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Painting murals supporting Black Lives Matter in Washington, D.C., in June
Among the most respected and revelatory of polls is the annual survey of Americans’ opinions from the Public Religion Research Institute, which released this year’s survey earlier this week. It contains few surprises, but its detailed questioning of different subgroups confirms just how starkly we’re divided—above all, on issues of race.
First, to the one question uppermost in everyone’s mind, the poll found that Americans favored Joe Biden over Donald Trump by a 56 percent to 42 percent margin, when those “leaning” to one or the other candidate were factored in.
The one attitudinal (that is, not directly candidate related)question on the poll that produced the answer most at variance with the same question’s answer on a previous (2016) poll asked respondents whether they believed that “God granted the United States a special role in human history.” Every time that question had been previously posed, most Americans answered Yes—in 2016, by a 57 percent to 40 percent margin. This year, those figures were just about reversed: 58 percent said No, while just 40 percent said Yes (64 percent of Republicans still said Yes, but only 32 percent of Democrats did). We can only surmise that the cumulative effects of the pandemic, the natural disasters, the realization of police anti-Black violence, and the Trump presidency have made it harder for most Americans to believe we retain the favor of the Almighty.
On questions of both race and gender, the partisan differences are vast. Asked whether American society “has become too soft and feminine,” 39 percent of Americans agreed, but 59 percent disagreed. Among Republicans, 63 percent agreed; among Democrats, 24 percent. I suspect that this is one issue on which the support Trump has among working-class men of all races is based.
PRRI also asked respondents whether they believed that, “It always makes the country better when all Americans speak up and protest unfair treatment by government.” Then, it asked the same question, but substituted “Black Americans” for “all Americans.” Democrats made no distinction between the two questions: 71 percent answered Yes to both. Among Republicans, however, 49 percent believed it made the country better when all Americans spoke up and protested unfair governmental treatment, but just 24 percent believed it when Black Americans spoke up and protested. Among Republicans whose most trusted news source is Fox News, the gap was 47 percent Yes for all Americans, and a bare 10 percent for Blacks.
Indeed, 57 percent of Republicans believed that whites face “a lot of discrimination,” while just 52 percent believe that Blacks do. Among Democrats, 13 percent said whites encounter a lot of discrimination; 92 percent said Blacks do.
The euphemistic encapsulation of the above is that Republicans have consolidated the traditionalist vote. A somewhat clearer encapsulation is that the Republicans have become a rats’ nest of sexists and racists.
