Despite National Focus on America’s Divisions, One Thing Unites Communities: Populism
It’s easy to look at national headlines, and the stories under them, and see a hopeless blue/red political chasm. But that isn’t completely true.
A close look at survey data from the American Communities Project shows there are some issue areas that seem to unite the right and the left as the nation hurtles through a midterm year, and the force behind them seems clear: anti-establishment populism.
Distrust of elites and “the powers that be” has become a defining part of the MAGA movement that supports President Donald Trump. But ACP survey data indicate that on a range of issues — from the media to the government to big business — distrust reigns supreme in all kinds of communities, from liberal-leaning Big Cities to conservative Aging Farmlands.
That finding doesn’t mean the nation’s deep divisions have disappeared in the ACP’s survey data, particularly around race, culture, and religion. But the survey at least suggests there are some topics and issue frames that can unite voters rather than divide them.
And the way those sets of issues are deployed and who deploys them in 2026 may reveal a lot about the upcoming midterm campaigns.
Defining Unity and Division
In 2025 (and in 2023 and 2024), the American Communities Project gave respondents a list of statements and asked if they agreed or disagreed with them. The statements touched on a host of topics, from abortion to faith to immigration.
For this purpose, the ACP then grouped the responses into two categories.
- Uniting statements: Those where every community type was on the same side of the 50% agree mark, and where the difference between the types was 15 percentage points or less.
- Dividing statements: Those where communities sat on different sides of the 50% agree mark, and where the difference between types was 20 percentage points or greater.
The breakdown of those statements provides an issue map for understanding where common ground does and does not exist in the United States.
The Unifiers
The chart below shows the five statements that qualify as unifiers under this breakdown, and you’ll notice a clear pattern to most of them.
Three of the statements focus on distrust of the media, traditional political parties, and the broader economy. In every one of the ACP’s 15 community types, solidly more than 50% said they distrust or don’t believe in those institutions.
It’s hard to overstate how different the ACP types are on a whole list of areas — racial and ethnic diversity, household income, educational attainment, population density. So the widespread agreement on these institutional issues is notable.
Americans’ common anti-establishment views may explain the current, unsettled, back-and-forth nature of American politics. When all these different kinds of communities — economic winners and losers — are unhappy with the powers that be, politics can vacillate. The “other” option that is not in power seems to be better, whatever that option is.
But note that the one statement with the most consistent agreement is: “The U.S. government should cut social programs in order to lower taxes.” Here there was only a 9-point difference across all the types,
Even the highest agreement for that statement was only at 29%. And this percentage came from Rural Middle America and Working Class Country, two largely rural, conservative types.
This finding at least suggests that even with all the distrust in the electorate, there is concern that the government needs to be involved in helping those who need help. And it’s worth noting that this finding has been consistent over multiple ACP surveys since 2023. It surprised us to the point that we traveled to a conservative Graying America community in Florida in 2024 and held a roundtable discussion on the topic.
There is also surprising agreement on the idea that Americans have “more in common with each other than is generally believed” across all community types.
Considering the state of political discourse in 2026, those last two uniting statements seem to be evidence of a hopeful defiance lurking in the electorate.
The Dividers
But working against that perspective is the list of issues that divides the communities of the ACP — under the well-known lines of race, religion, and culture.
Such statements yield some stark differences:
- a 34-point divide on faith and religion as important parts of American life;
- a 26-point difference on racism as part of the American system; and
- a 27-point gap on the U.S. doing more to “level the playing field” for some racial and ethnic groups.
In some ways, these divides are less interesting because they follow well-known patterns.
The left-leaning Big Cities are more likely to agree that racism is deeply ingrained in the nation’s institutions and that there’s a need to address inequities. The young and liberal College Towns are the most likely to say the United States is in decline.
Meanwhile, the deeply conservative Aging Farmlands are the most likely to see faith and religion as important to the nation. And the right-leaning Evangelical Hubs are the most likely to think that people “of this country” should be hired over immigrants when jobs are scarce.
Reaching Voters in 2026 and Beyond
So, if there are issues that can unite voters, or at least issues that resonate with voters in all the different kinds of communities the ACP studies, why aren’t they a bigger part of politics? Where are the unity campaigns?
Part of the answer is that divisive issues fire up base voters and, depending on where one is campaigning, these issues can bring out more voters than they turn off. That may be doubly true in a midterm year, where the inherent question before voters is: “What do you think of this administration so far?”
But keep an eye on the uniting populist issues this year. The data suggest that the public, across all different kinds of places, are hungry for the right kind of anti-establishment voice — perhaps one that wants to take a sledgehammer to the system and remodel, rather than use a blowtorch to burn everything down.
That’s probably a discussion more suited for the 2028 presidential race, but the seeds are there now.