Our Common Bonds: Using What Americans Share to Help Bridge the Partisan Divide

This includes opposition to compromise across parties, supporting more extreme positions on public policy, and evaluating the performance of public officials based on their partisan affiliations rather than their actions.

“This includes opposition to compromise across parties, supporting more extreme positions on public policy, and evaluating the performance of public officials based on their partisan affiliations rather than their actions (Druckman et al., 2024;Levendusky, 2023).”

These developments have the capacity to exacerbate all three types of polarization, insofar as individuals bring their own political attitudes and beliefs into alignment with those who are spatially proximate and tend to form negative impressions, including misperceptions, about those with whom they rarely interact.

“These developments have the capacity to exacerbate all three types of polarization, insofar as individuals bring their own political attitudes and beliefs into alignment with those who are spatially proximate329,331 and tend to form negative impressions, including misperceptions, about those with whom they rarely interact332.”