On the Fragmentation in American Society
It’s been a very difficult few months in the United States, but more than a year into our three-year study of the fragmentation in American society, our survey and field work shows that Americans in all kinds of communities do agree on some important ideas. Overall, they think their personal lives are going in the right direction while the country is on the wrong track. In addition, respondents think Americans have a lot more in common than is generally believed and hold similar views on key policy issues, including:
- tax cuts — they don’t want them if it means cutting social programs,
- the economic system — it’s rigged for the wealthy,
- immigration — people are concerned, and
- abortion — people want it to be legal.
Where the divides are wide is on culture. Across our 15 community types, people disagree on gender identity, guns, family structure, and religion. Community residents are also very divided on why the country is headed in the wrong direction and whether they feel like a stranger in their own country.
Our second survey, in progress now, focuses on Americans’ hopes and fears.
Below are snippets and links to our full pieces from year one. Peruse the full survey results here.
PDF of the full survey results from July 2023.
New Survey Breaks Down America’s Complicated Landscape
October 26, 2023
The media tends to explain the divides in United States in binary terms — red/blue, left/right, urban/rural. News stories discuss war between two conflicting “cultures” in the country. Sometimes included is a third option for “independents” or “centrists.” But look closer and the picture is far more complicated, marked by fault lines that can be hard to see.
The American Communities Project is exploring what those differences look like with a three-year project funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. This is the first of three large public opinion surveys conducted with Ipsos. This survey of more than 5,000 Americans spread through the ACP’s 15 community types shows a deeply complicated landscape across the country on many issues — from gun ownership to race. But it also shows some areas of commonality and potential for common ground.
Truly understanding the underlying drivers and finding ways to overcome them or coexist with them is a process. This is just the beginning of that work.
Read more
Community Pieces Based on ACP/Ipsos Survey
July 16, 2024
Predictably, social media swelled with allegations, flamewars, and pro- and anti-Trump memes in the days after a 20-year-old gunman apparently tried to kill the former president in Pennsylvania. The shooting became a kind of Rorschach test for a country keyed up by an approaching election. The national cleavages over the fitness for office of the two leading candidates seem with us every moment. Data, and conversations with citizens reveal a much less divided, and more interesting mindset.
There are few more interesting places to test the proposition than two neighboring counties in Washington State, Pierce and Yakima. They share a border in the Cascade Mountains. The peaks divide the state, east and west, culturally, politically, and in the popular imagination. The American Communities Project classifies Pierce as an Urban Suburb, and it well lives up to the name as the home of more than 900,000 people, 59th in population out of more than 3,100 counties in the US. Yakima is classified as a Hispanic Center in the ACP typology, with Latinos now about half its population of around 250,000.
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Should We Cut Social Programs to Lower Taxes? A Roundtable Chat in Florida’s Graying America
April 9, 2024
Talking About Guns in Big City and Working Class Country Michigan
April 3, 2024
Voices in Urban and Rural New York Shed Light on America’s Crossroads
March 4, 2024
Among the most curious results in the American Communities Project/Ipsos survey of 5,000 Americans last year was the divide between how positively they felt about the direction of their lives and how negatively they felt about the direction of the country. The ACP interviewed residents in New York City’s Big City boroughs and residents in Chenango County, New York, part of Rural Middle America some 200 miles away, and asked a simple question: Why?
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Missouri’s Evangelical Hubs: A Place Apart?
February 26, 2024
Again and again, people in the cluster of counties pushed up against the Missouri-Arkansas line remind the visitor, while they may think they live in a place apart, they are part of the American whole. Douglas and Ozark counties are Evangelical Hubs, as defined by the American Communities Project county models.
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Data-Driven Articles Based on ACP/Ipsos Survey
Can People Be Trusted? Americans Across Communities Share Their Thoughts
June 26, 2024
The last few years in the United States have been tense. The Covid-19 pandemic led to a more solitary life for many. Political divides have made people edgy. And you can see the impacts in the results from the American Communities Project’s 2023 survey. In it, only 33% of Americans said, “Most people can be trusted,” while 66% said you “can’t be too careful in dealing with people.”
How Americans View Infrastructure in Their Community
April 30, 2024
Last year, the American Communities Project and Ipsos asked 5,000 Americans their thoughts on the infrastructure in their own communities as part of a survey on the fragmentation of American society. Overall, 69% of Americans rated their community infrastructure as excellent or good. The survey outlined infrastructure broadly, including roads, bridges, water, sewer, and electrical systems. Drilling down by community type, the net excellent/good score ranged nearly 40 points. Ratings were highest in a variety of the nation’s affluent and middle-income communities and lowest in poorer communities of color.
Read more
What Are Shared Values in Community?
April 24, 2024
The American Communities Project delved into people’s values in its 2023 fragmentation survey. Respondents were asked whether a variety of institutions shared their values.
The big finding: A lot of agreement, but agreement that seems built on skepticism and disillusionment. Across all the 15 community types that the ACP studies, there is little belief that any of the nation’s big institutions — big business, entertainment, the news media, and the federal government — share their values.
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What Do Americans Say Are The Biggest Factors for Success?
January 29, 2024
Hard work? Lucky breaks? Help from others? Support from society? The American Communities Project/Ipsos 2023 Survey asked more than 5,000 Americans to rank order these contributors to success in America. More than two-thirds of Americans, 68%, said hard work and grit was the No. 1 contributor to success. At least 59% in each of the 15 community types felt the same way.
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Do Americans Want to Move? Probably Fewer Than You Think.
January 8, 2024
A survey from the American Communities Project finds that in most places, a majority of people are quite happy with where they live. And those most interested in finding new homes tend to be people who live in wealthier, more urban communities. Overall, the survey found 58% of Americans answered “no” to the question: “If your finances and circumstances allowed, would you want to move to a different neighborhood or a different community?”
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Americans Across Communities Share Concerns About Their Public Schools
January 2, 2024
More than a third of Americans gave their public schools a fair or poor rating, according to the American Communities Project/Ipsos 2023 Survey. Ratings were worse in rural communities of color. Across all 15 community types, underfunding or underinvestment was the top concern voiced, followed by too much demand or strain, such as staff shortages.
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How Americans Are Perceiving and Feeling Inflation
December 11, 2023
Americans are generally feeling negative about their economic futures. The driving element is the cost of things. Americans cited inflation as the top local concern. At least 40% in every community type singled out inflation, according to the American Communities Project’s survey.
But the survey went further on inflation with a series of questions about “serious problems” due to prices. These questions yielded a very different set of responses.
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Supporting Community — a Way of Life Across America
November 27, 2023
America continues to be a nation teeming with helpers. Very rural county types have the highest helping rates. In both the young, more diverse Native American Lands and the older homogenous Aging Farmlands, 93% of residents said they helped a relative, neighbor, or friend in their community in the past year, according to the recent American Communities Project/Ipsos Study.
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Understanding Gun Violence and Views by Community
November 20, 2023
American Communities Project homes in on the geographic distribution of mass shootings and how this intersects with issue importance and gun culture in America. The Northeast, Upper Midwest, South, and Southwest were more adversely affected than other areas in 2023, based on Gun Violence Archives data. Our analysis shows that more diverse communities had a greater number of mass shootings and made up a greater percentage of the total. Crime or gun violence ranks as a top issue for urban-oriented as well as diverse communities, including the African American South, Big Cities, Urban Suburbs, and College Towns, according to the recent American Communities Project/Ipsos Study.
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How Top Issues Compare to Cable News Viewership
November 9, 2023
One of the biggest findings in the American Communities Project opinion survey was the stark differences between the top local and national issues, particularly in some community types. Issues that were viewed as crucial in local terms, faded nationally, and issues that were not big locally ranked much higher as national concerns.
One possible driver of those differences is how and where people get their news. The ACP, working with Comscore, has a way of measuring that in each of the 15 community types. For this analysis we looked at the ratings in each of the 15 types for four news channels: CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, and Newsmax.
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Where Local News Is Scarce — and Why It Matters
November 2, 2023
Two-thirds of America’s 3,142 counties do not have a daily newspaper, according to Northwestern University’s report “The State of Local News in 2022.” And an American Communities Project analysis of the data finds the most rural county types are the most lacking.
An absence of local news is tied to lower voter participation as well as increases in corruption, misinformation, polarization, and distrust in media, according to Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism report. The American Communities Project/Ipsos survey released in October indeed found that media distrust is very high among residents across the 15 community types.