Why do you think America’s political landscape has become so polarized in recent decades?

📱 Social media (19%) – "I think social media is a huge driver in the polarization, especially due to inflammatory headlines. With the rise of social media, news platforms have increasingly used inflammatory headlines to drive clicks and ad revenue. However, too many people on social media take these headlines at face value and spread those articles without reading or understanding the underlying facts, which leads to mass outrage driven primarily by a headline that was at best, misleading, at worst, an outright lie or extreme exaggeration. But people love to cling to the outrage!"

🤑 Money in politics (6%) – "Until campaigns do not need to fundraise and accept money from huge corporations and wealthy people (and thus give them something in return), the American people will not be truly represented and I think people are starting to realize that."

📺 Cable news (9%) – "Not so much cable news, but cable opinion shows masquerading as news shows, for both parties."

🙅‍♀️ Lack of community in everyday life (5%) – "I truly believe that the fading of a sense of community impacts many things in our lives. People don't know their neighbors and have little empathy for them. It's easy to draw a line in the sand when you don't know or care to know someone else's perspective."

☝️ All of the above (57%) – "Social media algorithms create an echo chamber, presenting us with the views we already hold, and also isolate us from other members of our community. That isolation from real people who may be different from us just intensifies that echo chamber and makes it easier to dehumanize “the others”. Cable news needing views and clicks has lead to intense fear mongering through misleading headlines and even outright lies in some cases, furthering the dehumanization and fear of anything different than what we already know. And the money in politics has eroded the public’s trust in our government because rich donors buy the policies they want instead of politicians voting for the policies their constituents want. This makes people feel like the process is unfair to them, and the rich donors/cable news/social media echo chambers encourage people to blame those scary “others” who are “cheating the system” instead of the true culprits."

• "Single source media is driving the division in America. Your personal choice news source tells us what you believe, who you believe and how you will vote."

• Social Media paired with cable news amplified voices who likely don't have all the correct information but are great faces and good at pandering and stirring the pot. Pairing that with the money in politics to further amplify both, and that just adds to polarized thoughts. But it's the Covid quarantining that forced people to silo away and stay fully in their own little bubble, not hearing or seeing normal opposing views as they normally would."

💔 Other (4%) – "Lack of trust and honesty. Stretching the truth is typical in politics but the outright lying has become pervasive. There is no middle ground only far right or far left, and if a politician takes a middle ground stance for the good of the country his or her party tries to disown them."