US News and World Report
By Susan Milligan
August 02, 2018
AMERICANS ARE DEEPLY divided when it comes to matters of gender and race. And those divisions fall along gender, racial and party lines, according to a comprehensive survey by the Public Religion Research Institute, an independent group that studies the intersection of religion, culture and public policy.
The findings suggest that the culture wars in America are alive and well, fewer than 100 days before midterm elections that could determine who controls the House and Senate. The issues themselves might not be pivotal in this election, in which immigration, health care, national security and the economy are at the top of voters’ minds, according to recent polls. But the questions PRRI surveyed – same-sex marriage; religious liberty; and how women, immigrants and African-Americans are treated – reveal that Americans of different genders, races and political parties see things in starkly different ways.
“We’re still sort of fighting a culture war, but the terrain has shifted dramatically,” says Robert Jones, CEO of the research group. In 2004, for example, it “would have been unthinkable” that such a strong majority of Americans accepted gay marriage, he notes. But while general public opinion on that issue and other social issues has moved, the divisions between political parties and other groups are dramatic, he says.
A record number of Americans – 64 percent – support the right of same-sex couples to marry, continuing a trend that started before the 2015 Supreme Court decision guaranteeing the right and accelerated since the ruling. But a plurality of Republicans, 47 percent, believes same-sex marriage should be illegal, slightly more than the 44 percent who say such unions should be allowed. For Democrats, support for gay marriage is an overwhelming 80 percent, and among independents, 67 percent support it.
Attitudes toward wedding vendors who are reluctant to provide cakes or floral arrangement for same-sex couples on religious grounds has shifted slightly against the gay or lesbian affianced. A year ago, 41 percent of Americans said flower-arrangers or bakers should be allowed to refuse service if it violates their religious views. Forty-six percent feel that way now. But again, the picture changes according to party and gender: Seventy-three percent of Republicans sided with those who want to be allowed to deny such services, compared to 27 percent of Democrats and 45 percent of independents. Gender was a lesser, but still significant, factor: Fifty-two percent of men think it’s OK to deny wedding services to gay and lesbian couples, while just 40 percent of women agree.
And in a year when the elephant in the room is embodied by the Republican president himself, people of different parties, gender and sexual orientation have dramatically different opinions of how President Donald Trump is treating women, immigrants and LGBT people.
Americans as a whole are twice as likely to say Trump is hurting women, rather than helping them – 38 percent to 19 percent, respectively. But 45 percent of women, compared to 30 percent of men, say Trump’s policies have been harmful to women. Republicans are exponentially more likely to believe Trump’s policies are helping women than hurting them – 41 percent say Trump is helping, while 9 percent say he is hurting women. And Democrats have the same lopsided, but opposite view: Seven in 10 say Trump has been bad for women, while just 3 percent believe he has been good for females.
And while there is greater consensus among Americans on how Trump is behaving toward immigrants – 6 in 10 say Trump’s policies have been hurtful to immigrants, while 16 percent say they’ve been helpful – the numbers are very different when broken down by party and race. Eight in 10 African-Americans and 7 in 10 Hispanics say Trump’s policies toward immigrants are hurtful. Barely half of whites, 54 percent, agree with them. The partisan divide is even more dramatic: Eighty-nine percent of Democrats find Trump’s immigration policies hurtful, compared to a third of Republicans who feel that way.
“The culture wars have shifted from the ‘values voter’ model to what I call the ‘nostalgia voter’ model,” Jones says. In other words, it’s not social issues themselves that divide Americans – it’s how different people see America and what they think it should look like.
The PRRI numbers could be instructive this year, when polls show that Trump – while not being on the ballot – is a big factor in voters’ decisions about House and Senate candidates. A record 68 percent of registered voters in a June Pew Research Center poll said control of Congress would be a factor in their votes this fall. Further, 6 in 10 said they considered their down-ballot vote to essentially be a vote for Trump, 26 percent, or against him, 34 percent.
The numbers are reflective of what Democrats hope will be a big political nose-thumbing at the president in November, perhaps flipping control of the House and – less likely – the Senate to Democratic control. Democrats are bragging about “generic polls” that say Americans would prefer Democrats to run Congress instead of Republicans.
Democrats believed that, too, in 2014, when July and early August generic polls showed Democrats favored to run Capitol Hill. By November of that year – the last midterm – the GOP had gained ground in the polls. Republicans ended up picking up 13 House seats and retaking control of the U.S. Senate for the first time since 2006.
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