Pew Research released a survey on our growing partisan divide a few weeks ago, but I missed it while I was on vacation. Generally speaking, it says mostly what you’d expect: liberals and conservatives have both moved substantially since 2008 and are now farther apart than ever. But it’s not all bad news, and I feel like I need to put up a little ray of sunshine after my last post. So here it is. This is what happened after the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson three years ago:
After Ferguson, everyone, Democrats and Republicans alike, became more likely to believe that we need to do more to address racial inequities. What’s more, after a bit of a decline, it spiked back up among Republicans after a few months of Trump.
That’s good news. Far from causing a racial backlash, Ferguson helped change minds on both sides of the aisle. And it doesn’t appear that Trump did any lasting damage to the gains among Republicans. The gap between Ds and Rs is still large, but at least everyone is moving in the right direction.
