Churchill: Americans don't disagree about everything - Albany Times Union

COLONIE — We hate each other. We've agreed to be disagreeable. We view the opposite side of the political aisle with distrust, if not disgust.

That’s the view of America you get on social media and cable news, a nation of two warring parties — red against blue, conservative versus liberal — with increasingly little in common except a willingness to demonize the other side.

That portrait isn't completely inaccurate, of course. There’s evidence of that divided America in a remarkable new poll from the Siena College Research Institute in Loudonville.

A full 31 percent of voters, for example, continue to believe the 2020 presidential election was stolen from former president Donald Trump — a belief held by 81 percent of voters who are politically right of center. Only 3 percent of left-of-center voters believe the same.

Those sorts of findings suggest that the American experiment might be in trouble, that the distrust and animosity of us-versus-them are so deep that some sort of severance is inevitable, no matter how painful.

We can't have an honorable debate because we believe only one side has honor. We can’t agree even on basic facts, and we may just disagree too much to ever get along.

But what’s unique about the Siena poll, a massive survey of nearly 6,100 voters, is that it went beyond the usual political questions to ask about values. There, the findings became more encouraging, because they showed Americans largely agree on core values of liberty, equality and progress.

Nearly everyone surveyed — Trump voters and Biden voters, conservatives and liberals, New Englanders and Texans — said they strongly subscribed to and lived by the following statements: 

♦ Protecting every American’s right to vote is important.

♦ All people are equal, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, physical appearance or any other physical characteristic.

♦ The religious beliefs and practices of all people should be both protected and respected.

♦ Each of us is free to follow our own unique path in life.

OK, those might seem obvious. Who wouldn’t say all people should be equal or protecting the vote is important — and would someone ever admit believing otherwise?

And sure, it's fair to wonder whether respondents really live (and vote) by those values, or whether they're blowing a little smoke.

"I think people responded aspirationally," said Don Levy, who heads the nationally recognized Siena polling center. "It's the person you want to be, rather than perhaps the person you really are."

But hey, let's take agreement where we can find it, especially since some the of statements on which Americans mostly agreed were a touch more controversial. Such as:

No one, not even the government, should be able to restrict another's pursuit of happiness.

Or: No one should tell me how to live, how to love or what to think.

Taken together, those and many other shared principles in what Siena calls its "American Values Study" — released this weekend — paint a portrait of all that we have in common, a sort of national creed that belies our ongoing culture wars.

Could it be we’re not so divided after all? But if that’s true, why is it so ugly out there?

"We've got to recognize that we’re headed for a divorce," said Siena College President Chris Gibson, a former Republican congressman from Kinderhook. "We need an intervention ... This is a very serious moment."

That isn't Gibson's opinion alone. The same theme was hit repeatedly in one-on-one interviews Siena conducted as part of the survey, with respondents often expressing fear that the country they love is coming apart.

"It seems like what fundamentally held our country together is being shaken and I don't think that it's going to stand," said a 22-year-old woman from Colorado.

She added: "You politically can't really speak what you believe without at least one person in the room deciding that they hate you just because you agree with this political candidate versus this one."

Gibson blamed polarizing forces, including the gerrymandering of congressional districts, an increasingly partisan media landscape, and the willingness of Congress and other lawmakers to cede power to executives. Those and other factors reward extremes, instead of moderation, while making presidential elections feel like winner-take-all conquests.

But that isn’t how our constitutional system is supposed to work.

"We’ve walked away from a framework that made us work together," Gibson said. "We still have this language of shared values, but we’re not using it."

Meanwhile, political parties, special interest groups and cable news channels benefit from fueling division. Moderation and compromise don't fuel donations or ratings, while outrage, fear and hatred certainly do.

The suggestion isn’t that Americans should agree on everything. That has never been the case, of course, and never will be. Certainly, our political divisions result from genuine policy disagreements.

Take abortion, for example. The Siena survey found that 36 percent of voters nationally believe abortion should almost always be illegal, while 43 percent said it should almost always be legal. No consensus, in other words.

But there used to be pro-choice Republicans and pro-life Democrats, before our increasingly rancorous partisanship led to a sorting on most every issue. Increasingly, if feels that each side just sees the world differently.

To the point: When asked by Siena if much of the mainstream news media is "fake news," zero percent of left-of-center voters said yes, while a whopping 85 percent of right-of-center voters, along with 67 percent of independents, felt differently.

But let's leave that distressing topic aside and return to the values section of the Siena survey. Consider whether you agree with these statements, which were among the least popular in the survey but were still generally agreed upon:

♦ No person is complete if they do not give of themselves in service to others.

♦ Everyone can speak their mind in public regardless of the viewpoint without fear of punishment.

♦ Not everyone starts off with the same set of tools or skills, sometimes we need to level the playing field by giving some people a head start.

Liberals generally agreed with that last declaration, which is essentially an endorsement of affirmative action, while conservatives did not.

"That’s the only statement, out of 34, where there’s a dramatic difference between left and right," Levy said.

Levy and Gibson are hoping that the survey, one of the largest the Siena has undertaken, will launch a national conversation about what we share and how we might bind our divisions. Despite our very real and seemingly growing divisions, there might be seeds of hope within the big areas on which we agree.

"I am working hard to be optimistic based on this," Levy said. "I’m pretty optimistic based on what people are saying, but I’m not optimistic based on what our politics are generating."

Americans could probably agree about that, too.

cchurchill@timesunion.com ■ 518-454-5442 ■ @chris_churchill

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