How Perception Gaps Fuel America’s Political and Cultural Conflicts

It’s no secret that American life has become more atomized in recent years. Shared spaces that have historically given people the opportunity to connect with others have either seen a decline in participation (such as churches and civic groups) or become ideologically segregated (like social media and even workplaces). Meanwhile, more people are increasingly isolated in political and cultural bubbles—neighborhoods and online communities wherein they’re surrounded predominantly, if not exclusively, by others just like them.

The insularity of these bubbles has bred more estrangement between Americans, creating less understanding and, correspondingly, a greater propensity for conflict.

Indeed, misperceptions about other groups—and how extreme they are—is a likely culprit behind the country’s growing tribalism. In 2019, the group More In Common (MIC) published a report showing that many Americans believed that a greater share of partisans (55 percent) held more extreme views than actually did (30 percent). The group’s previous research has found that the most extreme flanks of the two parties are also the smallest segments of their respective coalitions, and each makes up less than ten percent of the total population:

• Progressive Activists have strong ideological views and very high levels of engagement with political issues. They feel more secure than any other group, which perhaps frees them to devote more attention to larger issues of social justice in their society. They have an outsized role in public debates, even though they make up a small portion of the total population: about eight percent.

• Devoted Conservatives are the counterpart to the Progressive Activists, but at the other end of the spectrum. They are deeply engaged with politics and hold strident, uncompromising views. They feel that America is embattled, and they perceive themselves as the last defenders of traditional values that are under threat. They make up an even smaller six percent of the country.

Pew Research has produced similar findings. In their 2021 typology study, the “progressive left” was only six percent of the population and 12 percent of self-identified Democrats—the smallest Democratic faction in both cases. On the Republican side, however, “faith and flag conservatives” were a slightly larger ten percent of the population, and they tied with the “populist right” as the largest share of the GOP coalition at 23 percent. So, while they remain a small portion of American society overall, they have significant influence in Republican circles.

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Importantly, though, both the MIC and Pew studies considered a majority of the country to be varying shades of moderate (or, at least, not “extreme”). This mirrors other polling as well. The 2024 AP VoteCast post-election survey found that a plurality (34 percent) of voters self-identified as “moderate” while another 39 percent were only “somewhat” liberal or conservative. Gallup’s early 2025 poll measuring Americans’ self-reported ideology showed almost the exact same numbers.

Even some traditional partisans aren’t totally obstinate in their views. In fact, MIC had one point of possible optimism for conservatives: they considered “traditional liberals” to be part of the “exhausted majority,” noting that although they hold many clearly liberal views, they also “have a more diverse range of opinions, seem more concerned about the country’s divisions, and are more committed to compromise.”

Unfortunately, despite this reality, Americans continue to overestimate the prevalence of extreme groups and also beliefs. For instance, Democrats believe that a majority (53 percent) of Republicans hold extreme views, but that number is closer to just one-third (34 percent) based on MIC’s metrics. Democrats especially struggle to accurately gauge Republicans’ views on issues related to race and immigration, perceiving that only about half of them believe immigration can be good for America and that racism is still a problem in society—even as those figures are closer to 80 percent.

Republicans similarly have a hard time nailing down where Democrats stand on a host of issues. They believe that fully 85 percent of Democrats think that “most police are bad people,” while the real number is about half that (48 percent—still high, but not even a majority, let alone nearly all of them). In the other direction, Republicans sell Democrats short on patriotism, believing that only about half (54 percent) are proud to be an American when that figure is actually a whopping 82 percent.

Even independents can’t always correctly judge where others stand on the issues of the day, a sign that less partisan people also sometimes struggle to assess things accurately. But MIC noted that some groups were much worse at making these judgments than others. Perhaps expectedly, this includes the wings of each party (progressive activists and devoted conservatives). It was another group, however, that was particularly surprising to me: highly educated Democrats. MIC explains:

Education is intended to make us better informed about the world, so we’d expect that the more educated you become, the more you understand what other Americans think. In fact, the more educated a person is, the worse their Perception Gap—with one critical exception. This trend only holds true for Democrats, not Republicans. In other words, while Republicans’ misperceptions of Democrats do not improve with higher levels of education, Democrats’ understanding of Republicans actually gets worse with every additional degree they earn. This effect is so strong that Democrats without a high school diploma are three times more accurate than those with a postgraduate degree.

Why are more educated Democrats so much worse at accurately assessing others’ beliefs? They continue:

The evidence suggests that it’s likely because they have fewer Republican friends. Highly educated Democrats are the most likely to say that “most of my friends” share their political beliefs. The same is not true of Republicans—more educated Republicans report having about as many Democrat friends as less educated Republicans. And Democrats whose friends are similar to them politically have a significantly wider Perception Gap than those with more political diversity in their friendship groups.

In other words, highly educated Democrats are among the most likely to live in ideological bubbles, rarely coming into contact with people who hold different views from them and thus warping the way they view those people. It’s a reminder of what we lose when we close ourselves off to diversity of all kinds, but especially diversity of opinion. When we don’t know someone from a particular group, the default for many of us is to fill in that gap with a stereotype based on the minimal representation we see of them. And this often comes from the loudest—and most extreme—voices in the group in question.

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Additional studies have found that America’s atomization is growing worse. Last October, just before the election, The New York Times’ Upshot published a fascinating analysis tracking where millions of Americans had moved since 2020—and how, whether intentionally or not, it has further facilitated political segregation. What they found:

Across all movers, Republicans chose neighborhoods Donald J. Trump won by an average of 19 percentage points in 2020, while Democrats chose neighborhoods President Biden won by the opposite margin (also 19 points). In total, movers started in neighborhoods 31 percentage points apart; they ended in neighborhoods 38 points apart. Across the country, the result is a widening gap between blue neighborhoods and red ones.

The Times took care to note that these moves were not always explicitly based on political considerations, though sometimes they can be.

Previous research has found that most people don’t intentionally seek out politically homogenous areas, but instead share similar preferences with people who vote as they do, with Democrats favoring cities and Republicans favoring the country, on average. A 2015 study, however, found that people favor properties in neighborhoods that reflect their partisan identity.

Regardless of whether the motivation for moving is explicitly political, the phenomenon of partisan self-sorting is real—and it has real consequences.

America’s political and cultural conflicts are reaching a fever pitch, and something has to give. Most people surely don’t want to go the way of total ruin, marked by violence between neighbors and possibly even family members. We’ve seen that story before; it doesn’t end well.

The only other option is for Americans who abhor the idea of that future to work together and chart a different one. This may be easier said than done—after all, as the Times analysis showed, the formation of our bubbles isn’t always intentional. But if we hope to keep the country’s experiment in self-government alive for another 250 years, working to puncture those bubbles and revitalize America’s civic spaces must be.