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GOP pollster and CNN contributor Kristen Soltis Anderson joined The Commons in Conversation recently to discuss opportunities for Americans to come together even at a time when the country seems more divided than ever. Some highlights:
- The election saw what she describes as a “slight depolarization,” with Democrats and Republicans moving closer after decades of moving apart. An example: “Women still broke for Democrats, and men still broke for Republicans, but by less,” she said. “There was less distance between the two then than you might have expected if the trend lines kept pushing people apart.” Some demographic political splits, she added, began “to heal a little bit.”
Trust in institutions continues to erode. For instance, an increasing number of Republicans, who traditionally hold the military in high regard, now have negative views more often seen from Democratic perspectives. Similarly, Democrats have lost faith in the media, growing closer to the perspective of Republicans. “The information environment we’re in just makes it easier for bad news, negative news stories about what’s going wrong to really take off and have much more of an impact than stories about what’s going right,” Anderson said.
- In the shared distrust of institutions lies common ground to advance change. Anderson described it as a growing “market for reform,” saying: “If you have everybody at least on the page — ‘We need to do something’ — I do think that that opens the door for more creative, approaches, a wider spectrum of possible solutions you can pursue.”
- Anderson’s polling suggests that philanthropy — often working through local institutions — has an opportunity to bring people together on tough issues. “People were really hungry ... for philanthropy to serve as a convener, to say, ‘OK, if we’ve got all of these resources, how can we bring different voices to the table to figure out what’s a good, inclusive way to make sure that there’s lots of buy-in from different voices on how we will solve a problem?’”
Watch the discussion on the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s YouTube channel or on LinkedIn with free registration. Below is a lightly edited A.I.-generated interview transcript.
Drew Lindsay: Hello, everyone. I’m Drew Lindsay. I’m an editor and writer at the Chronicle of Philanthropy. Welcome to The Commons in Conversation. It’s our monthly interview series in which we explore divisions in America and the ways in which philanthropy and nonprofits are trying to bring people together and strengthen fractured communities. The series is an extension of The Commons, which is a project where we have a dedicated line of coverage, really trying to explore those divides.
We’ve got reporting, analysis, profiles, essays, and a whole lot more. You can find that at philanthropy.com/thecommons. Really excited today and actually quite lucky to have a guest with us who has tracked the divides in our country, in our politics, in our society over a really long period of time. She has some real data-driven insights also into the role that philanthropy can play in bringing people together. So let me introduce you all to Kristen Soltis Anderson. Kristen, thank you for joining us and welcome to the Commons.
Kristen Soltis Anderson: Thank you for having me.
Lindsay: Appreciate it very much. To give you all a little background, Kristen is a nationally known Republican pollster and founder of the polling firm Echelon Insights. You might know her from television, as she’s a regular contributor to CNN. She’s also a regular contributor to the New York Times, where, among other things, she puts together dispatches from focus groups that she hosts of voters and Americans in general.
To get started, Kristen, I’m hoping you can give us sort of a state of the state in a sense. We are past the election. We’re a month into the Trump administration. And it feels in a way like our divide couldn’t be any worse. But you had a recent New York Times column where you first suggested there’s actually been a slight depolarization, something that runs a little bit counterintuitive to what we’re feeling right now. So I’m hoping you could explain that a little bit.
Soltis Anderson: Sure. Well, thank you for including me in this conversation. And I think the world of philanthropy and those who want to commit their resources toward trying to improve their communities, they should be praised for doing so. And I think America is unique as a place that really fosters this robust civil society and philanthropy. Such a huge and important piece of this.
So thank you for including me. Since the election, it’s been really fascinating. You know, when we think about polarization over the last number of elections, we have seen things like the gender gap had grown where men and women who maybe used to vote a little bit differently began voting a lot differently. Over the last two decades, we saw a generation gap grow, where you had young voters and older voters who perhaps used to vote more similar to one another, suddenly began voting very differently, with younger voters breaking more to the left and older voters breaking more to the right.
In this last election, we didn’t see those divides grow, and in fact, we saw them in some cases get a little bit smaller. So women still broke for Democrats and men still broke for Republicans, but by less. There was less distance between the two than you might have expected if the trend lines kept pushing people apart.
Younger voters voting a little bit more like their grandparents, a little bit less of that generation divide. You see these divides along racial lines as well, getting slightly smaller as nonwhite voters moved more, too, into Donald Trump’s camp. And so what’s really interesting about this moment is that while we feel very divided, if we think of polarization as being something where you have voters on the right and the left who increasingly don’t agree on everything, we’re seeing that that’s not actually the case.
And if you think about our divisions as red America and blue America moving in opposite directions, certain types of voters and other types of voters moving in opposite directions, in some ways, some of those demographic political splits actually begin to heal a little bit in this last election.
Lindsay: And that’s remarkable, is it not, because of the history of these divisions? I mean, you have discussed a little bit about how long we’ve been, in a way, moving apart. Where do these divides start? And in a sense, where do we start seeing them?
Soltis Anderson: Well, a number of divides for decades. You can go back decades and find women and men voting differently, about different racial and ethnic groups. You know, you have had, for instance, Latino voters who were at least somewhat open to voting more for Republicans back in the 1990s, early 2000s became a pretty core part of the Democratic constituency and coalition. As you moved into sort of the 2010s and it was this election and perhaps the midterm before that began to show a little bit of a reversal of that trend.
Lindsay: Well, you also noted that there is some common ground, and you might call it almost unfortunate common ground, that increasingly people share a distrust or a dim view of institutions. The news that’s also interesting, what unites us increasingly is what we distrust. Can you talk a little about that or the movement you have seen in terms of trust of institutions?
Soltis Anderson: Yeah, you’re right. So when you ask Americans, do you think things in the country are headed in the right direction or the wrong direction? Increasingly, everybody says things are headed in the wrong direction, and for very different reasons, of course. But this sense of feeling like a lot of institutions are less trusted is something that’s becoming more pervasive.
So, I’ll give you an example. Republicans have not trusted the media, however defined, sort of a vague term that can mean a lot of different things. But it’s been a long time since Republicans would ever say that they trusted the media. But it used to be the case that Democrats would say that they generally trusted the media to do the right thing and increasingly no longer believe that.
An example from the other side would be business. So it used to be the case that the Democrats have been skeptical of bigger businesses for a while, that Republicans in the not too distant past, recall Mitt Romney getting into a little bit of trouble for saying things like corporations or people, or what have you. You know, that era of Republicans looking at big businesses and thought, these are job creators. This is really good. This is important for our economy. And you begin to see Republicans sort of breaking faith or losing faith in big companies over the last decade. And so when you see the top-line numbers, trust in media is down. Trust in businesses is down. But part of it is because those institutions have already long ago lost the trust of half of America.
It is just that the other half of America is now catching up. But the downside is it doesn’t seem like anybody is gaining trust. Part of this, I think, is because of the information ecosystem that we live in, that nowadays people have more information, and in some cases, misinformation, about the way a variety of institutions are functioning.
And a lot of times, when they’re lifting up these rocks, they’re not liking the spiders that crawl out. They don’t like what they’re learning. And so sometimes folks will say, well, what we need is more transparency. Transparency will build trust. But actually, the more information Americans have gotten about how certain institutions have functioned, the less that they really trust them, which I think is notable.
And I think the information environment we’re in just makes it easier for bad news, negative news stories about what’s going wrong to really take off and have much more of an impact than stories about what’s going right.
Lindsay: Right. And your analysis also showed a particular demographic that was particularly distrustful and that was a bit surprising to me. The younger folks, however you want to call them, Gen Z, are particularly distrustful. Explain that, if you would.
Soltis Anderson: That’s right. So, for younger voters, you might think, well, they don’t yet have reason to distrust these institutions. So why would they be so distrustful? But in general, I think it’s especially because Generation Z is coming of age in this era where most of what they’re learning about the world around them is coming from information filtered through social media.
It’s on the screens that they carry around with them. And while I would love to think that for many, that means you’re reading from reputable news sources, a lot of times the information you’re getting about the world around you is filtering through friends, influential people that you follow, whose content you like for perhaps nonpolitical reasons. And I think it’s that kind of information environment where something that makes you think is just not going to have the same kind of resonance as something that makes you feel and often feel angry.
And so for Generation Z, they look at a wide range of institutions and say, I don’t know that I trust this at all. And there’s a really interesting piece that I would urge all of you to take a look at. Derek Thompson wrote in the Atlantic this week all about especially why younger men seem to be particularly distrustful and points to something like the Covid pandemic as a moment where a lot of institutions that young people maybe thought they could trust were suddenly behaving in a way that perhaps did not engender trust and has left them feeling a little bit skeptical of everything.
Lindsay: Well, what you’re suggesting is interesting in a sense of we have politically some coming together, Democrats and Republicans, perhaps some of those gaps are closing. But you’re also pointing to a unity in terms of distrust and the question, I guess, becomes, does that unity lead to tearing down of institutions or does it lead to a more positive sort of we’re going to work together to improve those institutions? So I’m curious where you think we are in terms of the data you’re saying.
Soltis Anderson: So my hope is the latter. When we look at where these points of agreement are, I mean, one thing we agree on is that we distrust everything, and another thing we agree on is that we’re too divided. And so, the good news is that there to me suggests a market for reform, for change.
Lindsay: Interesting. Yeah. Unlike having a public where half of the public says everything’s fine, don’t touch that. Yeah. If you have everybody at least on the page, we need to do something. I do think that that opens the door for more creative approaches, a wider spectrum of possible solutions you can pursue. And so, you know, there’s good and bad ways that this can cut, but at least we don’t have a situation where there are institutions that need reformed.
But half of the public are saying, don’t you dare touch it. But instead you do have, whether it is our justice system, whether it is business, whether it is our schools and so on and so forth. If there is this hunger for change, then that at least creates the door to begin trying to move things in a positive direction.
Soltis Anderson: And I think we’ll also get a really interesting education in the coming weeks as everything we’re seeing at the Department of Government Efficiency, as they really go take a sledgehammer to large pieces of the federal bureaucracy. We will find out very quickly how much is public opinion’s appetite for the sledgehammer, and how much is public opinion’s appetite for change, saying, okay, you’ve done the demo, where’s the renovation? And that’s where I think we’re likely to see the polls beginning to show, okay, where is the renovation coming pretty soon?
Lindsay: Are you seeing that in polls and some data of people maybe accepting the demolition, but quickly turning to say, what’s it going to look like in the future?
Soltis Anderson: Yes. In a survey from my firm Echelon Insights, we put out a monthly voter survey and we tested a number of different things that the Trump administration has done in their first month. And things like the gutting of a number of federal agencies and things, they tend to be kind of a mixed bag in terms of public opinion.
For Donald Trump’s inauguration, we asked voters about a number of different federal departments. And do you think that they need to be completely overhauled? Do you think that you should let go of all the staff and start anew? Most of the staff think you just need to make some figuring around the edges. And an awful lot of Americans back then felt like you kind of just need to clear the decks and start over.
Lindsay: Right. But it’s one thing to say that hypothetically, it’s another thing to think that if you go: Wait a minute, I didn’t mean the people who babysit the nuclear weapons. And so the more and more you get stories like that, it’ll be interesting to see if suddenly there becomes an appreciation for certain institutions, if in a sense that they’re being taken down but not being rebuilt.
And am I right that there’s usually more trust in institutions that are local, the institutions that you know and touch and have experience with and perhaps at this stage in the quote unquote, demolition, we’re still talking about Washington, we’re still talking about big institutions far from home. If their ramifications are closer to home, if you’re a local food bank or a local institution of some kind is affected by the cuts that might have the negative effect.
Soltis Anderson: Yes. Well, you’re grabbing what we write about, local being a place where there’s much more trust, more that you can see, touch, and feel. And any institution and its work in your area, the more trust you’ll have... I mean, the trust between national media entities and your local TV, those are just like not in the same universe in terms of trust.
Same thing with local government. Not everybody loves their local government, but you’re much less likely to believe that your local government is part and parcel of, you know, some conspiracy or something horrible. It’s: You’re more just mad that the trash should get picked up on Thursday, or whatever it is. And so I think for the consequences of that then for philanthropy are that the more you can do with local partners on the ground, the more in touch you’re going to be, and the more trusted you’re going to be. Like, that dynamic carries through.
It’s not just media, it’s not just government, but really any institution. The more local and embedded you are in a community, the higher trust you’re likely to experience.
Lindsay: Well, that’s right. I did want to turn to that because I’m going to wager a good number of our audience are nonprofit professionals who care about bringing people together, who are working in these spaces in communities. And I wanted to go back to the study that you all did in 2023 that we reported on that really suggests that Americans, when they want to see results, when they want to see people come together, they actually think philanthropy is a perfect entity to do that. Philanthropy is well positioned to sort of negotiate and bring people together in different ways. So tell me a little bit about those studies and what those numbers are based on.
Soltis Anderson: That’s right. So we were taking a look at where Americans stand on the role that philanthropy can play in helping to solve important problems. And one of the things that we found is that because there is this sense that we’re so divided, people feel like I can’t even begin to have a conversation with somebody who’s on the other side because they probably think that I am not just wrong, but a bad person.
I mean, I hear this in focus groups all the time. You mentioned earlier on, I have these focus groups I do with the New York Times. I mean, we will hear people say, you know, I’ve lost friends over political views, or I feel uncomfortable talking about this with family members because it’ll cause a whole thing. And so people know that this has become more fraught.
And I think what’s interesting about philanthropy is that because philanthropy is able to come in and have influence because of the resources they are bringing to a problem, but also has a little bit more flexibility rather than having to worry about: I’ve got to listen to my base to make sure I get reelected in the next primary, you can think over a longer time horizon and you can be a little bit less... you can take some more risks in a sense, than someone who, you know, is is democratically elected and accountable to voters and all of those good things, but who may be a little bit more averse to really engaging with someone on the other side for fear that that’s going to spark a backlash. Philanthropy is unique in that they, as a sector have a little bit more freedom to take those risks, so you have a little bit more of that freedom.
And I think people were really hungry in the poll that you are citing for philanthropy to serve as a convener, to say, “OK, if we’ve got all of these resources, how can we bring different voices to the table to figure out what’s a good, inclusive way to make sure that there’s lots of buy in from different voices on how we will solve a problem?’
And so it makes total sense to me when you begin to think about that way, that philanthropy has the flexibility and freedom to be this convener, to think longer term than you might find from the government and to sort of use that dynamic for good.
Lindsay: Sure. And I think you also noted that in a sense, philanthropy is presumed not to have an agenda. In business, the agenda might be profit. In politics, the agenda might be to get elected. So in a sense, philanthropy enjoys this trust sector, in the sense of people assuming that they are in it for the common good.
Soltis Anderson: Yes. And that you’re in it to actually solve something. I think, you know, and unfortunately, there really is a perception that many who are involved in public policy and who get elected to office, speaking from that distrust we talked about earlier, that they get into office and suddenly all of those things, they promised that they were going to reform those suddenly become lower priorities.
I frankly think it’s that dynamic. That is why, despite the very dramatic actions we’ve seen in Washington over the last few weeks, that Donald Trump’s poll numbers, while not spectacular, are better than you might expect, and certainly better than they were for most of his first term, is because so many people say, I’m so used to hearing institutions and politicians and whomever say I’m going to do big, bold change, and then they never do it.
But I do think that philanthropy because what’s the reason you’re in it? You can be very clear about your mission and very clear about the outcomes that you’re trying to generate. And because you are accountable to your board and to your funders, but that the incentives there are much more aligned with, hey, let’s just get this problem solved.
Lindsay: You know, the Edelman Foundation has a trust barometer it does every year. It came out, I think, last month and they sort of point to: We’ve all been talking about a trust crisis for so long now, they sort of bump it up to a grievance crisis in a sense that our distrust has sort of grown worse and even reached the point where now it’s about grievance and what things have done to me. And I wonder how that changes the calculation for trying to rebuild trust in the sense of have people now gone so far that it’s going to be harder to get them back to a trust level?
Soltis Anderson: So, I think the first step to rebuilding trust is accountability. I think that right now, a big reason why you have seen trust decline is institutions going afield of their core mission, getting out beyond what they’re really good at and what they’re really trusted in, and sort of squandering some of that trust by trying to get into areas where they don’t have as much credibility.
So let’s take CEOs, for instance. There was a really great study by the Brunswick Group called the Talking Trap. They interviewed a bunch of CEOs as well as a bunch of average voters. And they asked, Do you think that when CEOs make statements about big social or political issues that it is good or not, and your average CEOs said, yes, it’s good when we make these statements, and your average voter said, no, absolutely not.
Just see CEOs of leaders stay more focused on: Here is my core business. Here is what our business does, and that the further afield you got from that, the less trust you have. I’ve also, frankly, seen this in a lot of focus groups I’ve done around things like public health And some of the reason why you’re seeing public health and trust in public health has gone down since the pandemic was a sense among especially those on the right that those that they may have previously trusted to deal in science began dealing outside of science, speaking and thinking about what ought to be in terms of society. And were just getting a little bit too outside their lane, so to speak.
So the question then is: If somebody gets outside their lane and they make a mistake or they get outside their lane and they see something they shouldn’t, what is the accountability mechanism for saying, I’m sorry, I want to do better next time? And I think too often, whether it’s the media, when other people in focus groups get frustrated, they’ll say like, it seems like they can be wrong and there’s no accountability or it seems like these are experts, so and so experts can’t be wrong.
We never get held accountable for it. I think that’s where trust is going to get rebuilt, is when an institution, rather than having hubris, instead has humility. I think coming to problems and saying, we wanted to make this better, We tried to do X, Y, Z, we didn’t work. So now we’re going to change tactics, we’re going to listen, and we’re going to do things differently.
I think that very simple communications formulation could do an awful lot to head off some of this erosion of trust that we’re seeing everywhere. It’s when an institution sort of puts its head down and says, no, we’re not wrong. What are you talking about? But then that trust begins to fracture even further.
Lindsay: Well, let me, if I can, if you were to think about a blueprint for all the folks that are here on the on the call, and I will say, as I mentioned to you, Kristen, we have our next guests on March 26, I believe is going to be Reid Hoffman, the philanthropist. He’s running a rebuilding or American Trust in American institutions challenge.
He’s going to offer $10 million to a nonprofit that he believes has a solution to rebuilding trust in a certain type of institution. Perhaps it’s colleges, perhaps it’s government. He’s sort of leaving that open to nonprofits. So here’s a philanthropist who’s saying, I want to find some solution. My question to you is, do you have any sense from your data, your analysis of what kind of solutions might work?
That’s one question. Another question is: What can these folks on the call in their everyday work do? What can they do differently in a sense, to build trust in their own organization?
Soltis Anderson: So I think the main thing that’s going to build trust is when people sense that an institution is delivering on what it promises on. So if you are promising as an institution: I’m going to deliver truly on biased, legitimate information. People have to have a sense that that’s actually what they’re getting. If you as an institution of higher ed are saying: We’re going to provide you with a way of thinking about the world that is going to make you a lifelong learner and give you the skills you need to be able to get a great job moving forward.
But you need to be able to prove that people are getting that and they’re not leaving your institution with six figures worth of debt and nothing to show for it. It’s those sorts of things where it’s hard for me to think of what a one-size-fits-all prescription means. But I think at the heart of whatever the solution is and whatever Reed Hoffman winds up, funding is going to have to be rooted in the idea of: How do you have an institution deliver on what it promises and demonstrate that it is delivering on that promise in a way that is credible.
You have to solve for that in order to solve the problem of: Why does nobody trust me?
Lindsay: And what role does transparency play in that along the way as you’re doing this? What’s that role? Do you have to show people every step along the way, in every step? Or is this more to end? You show the results.
Soltis Anderson: I think accountability is the most important thing. When I do ask people what would rebuild trust, they will often say transparency and accountability. But the funny thing about transparency is that I actually believe we’re living in a moment of unprecedented transparency, and that’s part of why people’s trust levels are so low, that the more they’re seeing, the less they’re liking.
And so you do need to be transparent because in the absence of transparency, that void can be filled with misinformation, disinformation, whatever you want to call it, questions, conspiracies, etc.. But at the same time, transparency alone simply opening everything up and saying, here’s what we’re doing, is not enough. If there’s not accountability and delivering on the promise of what you say you’re going to do.
Lindsay: How about feedback? You mentioned philanthropy, working through community organizations. How do you know? Is it important to build feedback channels so you actually recognize what the community, how they’re reacting to a program or an effort and sort of adjust on the fly to that?
Soltis Anderson: 100%, that’s a hugely important ingredient in all of this. And I have a little bias. I come to this as a pollster. So my whole job is to go out and listen to what people are saying and to collect up their information and give it to clients. But you don’t need to conduct a rigorous survey in order to do this.
You can be a good listener in countless other ways, and being a good listener is so key because it is when people feel like they are not heard, that they begin to lose faith. The irony is that nowadays we have, as individuals and as voters and engaged citizens, we have more microphones than ever. Think about somebody who was a voter in, say, 1984.
Somebody is a voter in 1984. What are the ways they can make their voice heard? Well, they can go to a member of Congress’s office. They can write a letter to the editor. They can send a letter to their congressman or woman. They can call their office. But nowadays, it’s that times a million, right? There are a million different ways you can make your voice heard.
You can post about your views on social media. You don’t have to, you know, write a letter to the editor. You get to be your own microphone, your own publisher. And we do that in every sector of life, too, though it’s not just politics as the product I buy, every service I use, and we’re very used to making our voice heard.
But putting your voice out there doesn’t actually mean it is being heard. And so, that’s where I think for philanthropy, it’s very important not just to say: Hey, we’re open to feedback. You actually have to listen. And then that’s where the accountability comes in, that you’ve listened, you’ve learned, and then you’ve chosen to lead on the basis of what you’ve learned.
Lindsay: Terrific. We know we’re running to the end of the time. And what I just maybe want to circle back to, you know, when I read your column at the start, it gave me a little bit of a lift, a little bit of hope. Talking to you now, I have bit more the whole notion of a market, a sort of expanded market for people interested in change and improvement.
We’ve got a lot of folks on the call who are working hard and working in a lot of different ways to build bridges. Any sort of last ray of hope you can offer them in terms of what you think is ahead for us over the next six months?
Soltis Anderson: Yeah, I think the good news is that in a moment where people are feeling frustrated with things, you can either have a public that tunes out or that tunes in. And I’m hopeful that this will be a moment where lots of people tune in, where either there are people on the political right who have felt unheard for a long time, who suddenly feel heard and feel engaged and feel ready to get involved in their communities and try to bring about change, or folks who may be on the other side who are feeling really fired up and engaged because they may not like what’s going on, as well as those folks in the political center who may have long thought: I don’t think big, bold change is possible. And we’re looking at what’s happening in Washington, even if they don’t like a lot of it, or even if they don’t like some of it, they may still be saying, well, at least I can see that it is possible to try something different. And so that’s... I’m not trying to put too much of a happy spin on something that I’m sure many people on the call are deeply alarmed about happening in Washington, but the more engaged and tuned in people are, I think that that can only be a good thing if harnessed in the right direction for change.
Lindsay: Terrific. Well, that’s great, Kristen. Again, really appreciate you joining us and everybody on the call. Appreciate you joining us. This is again our monthly series. We will be back on March 26. We don’t have the registration date link up for that. But again, we’re going to be talking with Reid Hoffman, the philanthropist, as well as Cecilia Conrad, who is at Lever for Change and is running Reid’s contest to build trust in institutions. So again, thank you, everybody, and have a good afternoon. Take care.
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