More local officials say than ever before In a new poll Political polarization has a negative impact at the national level, with those who live in larger communities seeing greater local impacts—findings that have coincided with rising political violence and gridlock in Washington.
Nearly 9 in 10 respondents to the survey of nearly 1,400 city and county leaders, which was Conducted in September By the non-profit organization CivicPulseThey said they believe political polarization is negatively affecting the nation. This is a slight increase from a previous poll on the topic conducted by a nonpartisan research organization during the first months In President Donald Trump’s second administration, which found that 83% of local government officials held this view.
However, only 30% of respondents to the latest survey said polarization is hurting their communities, a finding similar to previous findings by CivicPulse, which suggest community life remains resilient in the face of national discord, according to findings shared exclusively with NBC News.
The latest poll, conducted by the New York-based nonprofit Carnegie Endowment, is the third and final part of CivicPulse’s study of the impact of polarization that began in August ahead of the 2024 presidential election. As in the organization’s two previous polls, the perception that political polarization is harmful to communities rose with population size, with officials in communities with more than 50,000 people more likely to report “a great deal” of negative impacts (41%) than leaders in smaller communities (28%).
This is partly because elections in larger cities and counties have taken on a national character, with increased campaign spending and the interest of state and national political groups, the poll noted.
In all three polls, the vast majority of local leaders said they believe polarization is hurting the country — with the latest poll showing the highest percentage ever (89%).
“The consistency of that is pretty remarkable given how much has changed so far “We’ve seen the last year in the country,” said Nathan Lee, founder and managing director of CivicPulse.
September saw major upheavals in national politics, with the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk and a budget crisis in Washington that caused a six-week shutdown of the federal government. Before that, in June, Minnesota Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband were killed, and another Democratic lawmaker and his wife were shot in what officials claimed were politically motivated attacks. In April, the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion was set on fire while Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro was inside with his family.
Lee attributed the September increase in local officials concerned about national polarization to the events surrounding Kirk’s death and the political climate as the Trump administration hits its stride.
“Love him or hate him, Trump is a very divisive president,” Lee said, noting that during the latest poll, he was “just getting started in his administration.”
He added: “We are now in the stage of his actual management, so I think that is likely to be a factor.”
With Kirk’s assassination, Lee said, “I think both the event and the reaction to the event — and then the reaction to the reaction to the event — all contributed” to seeing the greater national damage caused by polarization.
Local institutions are a bright spot
CivicPulse found in the latest survey, conducted from January to March, that increased civic engagement and Dialogue focusing on local issues was crucial to ward off the negative effects of polarization locally. Municipal leaders surveyed in September expressed similar sentiments to NBC News.
“I think we all want mostly the same basics — safe neighborhoods, good schools, are there any jobs coming, more opportunities for kids?” Grant Henson, mayor of Pisco, North Carolina, a town with a population of about 2,200, said. “We see each other at the grocery store, or at ball games, or at church, or whatever, and we connect.”
Tamaya Lowe, township supervisor In Germantown, Wisconsin, with a population of just over 1,800, she echoed him about the power of local institutions in her community to overcome political extremism.
“People may have different opinions with their neighbors and people they go to church with or who have kids on the same sports team,” Lowe said. “But there’s a feeling of a small community, where people are still really working to try to get along and accept that we’re not always going to agree on things.”
In this final round of the survey, CivicPulse asked local officials to evaluate local public institutions to determine “on the ground, who would you actually partner with if you were to do the work to promote more positive engagement to reduce the negative effects of polarization,” Lee said.
Survey respondents ranked some local public institutions where residents congregate outside of work and home, especially schools, as key to mitigating the effect of polarization and encouraging civic engagement — something pollsters suggested could be expanded.
“The positive thing for us is the fact that it is [the survey] “It actually pointed out some things that might work,” Louise Richardson, president of the Carnegie Endowment, a charity that supports research and education, told NBC News. “For example, we see areas where the infrastructure already exists — schools, sports clubs, libraries, parks. These are all seen as areas where polarization is mitigated and where people can participate.”
83% of local leaders surveyed said K-12 schools promote civic engagement in their communities “a great deal,” “a lot,” or “a moderate amount,” while 70% said the same about sports leagues. 64% of community leaders considered law enforcement agencies, public libraries and local parks important for civic engagement, while 62% cited universities and colleges as having a positive impact.
One of the reasons K-12 schools are at the top of the list is their ubiquity, Lee said.
“Some institutions that were still seen as positive, like health care centers or cultural centers, museums, universities and colleges, are not found in all communities in America. But everyone has a K-12 school,” he said.
The fact that these public institutions are typically run by local leaders, rather than elected officials at the state or national level, makes residents more likely to care about and engage with them. Officials said.
“There’s a lot of motivation in our town to volunteer on different committees,” Eric Couture, a town selectman in Killingworth, Connecticut, told NBC News. “For example, we have Parks and Recreation, which is responsible for the playground, sports, finance, conservation, planning and zoning commission.”
“This kind of governance style pushes people involved in politics to put aside some of the acrimony and work together to find solutions,” Couture continued. “I think a big part of it is that everyone just wants the government to work and do well.”
Encouraging civic engagement at such local public institutions is effective because these are places where everyone regularly gathers, Richardson said.
“There is no ideological test when accepting public schools, everyone goes to school,” she said. “Here you have parents and children who are really engaged.”
Sports leagues, which survey results indicated foster local pride and intergenerational interaction, have a similar effect, she said.
“In baseball, no one cares whether your parents vote for one side or not,” Richardson said. “Parents, regardless of their political leanings, share a commitment to wanting their children to learn how to compete, wanting to get good training, wanting to do healthy activities and all the rest of it.”
Barriers to participation
Overwhelmingly, officials in communities of all sizes said that engaging youth in civic education programs outside the classroom, such as attending local government meetings (87%), volunteering during elections (80%), or even seeking representation in local government (80%), are vital ways to recruit.
Those experiments could be “a long-term way that can have a positive impact” on attitudes about policy that “does not require federal or state assistance,” Lee said.
“There is scope for work there in a way that seems very promising to create positive civic engagement across backgrounds,” he said.
But many local officials say they face various barriers to youth participation in government, with only about half of their communities offering such opportunities to young people. Some activities, such as volunteering in local elections, were less common, with only 18% of communities offering this opportunity to young people.
Officials who promoted such involvement in government “seemed to think it went well,” Lee said. “But most of them didn’t do it in their community.”
He said this suggested there was “a big gap between what is possible – what could have a positive impact – and what is actually happening.” “In other words, there is a significant lack of civic education programs in America.”
Part of the problem is that most local elected officials do their government work part-time, so adding responsibilities for youth programs, which require a significant investment of time, can be stressful.
“It just takes effort and initiative, and sometimes they have their hands full,” he told me.
Additionally, while a majority of officials said digital tools that provide access to information about local governments, such as online calendars, recordings of board meetings and live streaming, encourage civic engagement, these services are still unavailable in between 32% and 40% of communities.
Other digital tools, such as data dashboards and online surveys, have been adopted by less than a third of local governments to engage residents, with officials citing residents’ mistrust, lack of internet access and in-house expertise as reasons.
AI tools, such as chatbots and AI agents, saw less trust from local officials, with just over a fifth saying they were effective. CivicPulse found that this may be due to a lack of experience using this technology, with only about 3% of local governments using it to engage residents.
Henson, the mayor of Pisco, agrees that programs aimed at getting young people involved in government can have a powerful impact. He emphasized a program in his district, the Montgomery Youth Leadership Program, as one example.
He said: “All it does is that it is open for children to apply to it, and it focuses on developing their skills such as communication and problem solving, but the most important of them is community awareness.”
“This exposes our high school-age students to what local government looks like, you know, on a very basic level,” Henson said. He added that the program introduces students to what conversations look like “in the room before decisions are made.”
He said the program had a lasting impact on one former participant.
“The reason I am in local government today, and the reason I am interested in politics, is to lead youth in Montgomery,” Hinson said.