Americans Are Divided Along Party Lines On Coronavirus Vaccinations And The Issue Of Wearing Masks But They Have One Area Of Agreement In The Medical Industry
Large majorities of Democrats and Republicans believe nurses and healthcare aides are underpaid, while almost an identical number say doctors are overpaid.
There’s always room for agreement — even in politically polarized times.
As hospitals run low on nurses amid a resurgence in the pandemic, large majorities of Democrats and Republicans believe nurses and healthcare aides are underpaid, while almost an identical number say doctors are overpaid, according to a study released Tuesday by the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
There is a dramatic division along party lines on the issue of mask wearing and whether or not to get the COVID-19 vaccination — 58% of Republicans and 15% of Democrats say they will definitely not get the shot, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation — but there is no partisanship on doctors’ pay: 36% of Democrats and 37% of Republicans say doctors are overpaid.
“ ‘These findings provide some evidence that policies designed to improve pay for nurses and healthcare aides or lower the salaries of executives could be popular with both Democrats and Republicans.’”
— Trevor Tompson, director of the AP-NORC Center
A majority of people surveyed support increased government funding for lowering out-of-pocket costs for patients and for extending government health-insurance coverage for low-income people . However, Democrats are more supportive than Republicans.
How Partisans See Themselves: Republicans Say They Are More Patriotic Than Others Democrats Say They Are More Open
Many Republicans and Democrats also associate their fellow partisans with positive traits. And with some exceptions, these are broadly the inverse of how they see the other party’s members.
A clear majority of Democrats say that Democrats are more open-minded compared with other Americans. Republicans are considerably less likely to ascribe this trait to members of their party: 42% say members of the GOP are more open-minded than other Americans, while about as many say they are on par with other Americans .
However, Republicans are much more likely than Democrats to describe members of their own party as more patriotic . By comparison, just 29% of Democrats say Democrats are more patriotic than other Americans .
While majorities of those in both parties say their co-partisans are about as intelligent as other Americans, Democrats are slightly more likely to view members of their party as more intelligent than Republicans are .
Republicans Vs Democrats: Where Do The Two Main Us Political Parties Stand On Key Issues
After an impeachment, a positive coronavirus test and an unforgettable first presidential debate rounded out the final months of Donald Trump’s first term, it seems fair to say the past few years have been a roller-coaster ride for US politics.
On November 3, Americans will decide which candidate will win the 2020 presidential election, sparking either the beginning, or end, for each nominee.
But how does it all work?
Well, the US political system is dominated by two main parties — the Democrats and the Republicans — and the next president will belong to one of those two.
Just how different are their policies?
Here’s what you need to know, starting with the candidates.
Donald Trump Or Hilary Clinton Is Going To Be The Next President Of The United States
Once I lost interest in pursuing law, I didn’t care much about U.S. politics. I didn’t believe that my vote counted. I wasn’t informed or interested in national and global affairs. To be honest, I was too caught up in my own world to care about what was actually going on in the world.
But I realized that a lot of the people who do care about the decisions made in the U.S. are radical, and not representative of the majority of Americans. I listened. I listened to people very different from myself and slowly understood their positions, their fears, their needs.
We have so much in common.
I hope that what we all take from this election is a sparked interest in politics — that we are hungry for knowledge, change and information.
Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump is going to be our next President of the United States. Period.
We can continue to be angry. We can allow for another election of vulgarity, slander and aggression. Or we can accept the fact that most people are good in this world. In this country. We can change the way we run the next election and above everything, change the way we treat each other. Maybe one day, we’ll be less afraid, less angry, less violent. Or at the very least, less tolerant of intolerance.
The Difference Between What Republicans And Democrats Believe To Be True About Covid
This poll is a part of the Yahoo News/YouGov partnership and was cited in the Yahoo News article “New Yahoo News/YouGov poll shows coronavirus conspiracy theories spreading on the right may hamper vaccine efforts”
As the coronavirus has spread across the United States, so has rampant misinformation about the illness. A new poll from Yahoo News/YouGov asked about some of the more prevalent Internet theories that have little or no basis in fact, and the results show some strong partisan divides.
Most Republicans , for instance, believe a widespread myth that Chinese scientists engineered the coronavirus in a laboratory in Wuhan, China, from where it accidentally escaped. About one-quarter of Democrats think this is true, and most believe it is false.
A plurality of Republicans also believes a claim that appears to have originated on Facebook: that Microsoft founder Bill Gates wants to use a mass vaccination campaign against COVID-19 to implant microchips in people that would be used to track people with a digital ID. The post was removed by Facebook as an attempt to halt the spread of misinformation.
Despite that, half of Americans who watch Fox News as their primary news source indicated that they believe the statement about Gates is true. In contrast, most Americans who cite MSNBC as their primary source of TV news believe the statement is false.
Related: Becoming a coronavirus contact tracer intrigues those whose employment was impacted by COVID-19
Image: Getty
Republicans Democrats Are Increasingly Positive About Members Of Their Own Parties
When asked to rate Republicans and Democrats on a “feeling thermometer” between 0 and 100 – where 0 is the most negative rating and 100 is the most positive rating – large majorities of partisans rate the members of their own party warmly. In both parties, the shares giving warm ratings have increased since March 2016.
About eight-in-ten Democrats and Republicans feel warmly toward their own party. In March 2016 – prior to the conclusion of the presidential primaries – 75% of Democrats and 67% of Republicans said that they had a warm view of their fellow partisans.
Since 2016, the shares of partisans with neutral feelings toward members of their own party have dropped from about one-in-five to about one-in-ten .
As Republicans and Democrats take an increasingly positive view of members of their own parties, they have become more negative toward members of the opposing party.
Today, 79% of Democrats and 83% of Republicans rate the other party coldly .
Three years ago, narrower majorities in both parties gave the other party a cold rating. In March 2016, 61% of Democrats gave Republicans a cold rating and 69% of Republicans gave Democrats a cold rating.
How Americas Political System Creates Space For Republicans To Undermine Democracy
9) Republicans havean unpopular policy agenda
Let Them Eat Tweets
The Republican policy agenda is extremely unpopular. The chart here, taken from Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson’s recent book , compares the relative popularity of the two major legislative efforts of Trump’s first term — tax cuts and Obamacare repeal — to similar high-priority bills in years past. The contrast is striking: The GOP’s modern economic agenda is widely disliked even compared to unpopular bills of the past, a finding consistent with a lot of recent polling data.
Hacker and Pierson argue that this drives Republicans’ emphasis on culture war and anti-Democratic identity politics. This strategy, which they term “plutocratic populism,” allows the party’s super-wealthy backers to get their tax cuts while the base gets the partisan street fight they crave.
The GOP can do this because America’s political system is profoundly unrepresentative. The coalition it can assemble — overwhelmingly white Christian, heavily rural, and increasingly less educated — is a shrinking minority that has lost the popular vote in seven of the past eight presidential contests. But its voters are ideally positioned to give Republicans advantages in the Electoral College and the Senate, allowing the party to remain viable despite representing significantly fewer voters than the Democrats do.
10) Some of the most consequential Republican attacks on democracy happen at the state level
11) The national GOP has broken government
Republicans Dont Understand Democratsand Democrats Dont Understand Republicans
A new study shows Americans have little understanding of their political adversaries—and education doesn’t help.
About the author: Yascha Mounk is a contributing writer at The Atlantic, an associate professor at Johns Hopkins University, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and the founder of Persuasion.
Americans often lament the rise of “extreme partisanship,” but this is a poor description of political reality: Far from increasing, Americans’ attachment to their political parties has considerably weakened over the past years. Liberals no longer strongly identify with the Democratic Party and conservatives no longer strongly identify with the Republican Party.
What is corroding American politics is, specifically, negative partisanship: Although most liberals feel conflicted about the Democratic Party, they really hate the Republican Party. And even though most conservatives feel conflicted about the Republican Party, they really hate the Democratic Party.
America’s political divisions are driven by hatred of an out-group rather than love of the in-group. The question is: Why?
Democrats also estimated that four in 10 Republicans believe that “many Muslims are good Americans,” and that only half recognize that “racism still exists in America.” In reality, those figures were two-thirds and four in five.
Pandemic Puts A Crimp On Voter Registration Potentially Altering Electorate
For all the discussion about the effect of voter ID laws, however, a study last year found that whatever impact those laws might have is offset by increased organization and activism by nonwhite voters — leading to no change in registration or turnout.
Another battleground is early and absentee voting. Rules vary by state, with some requiring more explanation than others as to what’s permissible.
Bitter lessons
The parties today have arrived at this moment after years of what they would argue were bad experiences with elections at the hands of their opponents.
Republicans, among other things, sometimes point to what they believe was cheating in the 1960 presidential race. Alleged Democratic chicanery, in this telling, threw the results to John F. Kennedy and cost the race for Richard Nixon.
Fraudulent IDs, undocumented immigrants voting, people being “bused in” on Election Day remain consistent themes when Republicans talk about elections.
Democrats look to the decades of Jim Crow discrimination that kept many black voters out of elections.
More recently, they look at the Supreme Court’s 2000 decision that handed the outcome of that election to George W. Bush over Al Gore. The court halted the counting of ballots that Democrats argued could have changed Florida’s results, swinging the state to Gore.
Abrams’ group perceives what it calls a deliberate campaign by the establishment to purge Georgia voter rolls of mainly black or Democratic voters.
Matters of principle
More Now Associate Some Negative Traits With The Other Side Than In 2016
The shares of both Republicans and Democrats ascribing several of these negative traits to members of the other party have increased significantly since the spring of 2016.
The share of Republicans who say Democrats are more closed-minded has increased substantially over this time period. In 2016, about half of Republicans said Democrats were more closed-minded than other Americans. Now, a clear majority say this – an increase of 12 percentage points. While the shift is more modest among Democrats, it is in the same direction .
Members of both parties are now substantially more likely to say those in the other party are more immoral than other Americans than they were three years ago. Today, 47% of Democrats say this of Republicans, up from 35% in 2016. The share of Republicans who say Democrats are more immoral than other Americans is 8 percentage points higher .
There has been little or no change in the shares of Republicans and Democrats saying that members of their opposing parties are lazier or more unintelligent than other Americans.
The Legal Fight Over Voting Rights During The Pandemic Is Getting Hotter
Or as former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican, told NPR, there are no “fair” maps in the discussion about how to draw voting districts — because what Democrats call “fair” maps are those, he believes, that favor them.
No, say voting rights groups and many Democrats — the only “fair” way to conduct an election is to admit as many voters as possible. Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams, who has charged authorities in her home state with suppressing turnout, named her public interest group Fair Fight Action.
Access vs. security
The pandemic has added another layer of complexity with the new emphasis it has put on voting by mail. President Trump says he opposes expanding voting by mail, and his allies, including White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, call the process rife with opportunities for fraud.
Even so, Trump and McEnany both voted by mail this year in Florida, and Republican officials across the country have encouraged voting by mail.
Democrats, who have made election security and voting access a big part of their political brand for several years, argue that the pandemic might discourage people from going to old-fashioned polling sites.
Partisans Say Their Differences With Other Party Extend Beyond Politics
Majorities in both parties say that, aside from political differences, people in the other party do not share many of their other values and goals. About six-in-ten Republicans say, thinking about more than just politics, Democrats do not share many of their other values and goals; 54% of Democrats say the same about Republicans.
In the current survey, politically attentive Republicans are especially likely to say Democrats do not share their nonpolitical values and goals. Among Republicans who follow government and public affairs most of the time, 70% say that, setting political differences aside, Democrats do not share many of their other values and goals. That compares with 53% of Republicans who follow government less often.
Among Democrats, the differences based on attentiveness to government and politics are more modest: 57% of highly attentive Democrats say Republicans do not share many of their other values and goals, compared with 52% of less politically attentive Democrats.
What Do Democrats And Republicans Have In Common How Are They Different
Who are the experts?Our certified Educators are real professors, teachers, and scholars who use their academic expertise to tackle your toughest questions. Educators go through a rigorous application process, and every answer they submit is reviewed by our in-house editorial team.
What these parties have in common is a belief in the basics of the American system. Both believe in a capitalist economy and a democratic goverment with free electionss and civil rights and civil liberties for all.
Outside of those basic ideas, there are a lot of other ideas. Here…
Democrats And Republicans Dislike Each Other Far Less Than Most Believe
A new study indicates that some of our political polarization is based on unfounded beliefs.
- Democrats and Republicans dislike and dehumanize one another roughly equally.
- At least 70% of both Republicans and Democrats overestimated how much the other group disliked and dehumanized their group.
Political polarization is a well-documented issue in the United States, and the schism between left and right can sometimes feel impossible to overcome. But a new study from the Peace and Conflict Neuroscience Lab at the Annenberg School for Communication and Beyond Conflict may offer some hope for the future.
Often, people’s actions towards a group they are not part of are motivated not only by their perceptions of that group, but also by how they think that group perceives them. In the case of American politics, this means that the way Democrats act toward Republicans isn’t just a result of what they think of Republicans but also of what they think Republicans think of Democrats, and vice versa.
The study, , found that Democrats do not dislike or dehumanize Republicans as much as Republicans think they do, and Republicans do not dislike or dehumanize Democrats as much as Democrats think they do. This finding could indicate that some of our political polarization is based on unfounded beliefs.
New Poll: Americans Overwhelmingly Support Voting By Mail Amid Pandemic
Traditionally, Republicans have tended to support higher barriers to voting and often focus on voter identification and security to protect against fraud. All the same, about half of GOP voters back expanding vote by mail in light of the pandemic.
Democrats tend to support lowering barriers and focus on making access for voters easier, with a view to encouraging engagement. They support expanding votes via mail too.
The next fight, in many cases, is about who and how many get what access via mail.
All this also creates a dynamic in which many political practitioners can’t envision a neutral compromise, because no matter what philosophy a state adopts, it’s perceived as zero-sum.
Illegal Immigration Is A Bigger Problem That Deportation Doesn’t Solve
People emigrate to America for a chance at a better life. We have always been a welcoming land. Democrats believe immigrants enter America with hope. We have a responsibility to be a beacon. The Left supports ways to allow illegal immigrants to stay in this country. This is particularly important if those people are paying taxes and working jobs. Most immigrants contribute to our country. They work hard jobs. They pay taxes. Democrats support penalizing companies who hire illegal immigrants as a first step to curbing illegal immigration.
Democrats believe that most immigration issues, including illegal immigration, are human rights issues. America has an obligation to help persecuted people. When they come to America, we should welcome them, not attack them.
Growing Shares Of Partisans Give Opposing Ratings To The Two Parties
Three-quarters of Republicans and 71% of Democrats now rate the members of their own party warmly and the other party coldly. In both parties, the shares holding this combination of views have steadily increased over the past three years.
The share of Republicans with this combination of views is 26 percentage points higher than it was just three years ago . Among Democrats, there has been a similar increase in the share with a warm view of Democrats and a cold view of Republicans over this period .
Men Older Partisans Most Likely To View The Other Party Very Coldly
In both parties, there are gender, age and educational differences in “very cold” ratings of members of the opposing party.
Men in both parties are more likely than women to give colder ratings to the members of the other party. About two-thirds of Republican and Democratic men give the other party a very cold rating.
Similarly, in both parties, younger adults are less likely than older people to give highly negative ratings to the members of the opposing party.
Yet the education differences in these attitudes differ among Republicans and Democrats. Nearly two-thirds of Democrats with at least a four-year college degree give Republicans a very cold rating. That compares with 51% of Democrats who have not attended college. The pattern is reversed among Republicans: 52% of Republicans with a college degree give Democrats a very cold rating, compared with 65% of those with no college experience.
Where Do Democrats And Republicans Stand On The Issue Of Healthcare
The chasm between the parties’ approach to providing healthcare to Americans couldn’t be more vast. Simply put, Democrats have had some form of healthcare reform on their agenda for nearly a century. Republicans not so much. They feel that the status quo is just fine. At the core is a philosophical disagreement about the role of government. Democrats believe that government should be responsible for the people in some ways, and Republicans believe that the less government, the better. In the current climate, this boils down to Democrats wanting to retain, improve, and expand the ACA, and Republicans working overtime to repeal it with no replacement.
Leaners Are Much Less Warm To Their Own Party Than Are Partisans
Compared with those who identify with one of the political parties, those who “lean” toward a party are considerably less likely to view members of their own party warmly. However, they are only modestly less likely to give a cold rating to the opposing party.
While about eight-in-ten of those who identify with a party say they have warm feelings toward the members of their own party, only about half of partisan leaners say the same.
Among Republicans leaners, 46% rate Republicans warmly, while about as many Democratic leaners rate Democrats warmly.
However, majorities of partisan leaners – and those who identify with a party – have negative opinions of members of the opposing party. About eight-in-ten partisan identifiers have a cold view of the other party compared with about seven-in-ten leaners .
Politically Attentive Have Stronger Feelings Toward Both Parties
Partisans who follow government and politics most closely are more likely than less attentive partisans to give a cold rating to the other party – and a warm rating to their own.
About nine-in-ten who say they follow government and public affairs most of the time give members of the other party a cold rating. By comparison, smaller majorities of those who follow government some of the time or less often give the opposing partisans cold ratings
The most politically attentive are also most likely to have warm views of their own party. Overwhelming majorities of partisans who say they follow government most of the time give members of their own party a warm rating . Narrower majorities of those who are less attentive to politics say the same.
What Do Democrats Believe A Summary Of Democratic Party Ideology
Although many Americans claim to be independent of either major political party, many more offer allegiance to one of two major parties in the United States – Republican and Democrat. Under a Republican administration, many citizens no longer understand what Democrats support. Thomas Jefferson founded what he called the Democratic-Republican Party in 1793. Decades later, Andrew Jackson split his coalition from the leading party in a bid for the White House and the current party Americans know as Democratic evolved.
The older of the two major parties today, Democrats are those Americans who believe in government by the people. As stated in the Preamble of the United States Constitution, this nation’s government was founded to be by, of, and for the people. Democrats strive to support this idea and to protect it.
How Is The Democratic Party Different From The Republican Party
Democrats are generally considered liberal, while Republicans are seen as conservative. The Democratic Party typically supports a larger government role in economic issues, backing regulations and social welfare programs. The Republicans, however, typically want a smaller government that is less involved in the economy. This contrary view on the size of government is reflected in their positions on taxes—Democrats favour a progressive tax to finance government’s expanded role, while Republicans support lower taxes for all. However, Republicans do support a large budget for the military, and they often aggressively pursue U.S. national security interests, even if that means acting unilaterally. Democrats, however, prefer multilateralism. On social issues, Democrats seek greater freedoms, while Republicans follow more traditional values, supporting government intervention in such matters. For example, Democrats generally back abortion rights, while Republicans don’t. In terms of geography, Democrats typically dominate in large cities, while Republicans are especially popular in rural areas.
Read more about the Republican Party.
Democrat Vs Republican: Where Did The Parties Get Their Names
In the United States, the words Democrat and Republican are widely used to mean the two major American political parties: the Democratic Party and the Republican Party.
We often hear these words used to describe things the parties do or the people connected to them. For example, former Vice President Joe Biden is the Democratic candidate for president, and members of the Republican Party are often simply called Republicans.
The English words democratic and republicanactually have long, complex histories that go far beyond red and blue states or donkeys and elephants. Let’s take a closer look at where these two words came from and how they came to be used in the names of the two political parties.
Both Republicans And Democrats Used To Believe In Compromise
WalterG. Moss is a professor emeritus of history at Eastern MichiganUniversity, Contributing Editor of HNN, and author of “”. For a list of his recent books and onlinepublications, click here.
JohnMcCain’s recent dramaticappeal on the Senatefloor included these words: “The most revered members of thisinstitution accepted the necessity of compromise in order to makeincremental progress on solving America’s problems.” He was right.Six years ago I criticizedSpeaker of the House John Boehner for saying that he rejected theword “compromise.” And at that time I referred to some of thewords below by and about others who advocated conciliation andworking together for the common good.
Inhis Ben Franklin biography, Walter Isaacson wrotethat “we like to think of our nation’s founders as men withunwavering fealty to high-minded principles. To some extent theywere. But when they gathered in Philadelphia during the summer of1787 to write the Constitution, they showed that they were alsosomething just as great and often more difficult to be: compromisers.In that regard they reflected not just the classical virtues of honorand integrity but also the Enlightenment’s values of balance,order, tolerance, scientific calibration and respect for otherpeople’s beliefs.”
Inhis Profiles in Courage,future President John Kennedy stated:
Democrats Think Many Republicans Sincere And Point To Policy
Democrats, however, were somewhat more generous in their answers. More than four in ten Democratic voters felt that most Republican voters had the country’s best interests at heart . And many tried their best to answer from the other’s perspective. A 45-year-old male voter from Ohio imagined that as a Republican, he was motivated by Republicans’ “harsh stance on immigration; standing up for the 2nd Amendment; promised tax cuts.” A 30-year-old woman from Colorado felt that Republican votes reflected the desires to “stop abortion… stop gay marriage from ruining our country… and give us our coal jobs back.”
Other Democrats felt that their opponents were mostly motivated by the GOP’s “opposition to Obamacare,” “lower taxes” and to support a party that “reduced unemployment.”
Why Is The Democratic Party Associated With The Colour Blue
The idea of using colours to denote political parties was popularized by TV news broadcasts, which used colour-coded maps during presidential elections. However, there was no uniformity in colour choices, with different media outlets using different colours. Some followed the British tradition of using blue for conservatives and red for liberals . However, during the 2000 U.S. presidential election—and the lengthy battle to determine the winner—prominent news sources denoted Republicans as red and Democrats as blue, and these associations have persisted.
Read more about the U.S. presidential election of 2000.
Government Is Not The Solution To Domestic Social Problems
This is pretty universal among Republicans. Government should not be providing solutions to problems that confront people . Those problems should be solved by the people themselves. A Republican would say that relying on the government to solve problems is a crutch that makes people lazy and feel entitled to receive things without working for them.
Religion And The Belief In God Is Vital To A Strong Nation
Republicans are generally accepting only of the Judeo-Christian belief system. For most Republicans, religion is absolutely vital in their political beliefs and the two cannot be separated. Therefore, separation of church and state is not that important to them. In fact, they believe that much of what is wrong has been caused by too much secularism.
Those are the four basic Republican tenets: small government, local control, the power of free markets, and Christian authority. Below are other things they believe that derive from those four ideas.
Democrats Return The Favor: Republicans Uninformed Or Self
The 429 Democratic voters in our sample returned the favor and raised many of the same themes. Democrats inferred that Republicans must be “VERY ill-informed,” or that “Fox news told me to vote for Republicans.” Or that Republicans are “uneducated and misguided people guided by what the media is feeding them.”
Many also attributed votes to individual self-interest – whereas GOP voters feel Democrats want “free stuff,” many Democrats believe Republicans think that “I got mine and don’t want the libs to take it away,” or that “some day I will be rich and then I can get the benefits that rich people get now.”
Many used the question to express their anger and outrage at the other side. Rather than really try to take the position of their opponents, they said things like, “I like a dictatorial system of Government, I’m a racist, I hate non-whites.”
Democrats And Republicans Arent Watching The Same Pandemic
This week’s vice presidential debate was a face off not only between Vice President President Mike Pence and California Senator Kamala Harris, but a head-to-head matchup of two ways of understanding the United States’ COVID-19 pandemic. As Pence framed it, the Donald Trump Administration had been dealt a bad hand, but has risen to the challenge in a way Harris and her running mate, former Vice President Joe Biden, could not have. Meanwhile, Harris declared the Trump Administration’s response as “the greatest failure of any presidential administration,” pointing to the 210,000-plus deaths and more than 7.5 million infections in the U.S. so far as evidence.
These divergent narratives underscore just how far apart Americans overall have become in their interpretation of the pandemic—and the idea that people are increasingly rejecting reality for their own preferred set of facts. As an Oct. 8 poll of 9,220 Americans conducted by the Pew Research Center between Aug. 31 and Sept. 7 by reveals, Democrats and Republicans are sharply divided on how well the U.S. has done in fighting COVID-19. They’re also split on whether the outbreak was as big of a deal as it has been made out to be. Moreover, they’re paying less attention to the crisis overall, even as it shows signs of worsening once again.
