Hello and welcome to the 538 Politics Podcast. I'm Galen Drick. If you are alive in 2022,

you know that America is divided. Republicans and Democrats disagree on all manner of things.

Surveys suggest that they may not even like each other, and voting data shows they often

live separately too. But today's guests suggest that in focusing on the left right divide

in American politics, we are missing another important divide. One that may actually

run counter to the idea that America is hopelessly conflicted between red and blue. In the book,

The Other Divide, authors Yana Kriptakov and John Barry Ryan, are you that the golf

between Americans who are deeply involved in politics and those who are not deserves

more of our attention? In fact, they say the kinds of partisans who are engaged enough to actually

despise the other side only make up 15 to 20% of the country. The other 80 or so percent are

focused on their daily lives, and in large part don't like politics or want to talk about them.

And they say that it's a problem that the 15 to 20% minority drive our understanding of

the two parties and politics. Perhaps, dear listener, you are part of that minority, so consider

this your trigger warning. Yana and John are both political science professors at Stony Brook

University, and they are here with me now. Welcome to the show. Thank you for having us.

Yeah, thanks for having us. So first things first, how did you come to the conclusion that it is

only 15 to 20% of Americans who are engaged in that stereotypical partisan standoff between right

and left? I mean, there's not a simple answer to that question because the measure we actually

use in the book is a continuum. One question that correlates really well with the involvement

question. That is how much do you pay attention to politics? How much do you talk about politics?

This sort of battery is a standard question you've seen a lot of measures of effective polarization.

Would you be upset if your child married someone from the other party? And then the question

...