Why can’t we be friends?

In a series of surveys published on Tuesday by The Economist and YouGov, Americans from both sides of the political aisle ranked 72 different people and policies on a scale of 1 to 10, in the hopes of answering a single question: can Democrats and Republicans agree on anything?

📊 The results… As you might expect, both parties held very different views on essentially every single US politician or political organization – with the exception of centrist Democratic senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema.

• Policy-wise, the only proposal to garner the support of more than half of Republicans and Democrats was capping the price of insulin at $35. This was backed by 80+% of members from both parties.
• Away from politics, both sides agreed on the importance of nurses, farmers, construction workers, and the working-class – all of whom scored above a 7 out of 10 among both groups.

🇺🇸🤝 Zoom out: While the differences between Republicans and Democrats may be large in certain areas, they’re nonexistent in others. An August 2020 survey from the University of Maryland – based on in-depth surveys of more than 80,000 Americans – found majorities from both parties agree on nearly 150 key policy positions across more than a dozen policy areas.