Can Americans still communicate across differences? This is our work – even after the 2024 election.

A look at American history confirms that the 2024 election was unusual. The last time the presidency changed between parties in three consecutive elections was from 1884 to 1892, when Grover Cleveland was elected to non-consecutive terms. The election of Benjamin Harrison in 1888 intervened. (Mr. Harrison also won the Electoral College but lost the popular vote, which happened again in the election of George W. Bush in 2000 and then in the election of Donald J. Trump in 2016.)

The 2024 election was also the fourth consecutive election in which the popular vote margin was less than 5 percentage points, the longest such streak since the six elections between 1876 and 1896. By historical standards, partisan control of Congress was also short-lived poor in recent years; For more than eight years, since Republicans lost the House of Representatives in 2006, neither party has controlled either house of Congress.

This is not to say that the past is prologue or that reflecting on the history of the 1890s can predict the way forward. Rather, these historical comparisons provide confirmation, if necessary, that American politics today is unusually divided.

As Americans try to make sense of the results of Mr. Trump’s re-election, with his decisive victory in the Electoral College and a margin of victory of about 1.5 percentage points in the popular vote, this backdrop of more than a decade of narrow electoral margins and partisan swings warrants attention. It is not enough to simply analyze election polls and look at the individual counties that voted for President Obama, then President Trump, then President Biden, then President Trump again.

The range of often contradictory post-election analyzes based on exit polls offer little more than a blurry and unsatisfactory sketch of the electorate. Much of it focuses on determining which issues were most important to swing voters — the economy or immigration, or the current administration’s handling of either issue, or attitudes toward Trump’s disruption of political and constitutional norms — and what kind of mandate the new voter had The administration could claim.

While these are all important questions, we should also ask what background conditions have caused the country to be so deeply divided on so many different issues. There may be an interface between election polls and background surveys of a narrowly divided electorate. Almost three quarters of voters believe that the country is heading in the wrong direction, and three quarters also see democracy as being threatened. In the seven swing states that decided the election, 68 to 73 percent of voters said democracy was threatened.

Before the election, most commentators – including the editors of – said Americain repeated warnings about Mr. Trump as a threat to constitutional norms, would have assumed that strong voter agreement that democracy is in trouble would have benefited Kamala Harris. Instead, we are faced with the reality of voters who both see democracy as threatened and voted for Mr. Trump.

There is probably a combination of effects at play here, although the relative proportions are difficult or impossible to determine. First, there may be voters who believed democracy was threatened by Mr. Trump but decided that other concerns, such as inflation or immigration, were more pressing. Second, there may be voters who see Ms. Harris, rather than Mr. Trump, as a threat to democracy, either because they fear the government is going too far (e.g., during pandemic lockdowns that are generally more stringent in Democrat-led states were), or because in the various criminal cases against Mr. Trump) or because they still believe that Mr. Trump’s lies about the 2020 election were stolen.

Third, and probably the hardest to characterize, are those voters who may say democracy is under threat because they feel the system itself is not working – because elites in both parties are not prioritizing the concerns of average Americans and themselves focus on maintaining a grip on power in Washington itself. For some of these voters, Trump’s performative disregard for traditional political norms may be attractive, even if his policy proposals are incoherent, unfair, or threaten economic upheaval.

While the first two cases above are primarily issues of debate and persuasion, involving the judgments that voters make based on good or bad information about the candidates’ character and policy goals, the third issue goes beyond deeper. Both parties routinely put forward policy proposals that they believe prioritize “ordinary” Americans. But rather than being able to agree on a consensus of proposals, some voters appear to be able to cast one protest vote after another, rejecting the current incumbent.

It is also worth remembering that millions of voters who went to the polls in 2020 then decided to sit out the 2024 election, perhaps feeling that they had no one to represent their interests and to elect them.

A clear lesson from the last election is that many Americans are unsure whether our existing democratic norms and institutions, as the Constitution’s preamble puts it, are actually contributing to “promoting the general welfare and improving the well-being of the people.” secure”. Blessing of freedom for ourselves and our descendants.” In the language of Catholic social teaching, one could say that voters doubt whether the system in which they participate serves the common good.

In other words, Americans have a hard time recognizing a good that can truly be common despite our differences. What is good for the coasts does not seem to be good for the interior; What’s good for college graduates appears to be different from what’s good for blue-collar workers.

In his encyclical “Fratelli Tutti,” Pope Francis reminded the Church that political charity consists of “seeking the good of all human beings, not only as individuals or private individuals, but also in the social dimension that unites them” (No. 182 ). The starting point for those committed to the common good, then, is to work to restore a sense of “the social dimension that unites individuals and communities.” “Good politics,” says the Pope, “will look for ways to build communities at all levels of social life.”

This is a lofty ideal and requires both political patience and charity. We offer two suggestions for how this work might begin. First, local examples of cooperation should be examined and celebrated, such as in states where a governor from one party has a proven ability to work with the other party, which has a legislative majority. National parties should work to recruit candidates who have proven their abilities in such situations.

Second, building community requires a distinction between rejecting unjust actions and policies and denigrating or ostracizing those who voted for or did not vote against the leaders who implement them. The same recognition of the “well-being of all people” that underlies the advocacy of justice also requires an attempt to represent this well-being together with political opponents.