The 2016 election has been dominated on one side by promises to erect walls along the southern border and ban Muslims, and by pledges of free college and political revolution on the other.

So far, the race has also been epitomized by voters who feel that politicians (and the media) just don’t listen to them or address their problems.



In this kind of environment, it’s not enough – nor was it ever enough – to go to a few political rallies, talk to people who have already made up their minds about for whom they’ll vote and present their viewpoints to readers as more broadly indicative of voter sentiment. It seemed entirely possible that a significant part of the American electorate did not spend their time obsessed with immigration, college tuition, tiny hands, email servers or whatever the candidates’ issues du jour were; in fact, it seemed more likely than not.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Anas’a Dixon, 19, a student at Hampton University in Virginia. Photograph: The Guardian

And while it’s not easy to get a handle on the lives, hopes and dreams of 324 million individuals, we wanted to try to provide a more realistic picture of how people talk to one another about those lives and the policies that affect them, away from slogans and signs and cheering. We wanted to talk to the kinds of voters that politicians are courting, and the ones they tend to ignore, in swing states and in solidly partisan ones, in big, growing cities and places that are shrinking, and we wanted to listen as they talked to, not at, each other.

And, while, yes, the university students talked about the burden of student debt they’re all facing, they also brought up foreign policy and climate change. Our working mothers group talked about the minimum wage and paid sick leave, but also addressed what they considered “family values” – which they defined as parenting skills, not opposition to abortion.

Our group of more conservative men in Ohio cared about the economy, but one participant also cited education policy as important, as did two women in Albany, New York, a real estate broker in Orlando, a judge in Houston and one of the students in Virginia. Still, you’re unlikely to hear politicians talk in more than soundbites – end Common Core, refine No Child Left Behind – about an issue that many people across the country think is a problem.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Jeff Cutler, 42, in Albany, New York. Photograph: Bastien Inzaurralde/The Guardian

And down in Houston, we listened to older women talk about the peace movement and mass incarceration nearly as much as they decried how ugly politics has gotten in their lifetimes ... but not a single woman brought up social security or Medicare.

Politicians, political pundits and, yes, even journalists, have a tendency to reduce Americans to a series of caricatures – liberal and conservative voters, urban and rural dwellers, the 99% and the 1%. Trump voters and Clintonistas, Bernie Bros and #NeverTrumpers, everyone defined by a single issue, a single aspect of their lives. (Maybe the pollster and former Clinton strategist Mark Penn, who claims that he coined “soccer moms”, which reduced a whole group of female voters to a sport their offspring play, can take part of the blame for this one.)



In a lot of ways, however, Americans may have more in common than we give them credit for. It doesn’t take a degree in political science to understand that politics can have real effects on people’s lives. And while it’s common to suggest that certain people – those with less money or less education – are voting against their own interests, it takes a lot of chutzpah to truly believe that you know what someone else’s interests are, or that they are motivated by a single issue.

Politics, after all, is not just a battle between competing ideologies or talking points – and it is not a game to people who live and work outside of campaigns and beyond the studio lights.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Alejandra Villejas, 29, in Denver, Colorado. Photograph: Bastien Inzaurralde/The Guardian

Politics and political participation are a way for regular Americans to have a say in how our lives are collectively ordered. Politicians forget or ignore that at their peril, as a whole host of establishment politicians have already learned this cycle. But, perhaps more to the point, politicians forget what’s at stake in politics at the peril of the people they’re elected to represent.

Amongst the people we met, there’s a reason that Rob Ernst is concerned with how the government treats veterans, and a reason that Sianni Cabello longs for sincerity from politicians over anything else; there’s a reason that Sissy Farenthold, who comes from relative privilege, thinks reducing income inequality is key, and a reason that Jeff Cutler believes that the inability of politicians to look beyond the next election cycle is hurting the country. They can tell you what those reasons are – as long as you ask. So can almost anyone else.