We Agree More Than We've Been Told

Here is a finding that ought to be more famous than it is.

Researchers asked partisans to estimate what share of the other side holds extreme views. Democrats and Republicans each guessed about fifty-five percent. The real figure is about thirty. Both sides were wrong by nearly double, in the same direction, about people they live next to.

Two details make it worse. Heavy news consumption — all of it, not just social media — is associated with a wider gap, not a narrower one. And education makes it worse rather than better.

I want to be honest about the limit of this. It does not mean disagreement is fake. Americans hold real, non-negotiable differences about abortion, about guns, about religion in public life. No voting reform will dissolve those, and anyone who says otherwise is selling something.

But on the questions that determine whether the country actually functions — corruption, budgets, the border, whether ordinary people own anything — the public is far closer to agreement than the system reflects. These are not fifty-one to forty-nine questions. They are eighty-twenty questions.

And they produce nothing.

If I'm wrong about this, most of what follows is useless. I'd rather say that up front than bury it.