SALT LAKE CITY — Impeachment isn’t the only point of conflict between Republicans and Democrats these days, according to a new survey on American values from Public Religion Research Institute. Partisan polarization affects everything from how people feel about the future of the country to how they define key political terms.

For example, while more than 8 in 10 Republicans (82%) view President Donald Trump favorably, just 6% of Democrats share this assessment. There’s a similar gap between the percentage of Republicans who believe the United States is on the right track (74%) and the share of Democrats (11%) who feel the same way.

When Americans are asked which political issues are most critical right now, there’s no overlap between each party’s top three concerns. Republicans worry most about terrorism, immigration and crime, while Democrats care more about health care, climate change and foreign interference in presidential elections.

The two parties disagree on “what’s important, what’s at stake and what we should be worried about as we head into the next election,” said Robert P. Jones, the institute’s CEO, during an Oct. 21 panel discussion on the new survey in Washington, D.C.

Partisan polarization extends beyond political affairs into many other areas of public life, he added. Republicans and Democrats hold divergent views about whether discrimination against white citizens is as big as a problem as discrimination against black citizens and if society has started punishing men for just acting like men.

In his overview of the full report, Jones could offer just a few topics on which Americans with different political views were more likely to agree than disagree. Most notably, majorities of both parties oppose immigration policies that lead to children being separated from their parents at the border.

The bottom line is that if you feel like the country is becoming more polarized, you’re right, said E.J. Dionne Jr., a senior fellow in governance studies with Brookings, during the panel.

“We are pretty much as divided as we think we are. This survey really underscores that dramatically,” he said.

Fractured nation

During divisive political times, it’s interesting to explore whether people are more driven by love for their own party or hatred toward their political opponents, Jones said. In America today, people might be driven by both.

The survey showed that members of each party are far more likely than political independents to view their party positively. They’re also more likely to view the opposing party in a negative light.

Researchers came to this conclusion by having survey participants choose which of two possible descriptors best described a given political party. Ninety-four percent of Republicans said the Republican Party “is trying to protect the American way of life against outside threats,” rejecting the notion that it’s been “taken over by racists.” Just 17% of Democrats and half of independents (49%) also picked the more positive descriptor.

Nearly as many Republicans (82%) said the Democratic Party has been taken over by socialists, choosing the more negative of the two options offered by researchers. Fifteen percent of Democrats and 46% of independents feel the same way, the survey showed.

Findings are based on 2,527 interviews conducted online and by phone from August to October. The margin of error for the survey is 2.8 percentage points.

Overall, Republicans and Democrats seem to be living in two different worlds, Jones said. They even define key political terms differently.

“Democrats are more likely to view socialism as providing a stronger social safety net for everyday Americans (65%) than to see it as a form of government control (32%),” the survey showed. Those figures are nearly perfectly reversed for Republicans.

Unsurprisingly, members of each party are sharply divided over the ongoing House impeachment inquiry, Jones said. Nearly 9 in 10 Democrats support impeaching Trump and removing him from office, compared to fewer than 1 in 10 Republicans.

The findings tied to Trump’s job performance were a little more nuanced. While more than three-quarters of Democrats (77%) disapprove of Trump’s job performance and say there’s nothing he could do to win their approval, just 37% of Republicans feel as confident that they’ll always approve of his work, the survey reported.

Republicans also expressed some concerns about the president’s personal conduct. Seventeen percent believe his decisions have encouraged white supremacist groups and 46% said they wish he would act more like past presidents.

However, the share of Republicans who support Trump’s reelection is still large and growing. In September, nearly three-quarters of Republicans and Republicans leaners (72%) preferred Trump over any other 2020 Republican presidential candidate, a 13 percentage point increase from October 2017, the survey reported.

Findings like these confirm that it’s unlikely Republicans will collectively turn their backs on the president, Dionne said, joking that it might take “an act of God” for the Republican-controlled Senate to rule against Trump in an impeachment hearing.

But that doesn’t mean Trump has an easy path to reelection, said William Galston, a senior fellow with Brookings who also took part in Monday’s panel. Many Americans who don’t identify with either party are troubled by Trump’s leadership and willing to be swayed to vote for the Democratic candidate in 2020.

“Sixty-five percent of the American people say they believe Trump has damaged the honor and dignity of the oval office. Seventy-two percent of independents say that,” Galston said. “I think a lot will depend on whether that vague sense that something sacred has been profaned is a voting issue. If it does, I think the president will be in trouble.”