Left-right split is far bigger in the U.S. than in Europe
The divide between Americans’ political ideologies is widening, a major study finds.
WASHINGTON — Anyone who has watched U.S. politics in recent years knows that a widening gap between left and right, Democrat and Republican, has defined our era. Hardly a week passes without fresh evidence.
Americans — and some Europeans — have often talked of similar divisions in Western Europe’s major democracies. Divisive issues like Brexit in the U.K. and the rights of religious minorities in France drive comparisons to U.S. polarization.
But the U.S. differs notably from those other countries: Our ideological gaps are much wider on big cultural issues, according to a major new study by the Pew Research Center.
Pew began to study the comparison during Britain’s divisive debate over leaving the European Union and the campaign leading up to Donald Trump’s election as president. Researchers “really wanted to see what the concepts of nationalism and cosmopolitanism mean in the modern era,” said Pew’s Laura Silver, one of the lead authors.
What they found provides insights into America’s divides and how those differ from other wealthy democracies. The numbers, based on surveys of more than 4,000 adults in the U.S., France, Germany and the U.K., provide important context for understanding the Republican Party’s continuing evolution away from the country’s business establishment and toward becoming a more populist party of the right.
On several big issues, the center of gravity among conservatives in the U.S. stands further to the right than it does among their ideological counterparts in Europe, Pew’s numbers show. On the other end of the spectrum, liberals in the U.S. have moved further to the left in the last four years.
A large share of U.S. conservatives support restrictionist views of national identity, such as believing that “truly belonging” requires being native born or being a Christian. A large number also believe that discrimination against minority groups is an exaggerated problem.
Since 2016, across all four countries surveyed, the public has shifted toward less restrictive stands on issues of national identity. In Europe, that shift took place across the ideological spectrum. In the U.S., it did not.
U.S. liberals moved left — in some cases further left than their European counterparts. U.S. conservatives, however, started off further to the right than Europeans and did not move.
“Generally, we saw gaps closing in Europe,” Silver said. “The gap didn’t close comparably in the U.S.”
In 2016, for example, majorities in both the U.S. and the U.K., and about half of those surveyed in France, said that to be “truly” a member of their societies, it was at least somewhat important to be native born. About a third of Germans held the same view. Now, the share holding that view has dropped a lot in all four countries — to about 1 in 3 in the U.S., U.K. and France and 1 in 4 in Germany. Each of the national surveys has a margin of error of about 4 percentage points. In the three European countries, the drop did not vary much by ideology. In the U.S., liberals shifted much more than conservatives.
Pew also asked if being Christian was an important part of being “truly American” or British, French or German. The share saying yes declined in all four countries. So has the share saying that to truly belong, a person must observe the country’s customs and traditions.
As with the question about native birth, however, in the U.S., the overall decline has been accompanied by a widening gap. On the question of following national customs, the share of self-identified liberals and moderates calling it an important part if being truly American declined about 20 points. The share of conservatives did not budge.
Responses on a fourth topic — language — underscored the unique nature of the U.S. divide.
In the three European countries, close to 9 in 10 people across the board say being able to speak the dominant language is at least somewhat important to belonging. That’s also true of about 9 in 10 American conservatives.
But among American liberals, that view has declined sharply over the last four years: Just over half now say that speaking English is at least somewhat important for belonging in the U.S.
On that question, it’s American liberals who stand out from their European counterparts; on others, U.S. conservatives stand out. About a third of U.S. conservatives, for example, say that being native born is an important part of belonging; in the three European countries, no more than 1 in 4 say that.
Asked which is the bigger problem, people not recognizing discrimination where it does exist or people seeing discrimination where it does not exist, majorities in Britain, Germany and the U.S. said failure to recognize discrimination is the bigger problem. In France, the public closely splits on that issue. In all four countries, a gap separates left and right on that question, with conservatives more likely to say the bigger problem is claiming discrimination where it doesn’t exist. In the U.S., however, the ideological gap is twice as large as in the U.K. or France and four times larger than in Germany.
Similarly, the ideological split in the U.S. is about twice as large as in any of the European countries when people are asked if their country would be better off if it “sticks to its traditions and way of life” versus being “open to changes regarding its traditions and way of life.”
Religion is one of the factors that contributes to the larger ideological gap in the U.S. America remains more religious than most European societies, and white Christians, in particular, have become a mainstay for Republicans.
“Christians stand out on many issues from non-Christians,” Silver said. “They are more likely to say there is a great deal of discrimination against Christians in their society and to say that being Christian is essential to truly being part of their country’s citizenry than non-Christians. They are also more likely to say other key factors — including speaking the language and being born in the country — are essential components of national belonging.”
Not only are Christians a larger share of the population in the U.S., American Christians are more likely than European ones to identify as being on the right politically, Silver said; 52% of U.S. Christians did so, compared with 48% in France, 36% in the U.K. and 27% in Germany.
The positions taken by a large share of U.S. conservatives put them in line with European supporters of right-wing, populist parties such as the National Front in France and the nationalist Alternative for Germany, the survey found.
That, in turn, helps explain the continuing strength of the populist faction of the GOP. Trump benefited from the rise of populism in the party, but as the Pew survey helps make clear, he didn’t invent it, and it’s not likely to dissipate whenever he departs from the political scene.