Everyone knows about the partisan gridlock in Washington, D.C., but you might be surprised to find that same partisanship extends to your neighbor’s house, and possibly your own. In a survey of about 1000 people across the state, the LSU Public Policy Research Lab found that people think that democrats and republicans are growing further apart when it comes to political ideology, and there’s a divide on whether they want their candidates to compromise, or stick to their guns.
In reality, democrats and republicans are much closer than most people think. We asked some lawmakers to talk about their counterparts across the aisle, and they were overwhelmingly positive. Barbara Norton, a democratic representative from Shreveport, says it’s impossible to pass anything if you go straight down party lines. Norton says “when we come into the chambers, I don’t think we look at each other in the sense of saying, ‘the democrats are over here, the republicans are over there.’ When we introduce a bill, we don’t say, y’know, I’m going to ask the democrats only to vote, I’m going to ask the republicans only to vote.” Republican Tanner Magee of Houma agrees, saying he sees compromise on both sides. “Louisiana is a fundamentally red state, it’s a conservative state, so the democrats here tend to be more conservative, the republicans tend to align between very conservative towards moderate, but everyone works for the best interest of the state as a whole”, says Magee.
While our lawmakers may get along at the capitol, public opinion of republicans and democrats is far from nice.
The survey highlighted their mutual dislike of one another, citing 87% of republicans have unfavorable opinions of the Democratic Party in Louisiana, while 67 percent of democrats have an unfavorable opinion of the Republican Party in the state.
Results from the Louisiana Survey will be delivered to lawmakers, so they have another too to understand the people they represent in our state.