What's Wrong With the Depolarization Movement?
Everyone wants to decrease polarization, so why is the movement trying to do just that struggling so much?
Polarization is a big problem. 87% of Americans feel exhausted by the problem, and fully 80% of self-identified Republicans and Democrats view the other side as a threat that “if not stopped, will destroy America as we know it”.
Luckily, 79% of Americans would like to contribute to decreasing social division. The grassroots support for depolarization is encouraging, and to date, literally hundreds of depolarization organizations have been started by leaders across the country to help solve the issue.
Below are just a handful of the most well-known of the depolarization organizations:
Sounds encouraging, right? Look closer at the graphic above. How many of these logos do you actually recognize? Even worse, how many do you think the average American can recognize? The answer is almost certainly between 0 and 1.
Given the facts that:
79% of Americans (260 million people) have an interest in decreasing polarization, and
There are hundreds of depolarization organizations to get involved with,
Why is it that the depolarization movement is struggling to gain recognition or widespread support?
The case in point is Braver Angels, which was founded in 2016 and bills itself as the largest depolarization organization in the country, boasting 33,500 total participants and 12,200 members.
Sounds impressive, until remembering that their target market is the 260 million Americans willing to help with decreasing polarization. Braver Angels’ total participants represent a market penetration of just 0.013%.
(1) Source: Listen First Project (March 2022); Listen First Nationwide Survey Topline_March 2022
The red dots above are pretty hard to see, but I really struggled to come up with a better way to show just how little participation Braver Angels has. A pie graph doesn’t work because the line representing Braver Angels’ participants is too thin to even be seen.
Another way to think about the Braver Angels participation rate is to think of it as a percentage of a trip. Imagine you’re flying from New York to LA. Total flight time is 6 hours and 20 minutes. Completing 0.013% of the trip would take 2.96 seconds. You’re still on the runway.
This “failure to launch” is not just a Braver Angels issue. It’s endemic to the whole depolarization movement. If 260 million Americans wanted a car and the leading car company in the U.S. only sold 33,500 cars, then there’s clearly something wrong with the car being sold.
I believe it’s clear that depolarization organizations broadly suffer from two problems:
Lack of simplicity
Lack of a compelling message
Lack of Simplicity
In terms of simplicity, the 260 million Americans willing to play a part in reducing social division generally want it to be easy. Workshops, membership dues, monthly meetings, dozens of programs to choose from, annual conferences, etc., make the barriers to getting involved with a given organization way too high for most.
Keeping messaging, goals, and programming extremely simple is the best way to ensure that an organization is available to everyone, not just the slim minority of people who have 10 hours a month to give to a new organization.
The difference between a movement and a club here is key. A movement has no monetary or time commitments above and beyond what is required to voluntarily spread the message of the movement. A club, on the other hand, has meetings, bureaucracy, and membership dues.
There can be overlap, and many times, clubs are responsible for starting or furthering a movement. More often than not, however, clubs are insular and fail to advance the interests of the movement. In this case, Braver Angels, and many other depolarization organizations, act more like a club than a catalyst for a movement.
For depolarization organizations, a key way to introduce simplicity in messaging is to reduce the number of causes of polarization as much as possible, ideally to one single root cause. Messages along the lines of “let’s discuss the 16 causes of polarization” tend to either lose the interest of the target audience or, even worse, inspire hopelessness.
Messaging closer to “here are the one or two causes of polarization and how we can fight them” is much more likely to hold the attention of a broad audience and compel meaningful action. As with all messaging, the best thing the depolarization movement can do for itself is to KISS (keep is simple, stupid!)
Lack of a Compelling Message
The second key issue with the depolarization movement is the broad lack of a compelling message. Depolarization organizations need to remember what they are competing against. The left and right offer people the chance to play a role in a good vs. evil struggle of apocalyptic proportions.
If depolarization organizations are offering the chance to play a role in, say, changing niche voting mechanisms or “independent redistricting committees” (kill me), which of these narratives do you think the majority of people are going to be most interested in?
Below is a screenshot from the Forward Party’s website:
When the majority of the messaging on the left involves a narrative along the lines of, “if the right gains power they’ll destroy the planet, roll back protections for women and minorities, and enrich the wealth at the expense of the poor” and the right hits back with messaging along the lines of, “if the left gains power they’ll destroy the economy, ostracize and marginalize your faith, and sexualize your children”, is it any wonder that the Forward Party’s issues described above seem quaint and unimportant? Is it any wonder they’ve struggled to gain any meaningful following?
The supporters that the Forward Party does have tend to point to the “rigged” two-party system and closed primaries as the culprit for their lack of a following, but have they considered the alternative explanation that voters just genuinely aren’t as interested in Forward Party solutions as they are in the “existential” issues being promoted by the left and the right?
This is a classic example of the Leather Seats Fallacy, in which a group (in this case, Forward Party centrists) assumes their preferences are shared by the broader population. When the facts on the ground don’t bear this assumption out, the group must assume some sort of market inefficiency or foul play to avoid the resulting cognitive dissonance.
In this instance, the Forward Party has assumed that the “rigged” two-party system and closed primaries are causing market distortions, rather than facing the more likely reality that the market is generally efficient and is genuinely reflecting the increasingly polarized and populist desires of the country.
To avoid this trap, depolarization organizations must remember what they are competing against. Even though most Americans are consciously opposed to polarization, virtually everyone also subconsciously wants nothing more than to play a part in a good vs. evil struggle.
Narrow policy proposals and niche voting mechanism reforms simply won’t capture the imagination of any sizable portion of the population like the allure of a good vs. evil narrative can.
Therefore, depolarization organizations must think about their messaging as competing with good vs. evil narratives. Otherwise, depolarization movements will be confined solely to the support of the slim portion of the country who is not interested in a good vs. evil narrative.
A Way Forward
Combining these two ideas, a successful depolarization movement needs to have:
A simple message with only one or two causes of polarization
A focus on defeating an evil of the same scale as the “evils” portrayed by the left and right
Too much complexity and a lack of a compelling message will undoubtedly result in continued failure. Reasonable people can disagree about what form a simple, compelling depolarization message should take. I have my ideas I can share later. Regardless, there should be no doubt that simpler and more compelling messaging is needed if the depolarization movement wants to take flight and get off the runway.
TL;DR
Despite 79% of the US wanting to help with reducing social division, depolarization organizations have struggled to gain widespread support.
Braver Angels, the largest depolarization organization in the US, has a market penetration rate of only 0.013%.
The depolarization movement needs a dramatic rethinking of its messaging, focusing on crafting a simple and compelling message to successfully build a movement.