In other cases, however, ostensibly controversial issues got surprisingly little attention from respondents. Newspapers have been pounding out stories about possible collusion between the Trump administration and foreign governments before the 2016 election. On Friday, after this survey was administered, a grand jury indicted 12 Russian intelligence officers for allegedly hacking into computer and email systems with the intention of interfering in the 2016 election. The New York Times’ editorial board has called reported Russian attempts to interfere in American elections “a profound national security threat.” And yet, only 45 percent of survey respondents said outside influence from foreign governments is a major problem in American elections, along starkly partisan lines: 68 percent of Democrats versus only 22 percent of Republicans, and 40 percent of independents.

Is outside interference or influence from foreign governments a major problem in the American electoral system?

On the opposite side, 52 percent of Republicans and 31 percent of Democrats consider ineligible voters casting ballots to be a major problem—only a third of respondents in total. Yet the White House clearly thinks this is a winning issue; voter fraud is one of President Donald Trump’s favorite topics. These numbers say something different: “It’s certainly not the red-meat issue that many Republicans might think that it is,” Jones said.

Does ineligible voters casting ballots present a major problem in the American electoral system?

Here, too, people’s experiences and political persuasions help predict their perceptions of reality. Strong majorities of black and Hispanic respondents said that the suppression of eligible voters is a major problem, for example, compared with just 27 percent of white respondents. While these results seem to have been affected by partisan affiliation, less than half of white Democrats—45 percent—said voter suppression is a big issue. Meanwhile, more than two-thirds of respondents with a favorable view of Trump said that voter fraud is a bigger problem than voter suppression.

But the bigger implication is that elites, whether they’re politicians or pundits, have miscalculated what’s important to regular voters. Or, to think of it another way, perhaps they haven’t successfully persuaded people to care about issues such as the alleged Russia scandal or voter suppression. This may exacerbate the sense of unreality in today’s political environment: Breaking stories in Washington may not match the stories people truly care about.

Ultimately, this survey “is one more indication that this whole political moment is an argument about … who gets to count as an American,” Jones said. At its core, politics is all about storytelling, and narratives of identity and decline are particularly potent. No matter how earnestly Americans wish for a strong, shared civic culture, they remain stuck in their own realities, railing to change a world that even neighbors may see in radically different ways. In the long run, this may force debates about what America is for, which “may be a moment of renewal for a constitutional democracy,” Jones said. But “in the middle of it, it’s pretty fraught.”



This project is supported by grants from the Joyce, Kresge, and McKnight Foundations.

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