How today’s divisions in America are different from what we’ve seen before

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• Amna Nawaz:

  For the last several weeks, Judy Woodruff has been digging into one of the most pressing issues facing our nation, deep divisions and distrust in some American communities.

  Tonight, she begins with a look back at our recent history and some of her own to try to better understand the nature of the divides we face and why this moment feels different.

  It's part of her new series, America at a Crossroads.

• Protester:

  What do we want?

• Protesters:

  Justice!

• Judy Woodruff:

  From fights over our rights…

• Protesters:

  Our rights are not up for debate!

• Judy Woodruff:

  … to defining who we are…

• Protesters:

  Immigrants are welcome here!

• Judy Woodruff:

  … what we believe…

• Protesters:

  We, the people, will not comply!

• Judy Woodruff:

  … and what we teach our children…

• Protesters:

  Shame on you! Shame on you!

• Judy Woodruff:

  … America is a house divided. And, in many ways, it always has been.

  Would you agree with Governor Carter, Dr. Cretch (ph), that it is difficult to find qualified women?

• Judy Woodruff:

  I first came to Washington in 1977 to cover Jimmy Carter, the former governor and peanut farmer I had followed as a local news reporter in Georgia, where I spent my teenage years.

  Ronald Reagan, Former President of the United States: Judy.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Mr. President, how concerned are you that…

  I stayed in Washington after Carter's landslide loss to Ronald Reagan in 1980 through six more administrations, trying to better understand how our government works, what motivates our leaders, and how their decisions affect hundreds of millions of Americans across the country.

  What happened today, Jim, was that a feud that has been simmering for weeks between Democrats and a group of conservative Republicans finally reached a boiling point. It all started…

  Over that time, I have watched partisan disagreements grow increasingly hostile.

• Fmr. Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-GA):

  Always delighted to yield to our distinguished speaker.

• Fmr. Rep. Thomas P. O’Neill (D-MA):

  You deliberately stood in that well before an emptied House and challenged these people, and you challenged their Americanism. And it is the lowest thing that I have ever seen in my 32 years in Congress.

  Barack Obama, Former President of the United States: The reforms — the reforms I propose it I am proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally.

• Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC):

  You lie!

  (AUDIENCE BOOING)

  Donald Trump, Former President of the United States: How stupid are our leaders? How stupid are these politicians?

• Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC):

  You looking for a fair process, you came to the wrong town at the wrong time, my friend.

  Joe Biden, President of the United States: That means Congress doesn't vote — I'm glad to see…

• Judy Woodruff:

  To the point that, today, there is an unwillingness to work with or often even talk to the other side to confront our shared challenges.

• Man:

  The debt debate in Washington heated up with the federal government set to hit its legal limit on borrowing in less than a week.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Rising distrust by the public in our big institutions from the federal government and public health officials to journalists.

• Donald Trump:

  We are a nation that no longer has a free and fair press. Fake news is all you get.

• Judy Woodruff:

  We have watched partisan battles that undermine our ability to deal with real problems.

  Much of the federal government was dark after Congress failed to agree on a stopgap funding bill.

  Shocking acts of violence directed at our political leaders.

• Man:

  Giffords remains sedated three days after being shot in the head at point-blank range.

• Lisa Desjardins:

  For at least five minutes, gunshots crackled across the Northern Virginia baseball field where Republican members of Congress were practicing.

• Judy Woodruff:

  U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's husband, Paul, was severely beaten with a hammer this morning.

  And even attempts to subvert the machinery of democracy itself.

• John Yang:

  Chaos erupted at the U.S. Capitol today, when pro-Trump demonstrators breached barricades and pushed their way inside.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Our current and former presidents of both parties acknowledge that something has changed over time.

• Joe Biden:

  But we didn't have many people playing on the fears of the American people. It has gotten too mean. It has gotten too personal and gotten too divisive.

  George W. Bush, Former President of the United States: So much of our politics has become a naked appeal to fear, anger, resentment. That leaves us worried about our nation and our future together.

• Judy Woodruff:

  I have long wanted to better understand what has been happening, the forces driving us apart, and what can be done to overcome them. And that is what this series, America at a Crossroads, will be about.

  To begin, I want to ask the most basic questions: How divided are the American people and how different our divisions today from what we have seen before?

  Hello, Carroll. How are you? Good to see you again.

  To find out what survey data show, I visited the Pew Research Center, the nonpartisan think tank in downtown Washington that's studied public opinion, demographics, and social issues for decades.

  Carroll Doherty and Jocelyn Kiley design and analyze polls that Americans take online each year, revealing how people think and feel about a range of issues and how those feelings change over time.

• Carroll Doherty, Pew Research Center:

  The country is more divided certainly along partisan lines, than we have seen it.

  There have been divisions in the past along other lines, but this is a moment where the divisions are deeper than ever and the intensity of dislike for the other side is probably deeper than ever as well.

• Jocelyn Kiley, Pew Research Center:

  I think it is fair to say, on virtually every domain you can think about, the gap between Republicans and Democrats is bigger than it was 20 or 30 years ago.

  And so when I say that, I mean, on, say, immigration, on abortion, on gun policy, on size of government. There have always been partisan gaps on these issues, but they are all wider than they used to be.

• Judy Woodruff:

  That is true not just of the American public, but of its leaders as well.

• Jocelyn Kiley:

  If you go back 30 years ago or so, there were a sizable share of Democrats in Congress who were more conservative than the most liberal Republican, and vice versa, a sizable share of Republicans who were more liberal than the most conservative Democrat. That hasn't been the case for nearly 20 years.

• Judy Woodruff:

  It also shows up in presidential approval ratings, which have fallen sharply since the 1950s for both parties.

• Carroll Doherty:

  It used to be that people would reserve their judgment about the new president. There would be a lot of "don't know"s if you asked about a new president.

  And now people go to their partisan corners a lot more quickly in terms of evaluating a new president. So there is not as much of a honeymoon, as we used to call it in the old days.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Is that also due to people feeling part of their party and their party is opposed, so, therefore, they are opposed?

• Carroll Doherty:

  Yes, they are, exactly.

  So, for Biden and Trump, it's very — people make their judgments very quickly, again, on the basis of their own partisanship.

• Judy Woodruff:

  And there is another trend that really worries Doherty and Kiley, the degree to which people from one side not only disagree with, but actively dislike those on the other.

• Carroll Doherty:

  It is not new that Republicans have an unfavorable view of the Democratic Party and vice versa, but these very unfavorables is what we are focused on here. And these are the sort of intensely negative.

  And you see that tripling just about between 1994 and 2022 on the Republican side and a huge spike on the Democratic side as well. And so the shares of people who have this intense dislike for the opposing party has grown so much over the past 20 or 25 years.

• Jocelyn Kiley:

  We have asked for and while these questions about different traits. And you can see in this graphic that, for instance, 72 percent of Republicans say that Democrats are more dishonest than other Americans, and 64 percent of Democrats say the same about Republicans.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Carroll, it is striking. You look at the numbers.

  Immoral?

• Carroll Doherty:

  Yes.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Just, in 2016, 35 percent of Democrats thought Republicans were immoral. Today, it is 63 percent. And Republicans, it has gone from 47 to 72.

• Carroll Doherty:

  It is quite striking.

• Judy Woodruff:

  And, Jocelyn, from a polling point of view, from an researcher, academic point of view, what is striking about that? I mean, we are talking, I don't know, 22, 20 — less than 30 years that this has happened.

• Jocelyn Kiley:

  I think one way to think about this is that people have internalized partisan identity maybe in a way that we didn't really see, say, three decades ago.

  So it is about issues. It's about emotions. And they kind of feed on each other, meaning, as you see the other party further apart on issues, you are less likely to socialize with them. You're less likely to have them in your friend groups. And, therefore, maybe you are a little bit more likely to have negative stereotypes about them.

• Judy Woodruff:

  And that is what I wanted to ask you. Who is pushing this? Where — who is the instigator in all of this? Is it Washington pushing the American public, or is it the American public pushing Washington?

• Jocelyn Kiley:

  Yes.

  (LAUGHTER)

• Jocelyn Kiley:

  It's both of those things.

• Judy Woodruff:

  It's both.

• Jocelyn Kiley:

  It really — it really is both. And we can — you can think about the role of the media in this too.

• Carroll Doherty:

  Yes.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Yes.

• Jocelyn Kiley:

  Over this time period, we started to see more fragmentation of media, so people who tend to be more likely to get their news from places that show them the kind of news they are interested in, the rise in cable news, the rise in social media.

  And so I think it would be very difficult to say this is top-down or bottom-up. It is a mix of both of those.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Add to that list a country that is rapidly changing demographically, extremely high levels of inequality and very low trust in government, regardless of who is in power.

• Jocelyn Kiley:

  We talk about the ways the two partisan coalitions are growing more demographically distinct. They are also growing more distinct in terms of their issue positions and then also in terms of how they feel about one another.

  And each one of those contributes to each other.

• Carroll Doherty:

  Is this pattern just going to continue?

  Are we just going to see this get more and more intense over time, this partisan antipathy, this partisan hostility, leading to perhaps negative consequences for the country?

• Judy Woodruff:

  And this is what I will be diving into over the next two years, trying to better understand the roots of our disagreements, where policy differences end and where you might call identity politics begin, and asking Americans from all walks of life how we can move forward towards solutions.

• Lilliana Mason, SNF Agora Institute, Johns Hopkins University:

  Well, decades ago, we disagreed over things like the role of government or the size of government or what we wanted the government to be doing. And with those types of divisions, we can find a compromise.

• Judy Woodruff:

  In my next report, I will speak with political scientist Lilliana Mason to try to understand how our identities and our politics became so intertwined and what that means for our challenges ahead.

• Lilliana Mason:

  What we are seeing today is, the divide is much more about our feelings about each other. We are angry at one another. Democrats and Republicans don't trust one another. And these types of feelings are not the kind of thing we can compromise with.

• Judy Woodruff:

  For the "PBS NewsHour," I am Judy Woodruff in Washington.

• Amna Nawaz:

  And we will have Judy's second installment of America at a Crossroads next month right here on the "NewsHour."