At the same time, many respondents didn’t seem to care about civic issues that have gotten major attention from scholars, journalists, and government officials, pointing to another possible perception gap between elites and everyone else. In both Americas, people care about protecting civic life. They just can’t agree on what its problems are. [...]
But respondents’ opinions were sharply split along partisan lines. Only 42 percent of self-identified Republicans see the outsize influence of money in politics as a big issue, compared with 82 percent of Democrats who said the same. Both Republicans and Democrats are concerned about low voter turnout, but 78 percent of Democrats said it is a major problem, versus 58 percent of Republicans. And while 81 percent of Republicans see media bias toward certain political candidates as a major problem, only 41 percent of Democrats said the same thing. In general, 91 percent of Democrats think America is on the “wrong track,” compared with 70 percent of Republicans who said the country is going in the “right direction.” [...]
Each of these stories may contain truth, but Americans seem to assign them relative importance based on who they are and who they listen to. Age and race, in particular, affected respondents’ views on some of these questions: Older Americans are more likely than their younger peers to think media bias and too few people voting are major issues, for example. Whites are more likely than people of color to see media bias as a major problem; notably, 94 percent of self-identified white evangelical Protestants said media bias is a major or minor problem in America’s current electoral system. By far, party affiliation was the greatest source of division.
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