Can the Left and the Right have more in common? Study says KC craves connection | Opinion
Study after study talks about our disconnectedness, our unaffiliatedness, our loneliness. Those feelings can increase across differences: race and ethnicity, political ideology, where we live.
What about a desire to be connected, to belong? Do we aspire to these things?
A new study released this week says yes, especially in Kansas City.
“The Connection Opportunity: Insights for Bringing Americans Together Across Difference” studied three cities — KC, Pittsburgh and Houston — and found that Kansas City values connection across lines of difference, more so than the national average.
Compared to the national average, Kansas City residents are more likely to:
- Believe they have a responsibility to connect across lines of difference (78% versus 70% nationally).
- Be interested in activities that build connection across lines of difference (66% versus 56 % nationally).
To find out why Kansas City beats the pack, I interviewed researchers from More in Common, the nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that studied residents of the three cities in 2024.
“We’re in this time of increasing loneliness and social isolation and it’s harder for people to connect with one another,” said Kate Carney, deputy director.
More in Common says on its website that it looks for common ground and tries to bring people together to face shared challenges. In Kansas City, it studied 532 people who responded to a survey, along with five focus groups. It also did a national study of 4,500 respondents in 2023.
Carney said she was encouraged by the findings, and especially that people want to work together towards a shared goal.
“We asked (about) a whole host of different types of activities where people may connect with people who are different, from inviting someone into your home to going to an event to working together. And what we found is by far the activity that people are most interested in connecting across is by working together on a mutual goal in your community.”
Carney said majorities of people across race, class, religion and politics all said they would be interested in this kind of connection.
Politics still a stumbling block
It’s encouraging to see that the study found areas of connection that went across all lines of difference, but even politics? There’s the rub. Connecting across political ideologies was the difference that people were the most apprehensive about.
“We’re not as engaged in our communities as much as maybe once before. And we’re also in this time where, at least along political lines, we feel very politically divided,” Carney said.
After Donald Trump was sworn into the office of the presidency, I asked readers of the Star Opinion newsletter to tell us their perspectives on the new administration. More than 300 of you responded and responses were pretty divided.
Based on the question “What are you optimistic about concerning changes from the Trump administration?” 41% of respondents expressed optimism about changes, while 59% were not optimistic.
Of those who did express optimism in change, these topics came to the forefront: the economy, immigration control, government efficiency, safety, national defense and world leadership.
Our newsletter readers were not necessarily the subjects surveyed by More in Common, but if we extrapolate its findings, perhaps even this politically divided group might be willing to connect with each other across their differences.
But there are reasons why those conversations might be more difficult, said More in Common Research Manager Calista Small: “I don’t have the energy.” “I think this is going to be uncomfortable.” “I think I’m going to feel misunderstood.” “I don’t think this is going to be a positive experience.”
“And those were numbers that were definitely a little bit higher, I think, compared to the national average. So, there’s definitely this apprehension around connecting across political differences, which I think reflects on how political differences are handled,” she said.
How to make connection happen
Another statistic from the survey that makes Kansas City a study outlier is community trust. We trust our neighbors and our neighbors trust each other.
“About 71% express high trust in their communities, which is also high above the national average.” Carney said.
So why isn’t connection happening more often?
The study found that the most commonly cited barrier was actually a lack of opportunity.
“People didn’t always find that they had the opportunity to connect across differences. So, how do you think about creating more of those? There can be opportunities where you host a community event and people get to go and they get to meet their neighbors and they see one another,” Carney said.
Interest is one thing, but Small said it’s deeper than that in Kansas City.
“A large majority, 78% of residents in the Kansas City metro area, believe that they have this connective responsibility, that they have a social or moral responsibility to people who are from different backgrounds or have different beliefs than them. And that’s higher than the national average,” Small said.
That’s important because in the national study, the idea of connective responsibility predicts people’s levels of interest in engaging across lines of difference.
“So if you really feel that you have a responsibility to do this, you’re more interested in doing it yourself, of course. And so the fact that that’s higher in Kansas City, we don’t really know why, but it’s really exciting and something to talk about and take a lot of pride in, I would say,” Small said.
This story was originally published March 19, 2025 at 5:08 AM.
