Americans sorted

ISIS and the challenge of radical Islam have emerged as a major theme on the presidential campaign trail, particularly in the wake of the Orlando shooting, the deadliest terrorist attack to occur on US soil since 9/11. Last Monday, Brookings hosted an event launching the results of two new public opinion surveys that gauge the effect of the Orlando terror attack on American public attitudes about Islam and Muslims.

The first survey was conducted two weeks before the June 12 shooting at Orlando’s Pulse gay club, and the other two weeks after. Both were conducted by Shibley Telhami, Nonresident Senior Fellow at Brookings. After presenting the results, he was joined in discussion by William Galston, the Ezra K. Zilkha Chair in Governance Studies at Brookings, and Tamara Cofman Wittes, Senior Fellow and Director of the Brookings Center for Middle East Policy, who served as a moderator.

Contrary to what one might expect, American attitudes toward Muslims and Islam have not worsened, but have become more positive after the Orlando shooting. The two charts below — presented by Telhami —  show the change in public perception pre- and post-Orlando.

In May 2015, 53 percent of Americans viewed Muslims favorably, a sentiment expressed by 58 percent of Americans in May 2016 and 62 percent in June, two weeks after the terror attack in Orlando. Americans distinguish between “Muslim people” and the “Muslim religion,” viewing Muslims more favorably than they view Islam. While 62 percent of the people surveyed expressed favorable attitudes toward Muslims, only 44 percent thought the same of Islam.

The point that Telhami and Galston emphasized is that attitudes about both Muslim people and Islam are largely divided along party lines. 79 percent of Democrats have favorable views of Muslims, compared to 42 percent of Republicans (37 percentage points difference). Similarly, 82 percent of Democrats deemed Islamic and Western religious and social traditions as compatible, compared to only 42 percent of Republicans (40 percentage points difference).

Attitudes about the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Iraq War are also split down party lines. When asked “Which one of the two factors do you believe is most important in the emergence and growth of ISIS?” 71 percent of Democrats answered “Going to war with Iraq in 2003,” in contrast to 61 percent of Republicans who think it was “Withdrawing most US troops from Iraq.” The panelists maintained that Americans are deeply polarized. According to Wittes, “if one had to come up with a single headline [to capture the survey results], it would be polarization.”

Someone who has read Morris Fiorina’s Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America would know that what Wittes is talking about is rather party sorting, not polarization. In other words, what the Brookings survey depicts is the process of party purification, where party affiliation now reflects ideology to a greater extent than a generation ago. The opinion distributions in the survey show no evidence of increase in conservatives and liberals, or a decrease in those having more moderate views. Additionally, when presented with dichotomous choices like in the Iraq War question above, or in other questions related to the Arab-Israeli conflict, subjects are only able to choose between two extremes. Given a choice between two extremes, they can only choose an extreme, but polarization of people’s choices is not the same as polarization of their positions.

The fact remains that Republicans and Democrats are largely divided on questions concerning Islam and the Middle East. This divisiveness is even more pronounced in the 2016 presidential election. The election represents ideological sorting of an even greater level than the parties the candidates represent.  Only 16 percent of Trump supporters view Islam favorably, compared to 66 percent of Clinton supporters (50 percentage points difference). The  “clash of civilization” question, asking whether Islamic and Western religious and social traditions are compatible, tells a similar story. 64 percent of Trump supporters say they are incompatible, while 13 percent of Clinton supporters perceive such incompatibility (50 percentage points difference). With respect to the  the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, 43 percent of Trump supporters believe the US should support either annexation without equal citizenship or maintaining the occupation; 13 percent of Clinton supporters take that view.

As Galston observed, “in the past political differences ended at the water’s edge. Now, those days are gone.” The surveys reveal that these cleavages are larger than those found in domestic politics on issues like abortion or same-sex marriage. In fact, gaps don’t get much bigger. Islam and the Middle East have sorted out America. Americans need to sort this out.