{"id":11853,"date":"2013-06-14T10:50:24","date_gmt":"2013-06-14T14:50:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=11853"},"modified":"2013-06-14T10:50:24","modified_gmt":"2013-06-14T14:50:24","slug":"educating-voters-in-a-time-of-political-polarization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=11853","title":{"rendered":"educating voters in a time of political polarization"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post is cross-posted<\/a> from the Democracy Fund blog. It’s one in a series of posts about our evaluations of initiatives <\/a>funded by the Democracy Fund. <\/em><\/p>\n

During the 2012 campaign season, the Democracy Fund\u2019s grantees experimented with a wide range of strategies to educate and engage the public. Some produced videos and other educational content to directly inform the views of voters. Others worked with journalists to improve the information that the public receives through local and national media. In all cases, CIRCLE\u2019s evaluations found that the public\u2019s polarization made it significantly more difficult for these efforts to achieve their goals; polarized individuals often resisted the messages and opportunities offered to them.<\/p>\n

Americans perceive the nation as deeply divided along political lines. In February 2013, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center<\/a>, 76 percent of registered voters said that American politics had become more divisive lately and 74 percent believed that this trend was harmful. Academics disagree somewhat about the degree of polarization and whether it has become worse over time, but few doubt that political polarization can exacerbate fear and distrust, prevent people from understanding alternative perspectives and considering challenges to their own views, and reduce the chances of finding common ground.<\/p>\n

The challenges of engaging polarized citizens emerged clearly in CIRCLE\u2019s evaluations. For example, Flackcheck.org produced parody videos that taught viewers to reject deceptive campaign advertisements. In testing whether these videos were effective, we showed representative samples of Americans real campaign advertisements that we considered misleading. One example, \u201cObamaville,\u201d produced by Rick Santorum\u2019s campaign, displayed President Obama\u2019s face alternating with that of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on a television screen in a post-apocalyptic setting:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

More than 80% of Democrats but fewer than 20% of Republicans considered this video \u201cinvalid and very unfair.\u201d Among the Republican viewers, some made comments like this:<\/p>\n