The results show dramatic opinion shifts and notable consensus-building across party lines. Most notably, dissatisfaction with American democracy dropped 21 points overall—from 75% to 54%—with Republicans, Democrats, and independents all showing significant improvement in democratic confidence at the end of the weekend.

"When Pennsylvanians were given the space for informed, civil conversation, they consistently depolarized on issues that dominate cable news narratives as hopeless partisan battles," said James Fishkin, Director of Stanford's Deliberative Democracy Lab. "This experiment proves that America's political divisions and opinions are not as intractable as they might seem. Voters, when presented with balanced information and the opportunity to listen to one another, emerged with considered judgments about what needed to be done as well as greater respect for those they disagree with. The results offer a look at what really matters to voters when they think in depth about the issues. In my view, it also offers an inspiring picture of how democracy could actually work better.”
 

Key findings:
 

• Immigration: Support for increasing visas for low-skilled workers doubled from 25% to 50%, with Democrats moving from 41% to 69% support and Republicans increasing from 9% to 30%. State-level DACA protections gained significant Republican backing, rising from 18% to 38%.
• Voting Rights: Support for broad voter enfranchisement jumped to 96% (up from 83%), with Republicans increasing their support by 22 points. Democrats increased their support for voter ID requirements, increasing from 48% to 57%.
• Election Integrity: An overwhelming majority of participants supported increases in election integrity, with 77% supporting random ballot audits, and 87% supporting criminal penalties for voter intimidation.
• Healthcare: Rural healthcare initiatives achieved near-unanimous support, with 94% backing loan forgiveness for healthcare workers in underserved areas and 88% supporting tax credits for rural facilities.
• Foreign policy: Support for providing military support to Taiwan in case of Chinese invasion doubled from 35% to 69%, with massive bipartisan increases among both Democrats (40-point jump) and Republicans (30-point jump).
• Education: While trade school subsidies gained overwhelming support (81%), free college tuition support dropped from 59% to 47% as participants weighed budget realities.
• Transformed relationships & Understanding: Perhaps most significantly, 91% of participants reported respecting opposing political viewpoints (up from 72%) following their experience at America in One Room: Pennsylvania and 90% expressed willingness to compromise with political opponents (up from 80%). As a whole, 97% of participants reported that A1R: PA was valuable in helping them clarify their positions on key public policy issues debated.

America in One Room: Pennsylvania is the fifth Deliberative Polling® event organized by Helena in collaboration with Stanford’s Deliberative Democracy Lab. Public Opinion Strategies conducted outreach, selected the representative samples, and administered the questionnaires.

Full results and executive summary are available below:

The "Meet Our Researchers" series showcases the incredible scholars at Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL). Through engaging interviews conducted by our undergraduate research assistants, we explore the journeys, passions, and insights of CDDRL’s faculty and researchers.

What is the most exciting or impactful finding from your research, and why do you think it matters for democracy, development, or the rule of law?

My current research examines the question of how opposition movements survive in authoritarian contexts, with a focus on recent local elections in Turkey, where conservative incumbents were defeated for the first time in decades. We found that the opposition successfully built bottom-up alliances at the local level, which may be more successful than parties trying to form coalitions at the national level. 

This is because top-down alliances, as were attempted to be formed in Turkey in 2023, tend to be fragile and lack sufficient power to win elections. Top-down efforts involve convincing leaders of ideologically opposed parties to join together, which often isn’t effective in convincing their base to join suit. 

On the other hand, bottom-up local action can be much more powerful, with alliances in municipalities formed through an intimate knowledge of how resources and power are distributed among groups. These opposition coalitions, bound together by substantive ideas and community knowledge, tend to be more persuasive. 

This research demonstrates the power of local government and how opposition can be strengthened through numerous bottom-up alliances, as opposed to a weak, top-down national approach. Still, there are difficulties in preventing authoritarian backlash as a response to oppositional successes. After the loss of many governing party candidates in Turkey recently, there has been a new wave of coercion against municipal leaders, such as the Istanbul mayor being jailed after running as a presidential candidate. Several other newly elected mayors have been in jail for months without even an indictment.

How does the increased authoritarianism in Turkey fit into the context of global democratic recession? Are these patterns of oppositional gains in local elections a sign of a more optimistic future for Turkey, or is it still in a state of democratic decline?

I believe our research suggests that the opposition is more effectively contesting the governing party; however, it is too early to say whether this could serve as a model for a broader shift. Despite being embedded in European organizations and experiencing a moment of democratization in the 2000s, Turkey has become increasingly authoritarian, becoming one of the earliest cases of modern democratic decline. Also, global influences are harming Turkey’s trajectory, such as the presence of a more undemocratic leader in the U.S.
 

How do you see your research influencing policy or contributing to real-world change?

When starting research, I don’t think of writing policy as my main goal. Instead, it’s to understand big questions or add more nuance to a discussion about a phenomenon. My research today on local power dynamics and bottom-up coalition building continues to have real-world relevance in the battle against authoritarian regimes.

Returning to your research on Turkey and particularly the plight of the Kurdish minority, how can states mitigate the effects of ethnic fractionalism on development?

In Turkey, I think of democratization as being possible through the recognition of the cultural and political rights of the Kurds. The opening of systems to those who have been historically excluded would benefit not only democratic development but also economic development. This is because ethnically inclusive states are more prosperous, as otherwise, ethnic conflict hinders development, with national security concerns scaring off investment.

Amidst increasing authoritarianism, have situations for minorities like the Kurds worsened or improved over time?

While there have been gestures of peace with the Kurds, when those efforts fail, the Turkish government often strengthens authoritarian measures. This is exemplified by the peace negotiations from 2013 to 2015, which initially resulted in the Kurds amassing more political power. This caused the regime to fear being undermined and become more coercive toward the minority group in the long run.

Overall, improvements for the Kurds have not been linear. Peace negotiations are currently underway, though many believe them to be insincere. When looking at the regime’s other policies towards opposition, journalists, and students, it’s easy to be pessimistic. 

What gaps do you feel need to be addressed in your research field, and what do you anticipate you will study more in the future?

In the intellectual circles I have been a part of, academics tend to come from a political science background. I’m more interested in bringing in cultural and sociological perspectives, such as through discussions of social class or different ethnic groups. My research will continue to unite multi-disciplinary ideas to gain a deeper understanding of authoritarian regimes.

Could you elaborate further on your research into youth participation?

Currently, I’m working on a project comparing the U.S. and Turkey to better understand youth political behavior. In the recent elections in both countries, there was a lot of emphasis on the youth voice as a counter-authoritarian force, but this prediction did not necessarily hold true. In the US, many were persuaded by Trump’s agenda, especially young men. It’s important not to generalize too much when studying youth, as they are as diverse as the rest of the population. Still, there are notable trends among young people to monitor, like the Turkish youth’s growing secularism and how that might impact the Islamist parties’ power. 

You’ve discussed the importance of recognizing the impact of class when conducting research. How do you think politicians have capitalized on class to maintain power in Turkey, and is the opposition or current regime more supported by the working class?

The Islamist parties have been most known to garner support from lower economic groups. While the main opposition party is relearning how to succeed among the working class, it would be an overstatement to assume this shift has significantly expanded beyond the local level at this point.

President Erdogan was able to amass power by garnering support from the poor, going door-to-door and engaging in bottom-up efforts to get their votes. Now, opposition leaders appear to be learning from these strategies, leading to improved outcomes so far.
 

Lastly, what books would you recommend for students interested in a research career in your field?

I may be expected to recommend political science books, but it is American sociologist Richard Sennett who especially influenced me early in my career. He focuses on how big social changes affect individuals. His book, The Hidden Injuries of Class, shaped my understanding of how social class is not just a reflection of an individual’s position in society, but also influences one’s sense of self. He also wrote Respect in a World of Inequality about how changes in the economy and labor market influence individuals. Sennet’s work successfully approaches issues in a humane, historical, and power-conscious way.

Argument & Key Findings

Conditional cash transfers (CCTs) have been a widespread and effective tool in reducing poverty in Latin America. CCT programs transfer cash to the poor on the condition that recipients engage in beneficial behaviors, like enrolling their children in school, vaccinating them, or taking them to see a physician. CCTs aim to break the intergenerational cycle of poverty, especially among women. Indeed, women are central to CCTs as they are often responsible for children’s health and nutrition as well as ensuring that they remain enrolled in school.

Alberto Díaz-Cayeros reviews the scholarship on CCTs in Latin America, where much of that research had originated, shedding light on these programs’ workings and effects. Particular focus is given to how CCTs have helped overcome shortcomings of democratic systems, including ‘clientelism,’ broadly understood as the practice of politicians trading goods or services for votes. Despite CCTs’ broad success, challenges persist, especially regarding their use to mitigate poverty that is concentrated in rural areas as well as among indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples. The reader learns that CCTs are deeply interwoven with the behavior of politicians and the mobilization of social groups for political goals. CCTs are very malleable tools, having been adapted to the advent of COVID-19 when contagion and income loss were prevalent among the poor. CCTs have been one of the most rigorously evaluated interventions by social scientists. Most generally, they have reduced poverty, inequality, and infant mortality, while increasing school enrollment and nutrition.
 

Conceptualizing & Measuring Poverty

Díaz-Cayeros builds an incredibly rich historical overview of poverty in Latin America. This includes both its persistence and its dramatic decline in recent decades, CCTs having played a key role in the latter process. However, national-level declines obscure the wide disparities that persist at the subnational level and among historically marginalized communities. In addition, efforts (like CCTs) aimed at tackling poverty have often failed to address inequality, because social spending in Latin America has at times been regressive, i.e., taking resources from the poor and giving them to the middle and upper classes. Meanwhile, fiscal resources are often transferred to poor regional governments, as opposed to the individuals within them.

Poverty persists in part because of ‘poverty traps,’ a technical concept tied to factors like limited access to credit and education as well as poor health. These problems are especially pronounced in rural areas, which are often isolated from economic activity, lack the social mobility of cities, and tend to feature systemic exclusion along ethno-racial lines. The measurement of poverty has become increasingly sophisticated, moving beyond income to incorporate assets, basic needs, and geospatial data. The upshot of Díaz-Cayeros’ overview is that measurements of poverty, which any evaluation of CCTs must incorporate, often fail to account for poverty traps and their concentration among distinct groups in specific areas.

Background & Variation

Díaz-Cayeros examines the historical roots of CCTs, highlighting the role of 20th-century Latin American governments in replacing Catholic charities and philanthropists as the primary actors addressing poverty. These governments sought to target primarily urban poverty, owing to large-scale processes of internal migration, which moved workers away from agriculture and into factories and the informal economy. This helps explain the persistence of rural poverty. State social spending was undermined by the Latin American debt crises of the 1980s and 1990s, which disproportionately harmed the rural poor. The 2010s commodity boom enabled a re-expansion of social spending, although these programs continued to be insufficient to lift historically marginalized peoples out of poverty. The creation of CCTs by Mexican economist Santiago Levy in the 1990s can thus be placed against this backdrop of poverty, austerity, and labor market change.

CCTs have been widely adopted across Latin America by governments of different partisan leanings. One important determinant of this process has been fiscal constraint: because CCTs are relatively inexpensive, wealthier countries adopted them later. It should also be noted that effective CCTs depend on effective states, which provide, among other things, the hospitals and schools that recipients must utilize. By the mid-2020s, nearly 60 programs existed across Latin America, varying widely in terms of the share of beneficiaries of the total population. Countries that adopted CCTs early on do not necessarily have larger shares of beneficiaries, and larger shares don’t necessarily mean a given CCT is effectively helping the poor.
 

Clientelism & Democracy

One of the most important political aspects of CCTs is their potential resistance to ‘clientelism.’ What this means is that universal and automatic criteria for CCT recipients can limit the ability of politicians to trade particular benefits for votes. As such, CCTs have helped improve Latin American democracy, partly because politicians who ‘credit-claim’ for implementing CCTs can be more readily held accountable. On the ground, politicians still find ways to perpetuate clientelism, for example by manipulating the distribution of non-CCT goods like water cisterns. However, the broader implications of CCT are significant: as citizens’ cash needs are met, they can more meaningfully participate in the democratic process.
 

Future Research

Díaz-Cayeros posits an agenda for future research. These include: (1) the ways that continued discrimination against indigenous and Afro-descendant communities may require changes to the design of CCTs, (2) the ways that CCTs can be complemented by private charities and NGOs; the ways that expansions to CCT might bring Latin American governments closer to providing a universal basic income, and (3) the sources of Latin American citizens’ support for CCTs, whether owing to moral sensibilities, fear of deprivation, or otherwise. Ultimately, CCTs have been broadly successful and adaptable, improving both the economic standing and political efficacy of poor citizens. Their long-term success depends upon addressing the victims of systemic exclusion and intergenerational poverty.

*Research-in-Brief prepared by Adam Fefer.