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Lot of ink has been spilled on polarization, division, culture wars, etc. — including periodically by me. Now you have two new articles in The New York Times. In one article, they talk to pro-life voters. In the next article, they talk to pro-choice voters. These people are, likely, as ideologically different as you may find across a swath of people. Now, the sample sizes on both groups are very small. That’s also necessary to note.
Here is what seems to concern the pro-choice contingent the most:
And here is what concerns the pro-life contingent the most:
So obviously the pro-life contingent is probably right-leaning. Maybe not far-right, but probably right of center. Almost everyone is saying “the economy,” which makes sense because we’ve had an assumption that conservatives care mostly about the economy for five decades now. Also “the right” isn’t generally in power at this moment, so saying “the economy” feels like a good default.
On the pro-choice side, which should be everyone (IMHO) but is typically more left of center, the answers are all over the map — which seems to reflect some of the modern issues with progressive Democrats vs. moderate Democrats and what they’d like candidates to run on. It does seem like most of the answers are about division and polarization and lack of unity.
So on one side, in a very small sample size, you have a focus on the economy. On the other, it’s about disunity. This all tracks up with most people that I know, so I’d say it’s broadly “correct.”
The ideology wars have gotten pretty tedious over the last 3–5 years, but at the same time, this stuff is incredibly important to people. It’s funny because we keep claiming we live in some “data-driven” time, and maybe in some ways we do (and at some companies), but broadly we don’t, and your ideology impacts your perception of the world significantly more than “data” does. Ideological opinions are basically…
