Americans are more comfortable listening to opposing views if they're confident their side will win anyway
Americans are happy to engage in a productive dialogue with people who think differently than they do, Pew Research finds, if they live in areas where their political perspective is the strong majority.
Republicans who live in counties where President Trump won easily were about 20 percent more likely than those in blue counties to say it is good to address political differences to try to find common ground. For Democrats living in Clinton counties, the same was true.
For partisans living in hostile territory, conversation feels risky. Republicans and Democrats alike living in counties where the opposite party's candidate made a strong win were more likely to say it is wise to avoid discussing political differences, because that will only make things worse.
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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