.

Do We Think About Our Votes Or Just Follow The Group?

Dr. Neil Gross (professor of sociology at Colby College) has written a thought-provoking article of political identity and voting. Here is part of what he wrote:

If you’re trying to guess whether people are Republicans or Democrats, knowing a few basic facts about them will take you a long way. What’s their race and gender? How far did they get in school? What part of the country do they live in and is their community urban, suburban or rural?

Between 2016 and 2020, for example, white Americans without college degrees favored the Republican Party by nearly 24 percentage points. Strike up a conversation about politics with such a person in rural central Maine, near where I live, and chances are that his or her sympathies will lie with the G.O.P.

Or consider gender and attitudes about crime and public safety: Men are about 10 percentage points more supportive than women of the death penalty and 10 percentage points less supportive of gun control. Or how about ethnicity and views on illegal immigration? Relative to Latino Americans, non-Latinos endorse“increasing deportation” as a partial solution by a 22-point margin.

Although there are certainly people whose politics defy generalization, the underlying demographic tendencies are powerful predictors of belief — powerful enough that elections have become as much a turnout game as an exercise in persuasion.

But this raises an important question. If our political views and behavior can be so easily predicted by characteristics like race (over which we have no control) or by factors like education (where our choices may be highly constrained by other things such as the social class of our parents), then when it comes to politics, are any of us really thinking for ourselves?

The accusation that people on the other side of the political divide have abandoned critical thinking and moral reasoning is now commonplace in American political discourse. Many on the left interpret the political tendencies of white voters without college educations as evidence that the Republican Party’s core constituency is ill informed or even unintelligent. Who else could fall for the lies of Donald Trump? Republicans, for their part, regularly invoke the idea of “liberal groupthink,” using it to make sense of how some of America’s ostensibly brightest minds could champion simplistic, unworkable policies like defunding the police.

These accusations form part of the broader phenomenon of partisan stereotyping, which has flourished as the country has pulled apart. Alongside the charge that those in the opposite political camp don’t think for themselves, Democrats in 2022 were considerably more likely than they were in 2016 to say that Republicans were closed-minded, dishonest and immoral. Republicans felt pretty much the same way about Democrats. . . .

It may be inevitable that our group identities, interests and experiences shape our political inclinations. But it’s up to each of us to scrutinize the beliefs we’ve absorbed from our social milieu to ensure that our values and political commitments are what we truly think they should be — that our beliefs are based on sound reasons rather than brute social forces.

Regrettably, a hyperpartisan society does little to reward such independence of thought, even as both progressives and conservatives claim its mantle. . . .

By all means, let’s duke it out in the public sphere and at the ballot box. You’ll fight for your interests and values, I’ll fight for mine. That’s democracy in a big, diverse, boisterous nation. But if we could bear in mind that we sometimes stumble into our most passionately held beliefs, the tenor of our discourse might be a bit saner and more cordial. The fact that we are all deeply social creatures, in politics and otherwise, underscores our shared humanity — something that we would be wise to never lose sight of. 

PRRI Poll Shows The Picture Of A Divided Country

These charts are from a Public Religion Research Institute Poll -- done between March 11th and 30th of a nationwide sample of 5,042 adults, with a 1.6 point margin of error. It shows the social groups of people in the United States. Generally, even though we live in a diverse nation, most people tend to socialize only with those in their own racial, religious, and political groups.

Gen. Z's Opinion On Who is Discriminated Against In U.S.

I found this chart interesting. It is from the Public Religion Research Institute. They asked a random sample of 2,023 members of generation Z (aged 15 through 24) which groups they thought were the most discriminated against in the United States. The results are shown in the chart above. The methodology is here.

One of the interesting aspects is that, like their elders, young Whites are the least likely to see discrimination in most groups. Could it be that those who don't experience discrimination find it the hardest to recognize it when it happens to others?

Donald Trump's Job Approval By Population Group

The chart above is from the Gallup Poll. It shows the average job approval of Donald Trump between January 20th and March 8th, using a random national sample of 24,311 adults. The poll has a margin of error of 1 point. About 70 different groups are included, and his approval varies widely among those groups. But only 14 groups give Trump an approval rating of 50% or more, while all other groups rate him below that. The average job approval for the country as a whole is only 42%.

Comparison Of 2016 Vs. 2012 Group Support In Election

The chart above was made from information provided by the Pew Research Center. The positive numbers show the margin of support for groups voting for Hillary Clinton, and the negative numbers show the margin of support for groups voting for Donald Trump.

Note that the support for in Clinton was down from the support Barack Obama got in 2012. Donald Trump also outperformed what Mitt Romney did in 2012, but by smaller margins. For whatever reason, Democrats simply did not turn out in large enough numbers for Clinton. If they had the same turnout Obama got in 2012 (or close to it), Clinton would have won.