Do most Americans treat politics as a spectator sport?

[wimp]

Do most Americans not treat politics as something that affects them in their daily lives but as a spectator sport like football?

[ultraviolet]

Considering our last president was a reality TV star…

[Del Tachi]

Where's the "No, most Americans are very marginally attached to the political system and consume minimal political information; do not have strong opinions on most issues; and have a hard time remembering if/how they even voted last time" option?

Pure tribalism in politics is actually something that is more common among high information, media-consuming people (i.e., Atlas posters.)  People who are more educated and have higher incomes report stronger partisan preferences and spend the most time/money voting, volunteering for campaigns, fundraising for candidates, etc.  It is actually the people with, as OP says, "mature and serious opinions" on politics who treat it as sport.

[dead0man]

I'd say it's more like a religion to a lot of people.  Especially these days.  These people are wrong.

[Vosem]

Del Tachi is correct that most Americans try to treat politics as little as possible, but that's not very interesting. The question could be more usefully phrased as "Do most American voters treat politics as a spectator sport?"

I think there is an important distinction to be made here between general election voters (probably no, most of these are also Americans who try to treat politics as little as possible), congressional-primary or state-legislative-primary or local-election voters (who usually at least make an attempt to be well-informed; those who are not well-informed generally do not vote at these elections, or if they happen to correspond with general elections their votes may simply go to candidates with high name recognition), and presidential primary voters (who, yes, do treat politics as a spectator sport).

So this is true under conditions of medium turnout in presidential primaries, but not under conditions of very low (congressional primaries and local elections) or very high (general election) turnout.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Well, it is a spectator sport, but where nerds are encouraged to compete.

[Pericles]

When ordinary voters ask politicians questions, they ask about actual issues like healthcare and the economy. It's the media that encourage a spectator sport view of politics by focusing on asking about the horse race, whether a bill has the votes and personality squabbles instead of focusing enough on whether a policy is a good idea or doing enough to inform people about it. Not asking about Covid at all in Biden's press conference is a prime example of this. Voters aren't very informed or engaged, the media's behavior doesn't help, but most people don't actively approach it as a sport.

[beesley]

Well yes, and for many of them a spectator sport they don't watch. I'm not sure what the best sport to compare it to is?