THE ECHO

By Amelia Humphrey // Reporter

American politics has become increasingly polarized in recent years. After President Donald Trump took office in 2024 for his second term, this has become more obvious. President Trump’s policies concerning ICE, Greenland, Venezuela, and other issues have sparked buzz throughout the nation, along with protests such as the walkouts. Studies have been conducted in recent years by organizations such as Pew Research, Gallup, and YouGov that show this effect and the population’s reaction to it.

45

This is the percentage of US adults that now identify as political independents, a new high. The new record metric suggests that the two main parties are losing ground in elections; however, junior Maxwell Hunter thinks differently. “I think when they actually go out to vote, their votes tell a different story,” Hunter said. “I think it’s a lot of the mentality and apathy of, ‘What can my one vote change? I need to give it to a larger party.’”

8

This is the percent advantage that Democratic-leaning adults has gained over Republican-leaning adults in the past year, under President Trump’s administration. Rather than being surprised at this noticeable percentage swing, senior Riley Starr thought it “would definitely be a higher number if people were willing to be a big person, be educated, and really see what’s going on in the world, instead of having tunnel vision on their life.” Starr said that this number might include not just people leaning Democrat, but people “leaning away from Trump’s administration.”

60.1

This is the percent of US voters who believe the country is headed in the wrong direction. Starr agrees with this sentiment. “The people should have a voice on what the government is doing. I think they don’t right now, and that’s very scary,” Starr said. Though Starr strongly disagrees with many of the actions of President Trump, she believes that these shouldn’t be ascribed to the Republican Party. “In my opinion, Republicans can look at what the Trump administration is doing and realize that it doesn’t even align with their morals,” Starr said. “Anybody who becomes president after Trump is going to try to reel everything back in and hopefully make a lot of change.”

26        19

These metrics describe the polarization of the two main parties. Over the past 30 years, the percentage of Democrats who identified as liberal increased 26% and the percentage of Republicans who identified as conservative increased 19%. Hunter believes that this trend has to do with the growing role of government and politics in people’s lives. “I’ve heard someone say that politics is pop culture,” Hunter said. “More people are in echo chambers in social media now. And I think just the role of the federal government has increased.” Hunter noted that the United States government has “drawn more toward direct democracy” in recent decades. “We’ve lost a lot of the elements of a mixed constitution, which has kept democracy stable, because democracy, pure democracy, left to its own devices, will always turn radical, because that is the way of the people.”