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Stories
Every piece is written to pass the swap test: swap the party labels, and it should still read as fair.
A calm summary of what social scientists have found about affective polarization, and about how badly each side misjudges the other.
Partisans dislike each other more than they used to, and much of that dislike rests on beliefs about the other side that are measurably false. Here is what the research supports, what it does not, and what remains open.
A calm summary of what researchers have found as local newsrooms have closed, from split-ticket voting to how well residents can name their own representatives.
As local newspapers have closed by the hundreds, researchers have tracked what disappears along with them: knowledge of local government, split-ticket voting, and contested local races. Here is what the evidence supports.
A calm summary of decades of survey research on Americans' confidence in government, media, and other major institutions, and what social scientists believe is driving the decline.
Confidence in nearly every major American institution has fallen over the past half-century, across survey after survey. Here is what researchers are confident of, what remains contested, and what does not fit the simple story.