Local governments are uniquely positioned to combat growing national polarization a new study on Wednesday from the nonprofit research organization CivicPulse and the Carnegie Corporation of New York.
The study, which included interviews with more than 1,400 local elected politicians and local civil service leaders, found that 87% of respondents said political polarization had a “very” or “very” negative impact on the country. However, only 31% of local officials said that political polarization has such a negative impact on their local communities.
“The political polarization that dominates the media at the national level doesn’t really dominate life at the local level,” Louise Richardson, president of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, a philanthropic foundation that supports research and education, told NBC News. about the report.
Richardson added that it’s “very reassuring” that communities “whether they’re broadly liberal, conservative or mixed … are engaged in the day-to-day business of reaching compromises, making policies to meet their day-to-day needs.” components.”
Smaller communities are less polarized
The survey, which broke down responses by population size, found that local officials in smaller communities saw less of the negative effects of polarization than larger communities.
While 46% of officials in communities with 50,000 or more residents said their communities were “a lot” or “a lot” negatively affected by polarization, only 28% of local officials in communities with 1,000 to 10,000 residents said the same.
One of those local officials is Township Supervisor Jeff Sorensen of Cooper Charter Township, Michigan, a community of about 11,000 people. Sorensen, The Republican told NBC News that community officials must run as Democrats, Republicans or independents, but once they’re in office, “those hats come off and we serve the people who live in our districts.”
“It’s a really great situation here,” he said.
Local officials interviewed for the study attributed the lack of negative polarization in their communities to several factors, including the fact that local government officials and their community members spend more time together, which allows them to bond over common values and interests outside of politics.
An elected official from California told the survey’s authors, “The more one interacts with people with different views, the more one realizes that we are all human, the more we have in common.” Wave a flag (or a gun) in their face when you sit next to them at a Lion’s Club event.”
Respondents also noted that solutions to local problems such as potholes, sewage problems and traffic light failures often do not fall along clear partisan lines.
“Political affiliation and underlying philosophy do not play a meaningful role in addressing community needs for things like infrastructure,” wrote one elected official from a small New Jersey municipality in response to survey questions.
Sorensen added that sometimes local issues need to be resolved within days or hours, and bickering between parties slows down the process.
For example, he cited a situation in 2018 in which local officials learned that a local drinking water source was contaminated with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS chemicals, at nearly three times the legal limit.
Officials across the city line “come together and drained the city of Parchment’s water system for 72 hours, forcing the voters of Kalamazoo and Parchment and Cooper to drink clean water during that time.”
Sorensen added that just 12 hours before the emergency, officials with the help of city and county officials had thousands of water transfers to residents.
“Everybody works together and doesn’t worry about who’s paying for something,” he said. “It’s something you look at as a local collaboration, and it’s something that I and others in the township government are trying to build.”
The study found that political polarization affected the attitudes of community leaders less than their constituents, with 36% of respondents saying community members were “a lot” or “a lot” affected, while only 23% said the same about attitudes. among elected officials.
Emily Holmes, vice chairwoman of the North Strabane Township board of supervisors in Pennsylvania, told NBC News that election season in a primary battleground can be “exhausting,” but “I’m celebrating more as a local and not as much as a local elected official.”
“I think a lot of it has to do with the dynamics of the board members and how they interact with each other,” said Holmes, a Democrat. “Do you have divisive members on your board who bring the national into local politics?
He said he hasn’t seen a negative shift in partisanship on the board, but “I believe it’s a sensitive situation and could change at any time.”
Tensions have increased during the election season
The study found that polarization has a profound effect on local governments around elections, as they are typically the ones collecting and counting ballots, hiring poll workers and actually managing federal and state elections.
“You get into this weird situation where, even in communities of only 5,000 people, if you feel anxiety about a federal election, your channel to express that anxiety is maybe to go and be hostile toward it. , your city council member,” Nathan Lee, founder and managing director of CivicPulse, told NBC News.
He added that sometimes local officials bear the brunt of people’s frustrations with federal elections because they are more accessible to community members than federal or even state elected officials.
Local officials “are the front lines for people who want to voice their concerns, and sometimes those concerns are expressed respectfully, and unfortunately most of the time they’re not,” Lee said.
The study also found that the increasing focus of national political parties on local issues has disrupted the relative political peace that exists in local communities.
LGBTQ programming and Books in schools and public libraries are just one example of a hyperlocalized national problem, survey respondents write.
Lee noted that such issues, which deal with schools, libraries and local zoning, are “under the jurisdiction of local government” and naturally belong at the local level.
“Even though they’re a national conversation … by default, these topics will often end up in the hands of your local community board,” he said.
Local news deserts
The study also found that in recent years, the shift from relying on local news outlets to social media as a source of information has led to misinformation and greater division between communities.
Holmes said local issues in his town are not immune.
“Development is a hugely divisive topic in my community and there are online groups that have formed around certain proposed developments.” Online groups have even spread with several local news outlets still operating in the community, he added, noting that online divisiveness is worse than in person.
“People feel more free to tell you something online than they do in person or sometimes by email,” he said.
Still, the report’s authors broadly saw points of optimism emerging from the survey, despite the pressure local government leaders face from polarizing forces at the national level.
“People see local government as a group of people they meet at the gym or at the grocery store,” Lee said. “It brings local government officials closer to their constituents and residents, and I think that’s a good thing for the trust.”