That leads to alienation at the national level, she said — something she certainly feels when she sees what comes out of Washington. “When you have a base that’s a minority of what general Americans think, but they’re the loudest voices in the room, that’s who politicians listen to,” Kiessling said.
Polarisation has transformed some states into single-party dominions, further alienating people like Mark Short, a Republican who lives in Dana Point, California.
“In California, I kind of feel that I throw my vote away every time, and this is just what you get,” said Short, 63, a retired businessman.
The poll shows that the vast majority of Americans — 71 per cent— think what most Americans want should be highly important when laws and policies are made, but only 48 per cent think that’s actually true in practice.
And views are even more negative when it comes to specific issues: About two-thirds of adults say policies on immigration, government spending, abortion policy and gun policy are not representative of most Americans’ views, and nearly that many say the same about the economy as well as gender identity and LGBT issues.
More than half also say policies poorly reflect what Americans want on health care and the environment.
Joseph Derito, an 81-year-old retired baker in Elmyra, New York, sees immigration policy as not representing the views of most Americans.
“The government today is all for the people who have nothing — a lot of them are capable of working but get help,” said Derito, a white political independent who leans Republican and voted for Trump. “They just want to give these people everything.”
Sandra Wyatt, a 68-year-old retired data collection worker and Democrat in Cincinnati, blames Trump for what she sees as an erosion in democracy.
“When he got in there, it was like, man, you’re trying to take us back to the day, before all the rights and privileges everybody fought for,” said Wyatt, who is Black, adding that she’s voted previously for Republicans as well.
She sees those bad dynamics as lingering after Trump’s presidency. “We always knew there was racism but now they’re emboldened enough to go around and shoot people because of the colour of their skin,” Wyatt said.
Stanley Hobbs, a retired autoworker in Detroit and a Democrat, blames “a few Republicans” for what he sees as democracy’s erosion in the US. He sees those GOP politicians as beholden to a cabal of big businesses and points to issues like abortion as examples of how the laws no longer represent the views of the majority of Americans.
He is trying to stay optimistic.
“It seems like this always happens in the US and we always prevail,” Hobbs said, recalling how American politicians sympathetic to Nazi Germany gained prominence before World War II. “I just hope we prevail this time.”
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