A Friendly Wager

"As Biden era begins, Democrats are more likely than Republicans to favor trying to forge compromises." Uh huh. If you've been around here a while, you might have read what I think about political attempts to forge things.

Often, the questions that Pew Research Center poses are fairly straightforward. Which isn't a problem in and of itself, but they sometimes leave me wondering what people were thinking when they answered. Consider the 7% of people who are Republicans or lean Republican and the 9% of people who are Democrats or lean Democratic who say that they want President Biden or Republican members of Congress respectively to "Stand up to [their side] on issues that are important to [the other side's] voters, even if it means it’s harder to address critical problems facing the country." I find myself dying to know what the thought process is.

To be sure, it being "harder to address critical problems facing the country" is not the same as those problems going unaddressed. And so part of me suspects that the wording of the question has a lot do with things.

To be sure, there likely is some sentiment in favor of bipartisanship. After all, the totals in favor of "reaching across the aisle" add up to 128% on the Republican side and 151% on the Democratic side. Therefore there seem to be a decent number of people who said "collaborate" to both questions, while it's possible (if perhaps unlikely) that no-one said "stand-up" both times.

But in the end, the whole thing comes across as an exercise in partisanship, with the answers being reliably skewed by political party. And I, for my part, really didn't need a Pew Research survey to tell me that. But understanding what people are really ready to give for that partisanship, that would be interesting. When people say they'd rather it be "harder to address critical problems facing the country," than that their man or woman should compromise, what problems do they have in mind, and how much extra difficulty are they thinking? And that, I think has value, because just knowing that people are going to side with their tribe isn't news. People willing see the SARS-2 CoV outbreak last six months longer than it otherwise would, for instance, would really communicate something that I don't think that I, and maybe others, currently really understand.

There was an article in The Atlantic that noted that a guy was making a small, if steady, amount of money by figuring out what Q-Anon supporters were willing to put money on an betting against them. Understanding the degree to which the public at large is willing to put their money where their partisanship is could be very educational.