If you care enough about politics to read The Atlantic or listen to Pod Save America or scroll through an infinite feed of strangers’ opinions, you mostly encounter broadly cohesive political identities. Even if we don’t agree with the views of leftists or liberals or Never Trumpers or MAGA Republicans, we understand them (or at least we think we do). The people whose views we don’t understand tend to be the people who simply don’t follow politics that closely.
And yet, that’s most Americans.
This majority still votes, but not in every election. They typically vote for the same party, but not always. Their political beliefs can be all over the map: left on some issues, right on others; willing to compromise on some issues, not on others. They tend to be less partisan (which doesn’t mean they’re centrist), less ideological (which doesn’t mean they’re moderate), and less likely to see politics as a black-and-white, life-and-death struggle with clear heroes and villains (which doesn’t mean they don’t care).
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/12/democrats-need-change-minds/680950