Common ground
We have more common ground than you’re led to believe.
If you take a step back and get off divisive social media for a minute, you will see we do share some areas of widespread agreement. This includes our core values as a nation and challenges facing the country. For this research exercise, I set 70% — a supermajority — as the minimum level of support to identify pockets of common ground. Polling on these issues is more reliable than, say, horserace candidate polling. I trust these numbers, which are snapshots in time over 2025 and 2026.
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87%Say social media has made it easier to manipulate people with false information and rumors
87%Say it’s important that the U.S. military is the most powerful in the world
84%Say treating people of all backgrounds equally is important to being American
83%Say believing in freedom, justice, and equality is important to being American
79%Think the U.S. has gone too far in restricting the right to free speech (19% say the right has been expanded too much)
76%Say it’s very important to be able to tell if pictures, videos, and text were made by AI or by people