As we close out 2024, something important is unfolding in America that hasn’t happened in many years: We’re more united in our outlook about our country’s institutions. There is rising and perhaps unexpected alignment between Americans of different walks of life, from left to right. Granted, this alignment may at first glance seem like a problem, for what unites us, increasingly, is what we distrust. But consider this: We have thought of ourselves as so divided for so long, might there be some upside to starting the new year knowing we aren’t quite as polarized as we thought and that people with whom we assumed we had nothing in common also believe our institutions must do better?
Since the early 1990s, majorities of Americans have said that our nation is “greatly divided when it comes to our most important values,” except for the year after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. In the weeks before the 2024 elections, Americans reported a record-high level of division. Fewer than one-fifth said we were mostly “united and in agreement about our most important values,” and that figure held true for Republicans, Democrats and independents alike.
But as a pollster, I was intrigued to see that the November elections pumped the brakes a bit on our previously widening political divisions. We didn’t move further apart; if anything, these elections produced a slight depolarization of our country along a number of fault lines, as 89 percent of counties in America shifted rightward.
The gap between how men and women voted shrank by three percentage points, a notable result in a campaign where some political experts expected a record gender gap. Voters under 30 years old and voters over 65 — two groups that were worlds apart in the 2020 presidential election, voting nearly 30 points in opposite directions — came closer together in 2024, around a dozen points apart in their preference for president. Of particular note was the lessening of racial polarization; while white voters remained about as supportive of Donald Trump this time around, nonwhite voters shifted over a dozen points in his direction.
What we are experiencing in our society is a reorientation of many of our existing political divides. Organizations, professions and institutions that were recently trusted by at least one side of the political aisle have come in for greater scrutiny, with new bipartisan alignment on skepticism.
Take business. Not long ago, many Republican Party leaders and plenty of G.O.P. voters believed in the value of business, the need to protect business from government interference and the virtues of job creators. In 2012, for instance, only 23 percent of Republicans said they had “very little” or no trust in “big business,” while 38 percent had “quite a lot” or “a great deal” of trust. By 2023, those numbers had flipped, with high trust in big business falling by 20 points. The partisan gap on this, at times quite large, has closed entirely, with Republicans almost catching up to Democrats in their disdain for large corporations. And in November’s election, Mr. Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, ran on a populist message that included skepticism of big business and the financial and hiring practices of many companies, including their use of immigrants in the labor force.
