I do wonder if the US had a nationwide referendum, which question lead to a result closest to current partisanship and be the most divisive?
Gun control could end up as a 50-50 issue and match partisanship, but I'm not sure if it is the most divisive issue. Anything racial would be incredibly divisive but it would be hard to get a question that doesn't favor one side. After all, many moderate Democratic positions on it poll well but a question that leans too much to the 'abolish ICE' or 'defund the police' side would likely be a blowout the other way.
Well it depends on how gun control is phrased. Something like 'eliminate the 2nd amendment' probably fails by at least 65-35, while something like 'institute background checks for gun sales' probably passes by double digits.
States have literally conducted basically this exact referendum. Background checks are less popular than the Democratic Party, always, generally in ways that imply a national Republican victory (R+1 in the Nevada case, R+2 in the Maine case).
Yes, I know polling shows >80% of Americans support background checks, and sometimes >90%. But those aren't the Americans who vote.
My guess is background checks would lose a national referendum, but it would be very very close and they could win in principle. (Although I actually think that support for 'repealing the Second Amendment' might run ahead of 35% -- you sometimes see really maximalist gun-control referendums win in blue states, in a way that suggests to me something like that could well hit the low 40s.)
Issue of universal background checks comes down to the details. People support it in the abstract, but when faced with a particular proposal they often object to how it is going to be implemented.
Poll
