Context

A medium-sized city in Kentucky found itself split by national hot-button issues — even on questions that were really about local life.

Process

Residents turned to Polis to identify the local issues they actually agreed on, then used the resulting map of their collective will to hold officials accountable for acting on it.

Results

Around 2,000 of the city’s 65,000 residents took part — a 3% participation rate that’s remarkably high for a city, and proof that polarization isn’t the whole story.

Opinion landscape