More local officials than ever say in a new survey that political polarization is having a negative impact nationally, with those in larger communities seeing greater local effects — findings that coincided with a surge in political violence and Washington gridlock.
Nearly 9 in 10 respondents of the survey of about 1,400 city and county leaders, which was conducted in September by the nonprofit CivicPulse, said they believe political polarization is negatively affecting the nation. That's an uptick from a earlier survey on the subject by the nonpartisan research organization during the first months of President Donald Trump’s second administration, which found 83% of local government officials held that view.
Just 30% of respondents to the latest survey, however, said polarization is harming their local communities, a result similar to CivicPulse’s previous findings, which suggests community life remains resilient to the national discord, according to the results shared exclusively with NBC News.
The latest survey, commissioned by the nonprofit Carnegie Corporation of New York, is the third and final installment in CivicPulse’s impact of polarization study that began the August before the 2024 presidential election. As in the organization’s previous two surveys, the perception that political polarization is harmful to local communities rose with population size, with officials in communities of more than 50,000 people more likely to report a “great deal” of negative effects (41%) compared to leaders in smaller communities (28%).
That’s due in part to elections in larger cities and counties taking on more of a national tone, with increased campaign spending and attention from state and national political groups, the survey noted.
In all three surveys, the vast majority of local leaders said they believed polarization was harming the country — with the latest survey showing the highest percentage of all (89%).
“The consistency of that is pretty remarkable given how much change just in even the last year we’ve seen in the country,” said Nathan Lee, the founder and managing director of CivicPulse.
September saw significant turmoil in national politics, with conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s assassination and a budget impasse in Washington that caused a record six-week federal government shutdown. Before that, in June, Minnesota Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband were killed, and another state Democratic lawmaker and his wife shot, in what officials allege were politically motivated attacks, and in April, the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion was set ablaze while Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro was inside with his family.
Lee attributed the September increase in the number of local officials worried about polarization nationally 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 last survey, “he was just getting started in his administration.”
“We’re well into his actual administration now, so I think that seems likely to be a factor,” he added.
With Kirk’s assassination, “both the event and the reaction to the event — and then the reaction to the reaction to the event — I think all that contributed” to the view of greater national harm from polarization, Lee said.
Local institutions a bright spot
CivicPulse found in the last survey, which was conducted from January to March, that increased civic participation and dialogue focused on local issues were crucial to keeping the negative effects of polarization at bay locally. Municipal leaders surveyed in September expressed similar sentiments to NBC News.
“I think for the most part, we all want the same fundamentals — safe neighborhoods, good schools, are there any jobs coming in, more opportunities for kids?” said Grant Hinson, the mayor of Biscoe, North Carolina, a town of about 2,200 residents. “We see each other in a grocery store, ballgames, church, whatever and we’re connected.”
Tamaya Loewe, a township supervisor in Germantown, Wisconsin, which has just more than 1,800 residents, echoed him on the power of local institutions in her community to overcome political extremes.
“People may differ in opinions with their neighbors and the folks that they’re going to church with or that they have kids on the same sports team with,” Loewe said. “But there’s that small community feel, where people still really work to try to get along and kind of accept that we’re not always going to agree on things.”
In this final survey go-round, CivicPulse asked local officials to rate local public institutions to determine “on the ground, who do you actually partner with if you want to do the work of fostering more positive participation to reduce the negative effects of polarization,” Lee said.
The respondents highly rated certain local public institutions where residents gather outside work and home, especially schools, as key to blunting the impact of polarization and encouraging civic participation — something the survey’s organizers suggested could be scalable.
“What is positive for us is the fact that [the survey] actually pointed to some things that might be working,” Louise Richardson, president of Carnegie, a philanthropic foundation supporting research and education, told NBC News. “For example, we see the areas where the infrastructure already exists — schools, sports clubs, libraries, parks. These are all seen as areas in which polarization is mitigated and in which people can participate.”
Eighty-three percent of local leaders surveyed said K-12 schools foster civic participation in their communities “a great deal,” “a lot” or “a moderate amount,” while 70% said the same about sports leagues. Law enforcement agencies, public libraries and local parks were viewed as important to civic participation by 64% of community officials, while universities and colleges were cited by 62% as having a positive impact.
One reason K-12 schools topped the list is because of their ubiquity, Lee said.
“Some of the institutions that were still seen as positive, like health care centers or cultural centers, museums, universities and colleges, those aren’t in all communities in America. But everyone has a K-12 school,” he said.
That these public institutions are normally run by local leaders, not by state or national elected officials, makes residents more inclined to care about and participate with them, officials said.
“There is a large push in our town to volunteer on various committees,” Eric Couture, a town selectman in Killingworth, Connecticut, told NBC News. “Like, we have parks and rec, which is in charge of the field, sports, finance, the conservation commission, planning and zoning.”
“That sort of governing style really pushes people who are involved in politics to set aside some of the acrimony and work together to find solutions,” Couture continued. “I think a big part of that is everybody just wants government to function and function well.”
Richardson said encouraging civic participation at such local public institutions is effective because those are the places where everyone gathers regularly.
“There’s no ideological test on admission to a public school, everyone attends school,” she said. “Here you have parents and kids already engaged.”
Sports leagues, which the survey findings noted foster local pride and intergenerational interaction, have a similar impact, she said.
“On the baseball team, nobody cares whether your parents vote one side or another,” Richardson said. “The parents, irrespective of their political predilections, share a commitment to wanting their kids to learn how to compete, wanting them to get good coaching, wanting them to do healthy activities and all the rest of it.”
Barriers to engagement
Overwhelmingly, officials in communities of all sizes said getting youths involved in civics programming outside of classrooms, such as to attend local government meetings (87%), volunteer during elections (80%), or even seek representation in local governance (80%), are vital ways to polarization.
Those experiences can be “a long-run lever that can have a positive influence” on attitudes about politics that “doesn’t require federal or state assistance, Lee said.
“There’s room to act there in a way that seems to be quite promising for creating positive civic participation 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 for young people. Some activities, such as local election volunteering, were less common, with only 18% of communities providing that opportunity for youths.
Those officials who have fostered such participation in government “seem to think it went really well,” Lee said. “But most haven’t done it in their community.”
That suggests there’s “a big gap between what’s possible — what could have a positive impact — and what’s actually happening,” he said. “In other words, there’s a significant underprovision of civics programming in America.”
Part of the problem is that most local elected officials do their government work part time, so adding responsibilities for youth programming, which requires a significant time investment, can be burdensome.
“It just involves effort and involves initiative,” Lee said, “and sometimes they have their hands full.”
In addition, while majorities of officials said digital tools that provide access to information about local governments, such as online calendars, recordings of board meetings and livestreaming, encourage civic engagement, such services still aren’t available in between 32% and 40% of local communities.
Other digital tools, such as data dashboards and online surveys, were adopted by less than a third of local governments to engage residents, with officials citing resident distrust and the lack of internet access and internal expertise as reasons.
Artificial intelligence tools, such as chatbots and AI agents, saw less confidence from local officials, with just over a fifth saying they’re effective. CivicPulse found that could be due to a lack of experience with the technology, with only about 3% of local governments using it to engage residents.
Hinson, the mayor of Biscoe, agreed that programs aimed at getting youths involved in government can have a strong impact. He emphasized a program in his county, Youth Leadership Montgomery, as one such example.
“All it does is, it is open for kids to apply to, and it focuses on them developing skills like communication, problem solving, but the biggest one is community awareness,” he said.
“It kind of exposes our high school-age students to what local government looks like, you know, on the very basic level,” Hinson said. He added that the program exposes students to what the conversations are like “inside the room before the decisions are made.”
The program had a lasting impact on one former participant, he said.
“The reason why I’m in local government today, the reason why I got interested in politics, is because of Youth Leadership Montgomery,” Hinson said.
