This is the first article in the series “America in the Age of Polarization”, where Emil Bender Lassen (MPP ’25) drives 9,000 miles around the US to interview journalists, researchers and voters on the election that threatens to further divide this country. He hopes to better understand the rising trend in polarization, how it impacts the role of journalists – and maybe even uncover some ways this trend could be reversed.
Disclaimer: This piece reflects the reporting I’ve done up to July 10th. Since then, we have covered the assassination attempt of Former President Trump on this series’ companion podcast.
“IT’S THE INCUMBENT ADVANTAGE!”
“BUT IT DOESN’T MAKE ANY SENSE!”
The discussion among my Kennedy School friends is heated. I’ve just arrived in Washington, DC and a group of us have hit Roofers Union in Adams Morgan to grab a beer. It’s the day after Biden’s catastrophic debate performance – which, naturally, takes the center of the conversation.
I watched the debate the night before in New York. Unable to find a bar that broadcast it, I went with a friend to a comedy club that showed the debate on large screens while three comedians commented on it live. In the liberal metropolitan bubble, Trump naturally took more fire from the comedians than Biden. Less than 15 minutes in, though, the jokes slowly came to a halt. The mood inside went from “let’s have fun” to “this is much worse than we had expected,” and the rest of the debate was viewed mostly in silence. Audience members shook their heads and sighed loudly at the poor debate performance from both candidates: one side struggling to answer questions, the other struggling to stay on the path of truth.
Hence the frustration among my D.C. friends, who could agree only so far that both candidates had a bad night. But on the path forward, the disagreement was loud and vocal. And while people at the comedy club in New York left the debate concerned about the general direction of their country the coming four years, it was clear that there was a deeper, more personal reaction from my friends in DC. Post-graduation careers in the White House, its agencies, and on the Hill suddenly seemed a lot more distant.
An election leaving outsiders confused and families divided
Before starting my road trip on June 24th, I spent three weeks back in Denmark. Every single time that the US election came up, I was asked within minutes why such a large country cannot come up with better candidates than an unpopular men well above retirement age. The same question has been looming in the US for a long time, but it was not before the June 27th debate that the pressure reached a level that prompted a more serious discussion. As of now, Biden remains the nominee, but public support from party members and supporters has been dwindling in recent days with calls for him to step down from Congressmen, multiple Senators and influential supporters like George Clooney.1
After D.C., I made my way down to Georgia, where I spoke to Doug Reardon,2 a Political Reporter for Atlanta News First, who summed it up like this: “Everyone is a little bit freaked out. The consensus is he didn’t do very well. I think that for people in Georgia, being a purple state as we are now, that essentially won Joe Biden the presidency when he ran last time around, things are a lot more muddled now compared to four years ago. The debate threw a lot of doubt behind a lot of people’s decision.”
After talking to Reardon, I found myself Mobile, Alabama for an obligatory Po’Boy dinner while enroute to New Orleans. I tell my server, Emily, about the project I’m doing and she’s fired up immediately: “Everybody used to be independent voters here. But now everyone feels forced to pick a side. They don’t even listen to the issues anymore. It’s part of their identity. And honestly, that makes a lot of people just check out from politics.”
Trump carried Alabama with over 25 percentage points in both the 2016 and 2020 elections, so there’s not a lot of nail-biting on election day here. But Emily is getting at a more fundamental issue, which was also brought up by Reardon: “I have family members that don’t see things the same way as I see them politically and that’s created a fuzzy relationship,” he said. “In states where the election is decided by margins the size of a small town, you’re going to see hyper-granular polarization among friends and family members.”
The polarization people like Emily and Reardon have experienced in their personal and professional lives can’t just be boiled down to informed differences on policy positions. Now more than ever, people’s politics carry a social weight. Politics has become a central part of our identity. And we have grown more protective of our political identities, which might explain the rise in affective polarization despite the limited ideological change.
Rachel Kleinfeld’s paper published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace3 reviewed the latest research on polarization and highlights the research linking affective polarization with feelings of identity. Or, in the words of Lilliana Mason: “identity-based ideology can drive affective ideological polarization even when individuals are naïve about policy. The passion and prejudice with which we approach politics is driven not only by what we think, but also powerfully by who we think we are.”4
Balancing political engagement and voters checking out
The June 27th debate in Atlanta was the earliest presidential debate ever. While taping this blog’s companion podcast, Reardon and I discussed whether the early arrival of the political “circus” to Georgia has led to increased political engagement among voters, or if negative campaigning and personal attacks that have characterized the campaigns so far will cause voters to mentally checkout.
“The debate itself definitely drew more attention to the race, because I think a lot of people were just in their camps. They knew who they were going to vote for. These guys have run and served before, so everyone knew the drill,” he said. “But I think after a bad performance – on both sides – people started to question whether they really were as dug in as they thought they were.”
This discussion quickly leads us to the question of what role journalists should play. In the last two elections, Reardon found himself in the state where the vote ended up being the closest. Having covered the 2016 election in Michigan, where Trump won with a 0.2% margin, and the 2020 election in Georgia, carried by Biden with a 0.2% margin, Reardon is familiar with being in the eye of a political storm. When I ask him to reflect about his role as a political reporter in this age of polarization, he notes:
“Politics should be emotional, because we are dealing with life and death issues, money issues, things that make people uncomfortable. We should always strive to make it better and people should be shouting about it as long as it’s productive.
What scares him the most is the trend of some journalists abandoning truth in their reporting. In the first podcast episode with Alison King and Jane Petersen, we discuss the removal of the Fairness Doctrine that required media to give equal voice to both sides of an issue. But when it comes to reporting truth, Reardon challenges that approach:
“I hate the narrative that “50/50” is the way that you should cover news. If you talk to one Democrat, you should talk to one Republican as well to try to even things out. But truth is not objectivity. There’s going to be times where someone’s going to be right and someone’s going to be wrong. As long as you put out a good understanding of where both sides are coming from, that’s the best you can do.”
He believes that the decreasing trust in media5 is closely connected to journalists abandoning this principle in favor of hunting for perspectives that satisfy a predetermined angle aimed at satisfying readers rather than reporting truth:
“We have this problem, maybe especially in America, where you can look anywhere for a perspective that you want to find – and you will find it if you look hard enough. People need to feel validated so, by choice, you only get half the story, because you are only going to look for the half that satisfies your values.”
Trust in media outlets is deeply polarized and at a record low according to polling done by Pew Research Center.6
King shared a similar reflection: “As a journalist, it was very hard to cover January 6th and the 2020 election result. Donald Trump did not win the election. But if you’re talking to someone who absolutely thinks that the election was stolen from him, how do you report that? If you don’t report it, they’re going to say you are fake news. And if you do, you become part of a false narrative. It’s a catch-22.”
Where do we go from here?
Both King and Reardon underscore the need to get back to issues that the average voter cares about and is affected by, when asked about how we break the cycle of polarization. A break away from the hyper-generalizing national campaign messages and attack ads and towards the things that matter.
“I wish that what I saw in political reporting at the local and national level was more of that on-the-ground, grassroots reporting that gets you real answers instead of this spin that you see.” Reardon said.
We conclude that the best place to look for the solution to polarization might be the local McDonald’s, or in my case, anywhere that makes a good Po’boy, where you can escape the echo chamber and meet voters with real issues. As for me and my road trip, I find that my understanding of polarization in America – and its many nuances – is getting stronger. But when it comes to pinpointing things that work to curb polarization, I am still very early in my journey.
What’s clear is that there’s a significant role to play for journalists. The interviews I’ve had so far make it clear that there’s a number of decisions that journalists must make every day and – depending on their choices and the direction of their outlets – they either fuel or curb the trend of polarization.
Luckily, I still have just about 7,000 miles ahead of me on the road. You can follow the journey via our Instagram page or tune into the podcast episodes we put out along the way.
- “Welch Becomes First Democratic Senator to Call on Biden to Step aside – POLITICO,” accessed July 15, 2024, https://www.politico.com/news/2024/07/10/welch-becomes-first-democratic-senator-to-call-on-biden-to-step-aside-00167472. ↩︎
- “Doug Reardon,” https://www.atlantanewsfirst.com, accessed July 15, 2024, https://www.atlantanewsfirst.com/authors/Doug.Reardon/.
↩︎ - “Polarization, Democracy, and Political Violence in the United States: What the Research Says,” accessed July 15, 2024, https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2023/09/polarization-democracy-and-political-violence-in-the-united-states-what-the-research-says?lang=en. ↩︎
- Lilliana Mason, “Ideologues without Issues: The Polarizing Consequences of Ideological Identities,” Public Opinion Quarterly 82, no. S1 (April 11, 2018): 866–87, https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfy005. ↩︎
- Mark Jurkowitz Walker Amy Mitchell, Elisa Shearer and Mason, “U.S. Media Polarization and the 2020 Election: A Nation Divided,” Pew Research Center (blog), January 24, 2020, https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2020/01/24/u-s-media-polarization-and-the-2020-election-a-nation-divided/. ↩︎
- Ibid. ↩︎