Every year or so, one of the big polling outfits comes up with a new political typology intended to move us beyond the simplistic red/blue partisan dichotomy that dominates so much commentary about politics in the U.S. The reason that dichotomy dominates the way it does is obvious: Because America has a two-party system, and we're quite narrowly (and deeply) divided. That reality leads us to think in terms of either/or: Either you're a Republican or a Democrat, a Trump supporter or a Trump hater, a conservative or a liberal, a reactionary or a progressive, a red American or a blue American, and so forth. At the most macro level, this dichotomous way of thinking is accurate. The 2024 election was Trump v. Harris. Either/or. 49.8 percent voted for the first, 48.3 percent voted for the second. That's 98.1 percent of the more than one hundred fifty million people who voted. Studies have shown that had every eligible person voted that year, the outcome would have been very close to the...
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