Will America come together in the wake of this week’s presidential inauguration? The prospects for that appear dim, based on a trio of surveys conducted by the Pew Research Center.
One of the surveys, released today, hits a new low for political division: Eighty-six percent of the respondents said the country is more politically divided these days than in the past, while only 12 percent say it’s not more divided. That pessimism was shared by Republicans and Democrats in nearly equal measure.
In comparison, the breakdown between the optimists and the pessimists was roughly equal in January 2009, just before Barack Obama moved into the White House.
With Donald Trump taking office, there’s a wide gap in expectations along party lines: Eighty-three percent of Republicans say 2017 will be better than 2016, while only 24 percent of Democrats say the coming year will be better. Folks on both sides of the split say Trump’s rise to power is the biggest factor behind how they feel.
The survey on political attitudes was based on phone interviews conducted with 1,502 adults conducted Jan. 4-9.
Where we’re getting political news
A second survey indicates that Fox News was the main source of news about the presidential campaign for 40 percent of Trump’s voters, while CNN was named the No. 1 source by 18 percent of those who voted for Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.
CNN was the top source for 13 percent of the Trump electorate, at 13 percent, while MSNBC was No. 1 for 9 percent of Clinton’s voters.
Perhaps the most intriguing finding is that Facebook was the top election news source for 8 percent of Trump’s voters, and for 7 percent of Clinton’s voters. But was it the same Facebook? “It is likely that the specific news outlets that filled their Facebook feeds differed substantially,” the Pew Research Center said in its analysis of the results.
Either way, twice as many voters gravitated to Facebook than to The New York Times, which was named the top news source by 3 percent of the voters and led the list of newspapers cited.
This survey was conducted Nov. 29-Dec. 12, 2016, among 4,183 adults who are members of the center’s nationally representative American Trends Panel.
Who’ll be in charge
The third survey suggests that Americans expect wealthy people, men, whites and conservative Christians to gain influence during the Trump administration, while women, blacks and poor people lose influence.
When the survey respondents were asked how people like themselves would fare, 40 percent said they’d lose influence, while 27 percent said they’d gain influence.
Environmentalists, union leaders, and gays and lesbians were seen most widely as losing influence, while business corporations and the military were seen as the biggest winners. The questions on perceived gains or losses in influence were part of the Jan. 4-9 survey on political attitudes.
How will the reality match the perceptions? We’ll find out starting on Friday.
