Following stories that are important to local communities tends to reduce partisanship and political polarization by encouraging voters to make choices based on how a candidate’s policies might affect local conditions.
From Salon

“This was one of the first big-name criminal cases, but it didn’t have the polarization that, for example, O.J. Simpson had,” Gold said.
From Los Angeles Times

He argued that Democrats’ primary voters were inflaming the polarization by pushing their lawmakers to stake out a more extreme position by breaking quorum.
From Salon

How do you see that polarization influencing judges’ abilities to safely and effectively carry out their duties?
From Salon

We witness it in social media platforms where individual users and corporate algorithms optimize for engagement and profit, collectively creating an information commons so degraded by misinformation and polarization that democratic discourse itself suffers.
From Salon

from — Dictionary.com | Meanings & Definitions of English Words. (2025d). In Dictionary.com.