80-20 NATION::

Our analysis revealed seven groups in the American population, which we categorized as progressive activists, traditional liberals, passive liberals, politically disengaged, moderates, traditional conservatives and devoted conservatives. (Curious which group you belong to? Take our quiz to find out.) We found stark differences in attitudes across groups: For example, only 1 percent of progressive activists, but 97 percent of devoted conservatives, approve of Donald Trump's performance as president.

Furthermore, our results discovered a connection between core beliefs and political views. Consider the core belief of how safe or threatening you feel the world to be. Forty-seven percent of devoted conservatives strongly believed that the world was becoming an increasingly dangerous place. By contrast, only 19 percent of progressive activists held this view.

In turn, those who viewed the world as a dangerous place were three times more likely to strongly support the building of a border wall between the United States and Mexico, and twice as likely to view Islam as a national threat. By contrast, those who did not see the world as dangerous were 50 percent more likely to believe that people were too worried about terrorism and 50 percent more likely to believe that immigration was good for America.

Another significant finding concerned people's views on personal responsibility. It may come as no surprise that 86 percent of progressive activists believed that "people's outcomes in life are determined largely by forces outside of their control," whereas 98 percent of devoted conservatives believed "people are largely responsible for their own outcomes in life." But what is notable is that those who believe the former were twice as likely to favor increasing the government safety net, 25 percent more likely to believe that America had a moral obligation to accept refugees and about 35 percent more likely to believe that gender-based differences in pay were a result of sexism.

A third core belief dividing liberals and conservatives was parenting philosophy. We asked participants a series of questions on this topic, including whether they believed it was better for children to have "curiosity" versus "good manners" and "independence" versus "respect for elders." Once again, striking differences emerged: While 75 percent of devoted conservatives leaned toward the more strict values, 77 percent of progressive activists leaned toward the more permissive. [...]

This distortion renders thoughtful dialogue difficult at a time when it is most necessary. Americans are far more aligned on many critical issues than you might think. For example, our data show that 75 percent of Americans support stricter gun laws, 82 percent believe that racism is at least a somewhat serious problem in America and 79 percent favor providing a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants brought here as children. In addition, 77 percent of Americans agree that our differences are not so great that we cannot come together.

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