Source: Debbie Peterson / @heyjasperai
In an August 2024 article, writing for the UC Berkeley Greater Good Science Center, Ray Block, Andrene Wright, and Mia Angelica Powell said, “As political scientists, we have decades of experience studying politics—and we believe that not since the American Civil War has there been so much concern that American democracy, while always a work in progress, is under threat.” However, they also find that many Americans remain hopeful about democracy despite fears of its demise – and are acting on that hope.
Their survey of 12,208 people from October 26 to November 7, 2022, reveals that 66 percent of the Americans polled believe their democracy is endangered, that “the political system in the United States is failing, and there is a decent chance that we will no longer have a functioning democracy within the next ten years.” The other 44% are hopeful that it can recover.
Rather than resigning themselves to a lost democracy, the results indicate that voters from a broad array of demographic and political backgrounds feel hopeful that American democracy can overcome the nation’s challenges. Of the 44% who reported their emotion as “hope,” Black Americans were among the most hopeful (49%), second only to Asian Americans (55%), while White Americans were the most worried (33%.) When asked to select from four emotions as they entered the mid-term elections, 31% of the respondents reported being “worried.”
Of those feeling hopeful, when broken down by race and gender, the survey shows that Black women are most hopeful (56%), much more so than White men (43%), with Black men and White women both at 42%. These racial and ethnic differences are consistent with recent research on how emotions can shape politics.
How does hope manifest?
Psychologist Denise Larsen, a professor at the University of Alberta and a leader in studies of hope for two decades, explains that although hope may have a soothing quality, it’s not passive but highly motivating. “When we can imagine a future that we hope to participate in, we’re energized. We’re mobilized to take action to do something different.”
That energy manifested in July 2024 when, in just four hours, 44,000 Black women in a Zoom call pledged to raise $1 million in 100 days to support presidential candidate Kamala Harris. They beat their goal in just three hours, raising over $1.6 million. That energy didn’t stop with Black women. More than 53,000 Black men raised an additional $1.3 million.
Hope sprang to life when a Black Indian-Asian woman threw her hat in the ring for the presidency of the United States.
