The Vanishing Center of American Democracy

This report may well be the best thing I've ever read on American political ideology, or at least the best on the current plague of political polarization.

It's a keeper, for sure.

From the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia, "The Emergence of a New Culture War."

Read "The Vanishing Center of American Democracy," a revealing report on American political culture, here: https://t.co/ZaB589EDtq pic.twitter.com/8FZubi4T8M

— IASCulture (@iasculture) October 12, 2016

From the press release:

The Vanishing Center of American Democracy, a report based on an in-depth survey just completed by the Gallup Organization for the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia, suggests that the depth of public disaffection exhibited during the 2016 presidential election may reveal the emergence of a new culture war, one marked by both divergent values and social divisions.

The dramatic twists and turns of the 2016 presidential race exposed profound shifts in America’s political culture that challenge the legitimacy of the governing institutions of our democracy, according to report authors James Davison Hunter and Carl Desportes Bowman. The Vanishing Center reveals the multiplying fault lines of a culture war that pits many of America’s highly educated and prosperous against the less-educated and economically struggling.

The Institute's 2016 Survey of American Political Culture limns the contours and depths of Americans’ dissatisfaction not only with the economy, electoral politics, and our political leaders but with the very underpinnings of our political culture.

The full results of the survey, along with The Vanishing Center, were released at noon Oct. 12 at the Gallup headquarters in Washington, D.C. The report’s authors, James Davison Hunter, author of Culture Wars, and Carl Desportes Bowman, IASC survey research director, as well as New York Times columnist Thomas Edsall, and Professor Nancy Isenberg, author of White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America.

The nationally representative survey took place between Aug. 8 and Aug. 31, with more than 1,900 Americans taking part.

Read The Vanishing Center of American Democracy here.