We agree more than we disagree

Historical setting

The historical setting for common ground is the election of 1800.

Left. Right. Forward.

That line is ours, a modern editorial hook. The proof behind it is old.

The election of 1800 was vicious. A Federalist Congress had passed the Sedition Act, and only editors of Democratic-Republican newspapers were prosecuted under it archives.gov. The electoral count came out tied: Thomas Jefferson 73, Aaron Burr 73, John Adams 65 archives.gov. The House needed 36 ballots to break the tie and chose Jefferson on February 17, 1801 archives.gov. Then John Adams's party handed the government to its bitterest rivals. No army. No coup. The full story is in the election of 1800.

On March 4, 1801, Jefferson stood up and named the ground under both parties. "But every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle," he said. "We have called by different names brethren of the same principle" avalon.law.yale.edu. He also named the rule both sides lived by: the majority's will prevails, but "the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect" avalon.law.yale.edu.

Then he governed as a partisan. His Congress reversed major Federalist policies within about a year. Read what Jefferson meant for the details. That is the lesson. Bitter opponents still shared one system, one set of rules and one country. The disagreement was real. The shared ground under it was wider.

We agree more than we disagree

Americans agree more than they disagree. Look past the shouting and the numbers tell a different story.

Recent nonpartisan surveys find majorities of Republicans and Democrats giving the same answer on term limits for Congress, a ban on stock trading by members, paper backups for voting machines, keeping Social Security benefits whole, limits on prescription drug prices, parental consent for kids on social media, safety rules for AI and more. Every item clears 65% in both parties. We collected ten of them in the starting ten.

Here is one most people would not guess. In a 2023 Pew Research Center survey, 70% of Americans said "the people in their districts" have too little influence on the decisions members of Congress make. That included 72% of Republicans and 71% of Democrats pewresearch.org. The same feeling, on both sides, almost to the point.

What shared ground looks like

Shared ground looks like this:

• A starting point you can name out loud with someone who votes the other way.
• A reason to see the other side as neighbors with different views, not enemies.
• Values that run deeper than the labels: Jefferson's "same principle" under "different names" avalon.law.yale.edu.

Why it does not feel that way

It does not feel that way because disagreement is loud. Agreement is quiet. Nobody posts that they, like most of the country, want paper backups for voting machines.

The research shows how far the picture drifts from reality. In late 2018, More in Common and YouGov surveyed 2,100 American adults about their own views and about what they thought the other party believed perceptiongap.us. Democrats and Republicans imagined that almost twice as many people on the other side held views the study classed as extreme than really did. On average, they estimated 55%. The real figure was about 30% perceptiongap.us.

The specifics are striking. Republicans estimated that 54% of Democrats are "proud to be American, though I acknowledge my country's flaws." The real figure was 82% perceptiongap.us. Democrats estimated that 51% of Republicans agree "racism still exists in America." The real figure was 79% perceptiongap.us.

The gap grew with exposure to the noise. People who followed the news "most of the time" were almost three times as inaccurate as those who followed it "only now and then," and people who posted about politics on social media had a larger gap than those who did not perceptiongap.us. The authors are clear that these media links are correlations, not proof of cause perceptiongap.us.

The same pattern shows up on harder questions. Partisans in both parties overestimated the other side's support for political violence by 245% to 442%, and a short factual correction lowered people's own support for violence pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.

The other side is closer to you than it looks from here.

How to talk with people across the line

Seeing the shared ground is one half. Talking from it is the other. Research gives real guidance.

Start with what you share. In two randomized experiments, Erik Santoro and David Broockman paired strangers from opposing parties for video conversations. Talking about their "perfect day" sharply reduced dislike of the other party. Conversations focused on disagreement, such as why each supports their own party, had no effect. The warmth faded over the long term (study 1 rechecked after 3 months) pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.

Ask, then listen. In a 2016 study in Science, canvassers in South Florida had roughly 10-minute conversations with 501 voters that encouraged them to actively take another person's perspective. The conversations reduced prejudice toward transgender people, and the effect lasted at least 3 months ocf.berkeley.edu. Later field experiments by Joshua Kalla and Broockman, with 230 canvassers and 6,869 voters in 7 U.S. locations, found that arguments alone had no effect, while conversations with a "non-judgmental exchange of narratives" produced durable changes; the effects were small (d = 0.08 and 0.04) escholarship.org. A follow-up study found conversations built around "perspective-getting," asking the other person about their own experiences, worked on their own isps.yale.edu.

Understand the values behind the view. Across six studies, Matthew Feinberg and Robb Willer found that liberals and conservatives tend to argue from their own moral values, and that arguments framed around the other person's values typically landed better sdimakis.github.io. People often arrive at different answers from different starting values. Knowing which values someone holds explains a lot of what looks like disagreement.

Check what you think the other side believes. You probably picture them as more extreme than they are perceptiongap.uspmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. Ask. The answer is often closer to yours than you expected.

The full, practical version is at how to talk about politics.

Forward

We agree more than we disagree. The numbers show it. 1801 showed it. A kitchen table can show it too.

Left and right are directions. Forward is seeing how much ground we already share.

Evidence

The evidence on this page: the historical facts come from the National Archives and from Jefferson's inaugural address as published by the Avalon Project. The agreement figures come from Pew Research Center and the surveys collected in the starting ten. The misperception findings come from More in Common's The Perception Gap (full report reviewed) and a peer-reviewed study in PNAS. The conversation guidance comes from peer-reviewed experiments, read in full text where noted in the ledger and in abstract only for isps.yale.edu.

What the evidence does not show

The evidence on this page does not show the following.

• Not that differences are shallow. On most of the starting ten, the details divide people. Jefferson said not every difference was one of principle. He did not say none were.
• Not a single snapshot for all time. The Perception Gap survey was fielded in November 2018. Opinion and perception both move.
• Not that media causes the gap. The media findings are correlations perceptiongap.us.
• Not that conversation works miracles. Measured effects in the conversation studies are small, and some fade pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.govescholarship.org. Several were run with advocacy groups on specific issues; we cite them for the method.
• Not that 1800 was a golden age. The Sedition Act prosecutions happened. The "we" Jefferson addressed was far narrower than the whole population.

Sources

1. National Archives, "Alien and Sedition Acts (1798)," Milestone Documents. archives.gov (locator: summary). Accessed 2026-10-28.
2. National Archives, Electoral College results, 1800. archives.gov (locator: results table and notes). Accessed 2026-10-28.
3. Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801, Avalon Project, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School. avalon.law.yale.edu (locator: paragraph 2). Accessed 2026-10-28.
4. Pew Research Center, "Americans' Dismal Views of the Nation's Politics," September 19, 2023 (survey July 10 to 16, 2023, N=8,480). pewresearch.org (locator: pp. 47 to 48; topline REPR_INFL). Accessed 2026-10-28.
5. Daniel Yudkin, Stephen Hawkins and Tim Dixon, The Perception Gap: How False Impressions Are Pulling Americans Apart, More in Common, June 2019 (YouGov survey, November 7 to 10, 2018, N=2,100). perceptiongap.us (locator: pp. 6, 10, 14, 17 to 18, Tables 1 and 2; p. 31 on correlation). Accessed 2026-10-28.
6. Joseph S. Mernyk, Sophia L. Pink, James N. Druckman and Robb Willer, "Correcting inaccurate metaperceptions reduces Americans' support for partisan violence," PNAS 119(16): e2116851119, 2022. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov (locator: abstract; Discussion, limitations). Accessed 2026-10-28.
7. Erik Santoro and David E. Broockman, "The promise and pitfalls of cross-partisan conversations for reducing affective polarization: Evidence from randomized experiments," Science Advances 8(25), 2022. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov (locator: abstract; Discussion, limitations). Accessed 2026-10-28.
8. David Broockman and Joshua Kalla, "Durably reducing transphobia: A field experiment on door-to-door canvassing," Science 352(6282): 220 to 224, April 8, 2016. ocf.berkeley.edu (locator: abstract; discussion of the retracted LaCour and Green article). Accessed 2026-10-28.
9. Joshua L. Kalla and David E. Broockman, "Reducing exclusionary attitudes through interpersonal conversation: evidence from three field experiments," American Political Science Review 114(2): 410 to 425, 2020. escholarship.org (locator: abstract, accepted manuscript dated November 17, 2019). Accessed 2026-10-28.
10. Joshua L. Kalla and David E. Broockman, "Which Narrative Strategies Durably Reduce Prejudice? Evidence from Field and Survey Experiments Supporting the Efficacy of Perspective-Getting," American Journal of Political Science, first published October 31, 2021. isps.yale.edu (locator: abstract) (abstract only). Accessed 2026-10-28.
11. Matthew Feinberg and Robb Willer, "From Gulf to Bridge: When Do Moral Arguments Facilitate Political Influence?" Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 41(12): 1665 to 1681, 2015. sdimakis.github.io (locator: abstract; Study 1 participants; General Discussion on effect sizes). Accessed 2026-10-28.

Last checked against its sources on October 28, 2026. Report a correction.