newswire: 6/25/2020
- The partisan divide in views about racism and discrimination is huge—but before 2008, this wasn’t the case. According to a new analysis, the big gap today is largely due to Democrats’ opinions shifting leftward, while Republicans’ views have stayed the same. (FiveThirtyEight)
- NH: The polls conducted in the wake of George Floyd’s death show huge partisan gaps. Democrats and Republicans don’t just have different views on issues related to race; they practically live in different worlds. In a recent YouGov poll, for instance, 86% of Democrats said that they believe the criminal justice system treats whites better than blacks, compared to only 39% of Republicans. Similarly, 84% of Democrats believe that the deaths of African Americans in encounters with police are a sign of a broader problem, but just 32% of Republicans agree.
- Gaps this large might not seem surprising when our nation is so polarized. But the truth is that not so long ago, Democrats and Republicans actually had pretty similar views on race. The gap is the result of Democrats steadily moving leftward over the past decade--as they have on other issues like health care and college debt. (See “The 2018 Midterms: A Tale of Two Americas.”) Over the past 10 years, Democrats have become far more likely to agree that whites have an easier time getting ahead in society than blacks and that police use force disproportionately against blacks. Republicans’ opinions haven’t changed.
- To be sure, there have been major changes to both parties over the years that can’t just be summed up with “Democrats moving left.” Partisanship has become much more strongly intertwined with education, income, and race, with more affluent, educated, and nonwhite voters voting Democrat and working-class whites voting Republican. But even as the composition of both parties has changed, only Democrats have seen huge opinion shifts as a result.
