The Research

Primary research: Program for Public Consultation

Common Ground's foundational data source is the University of Maryland's Program for Public Consultation (PPC), led by Steven Kull. PPC is one of the most rigorous public-opinion research operations in the country, drawing on more than 100,000 informed participants across its policymaking simulations. Funding comes from the MacArthur, Rockefeller, and Hewlett foundations.

PPC's distinctive methodology is deliberative polling — citizens are given balanced briefings on policy questions (covering arguments for and against, with documented sources) before they are asked their views. This surfaces what people actually want when they are informed, not what they reflexively respond when prompted by partisan framing.

Two key reports underlie Common Ground's work:

• The 2024 Common Ground of the American People report, produced in collaboration with Stanford University's Deliberative Democracy Lab. This identified an extensive set of federal policies on which majorities of both Republicans and Democrats agreed.
• The 2026 CGOAP curation, which refined that work to 82 policieson which more than two-thirds of both Republicans and Democrats agree — the policies publicly available on PPC's site, which Common Ground's own look-up tool displays.

Supplementary sources

We draw on additional peer-reviewed and credibly-sourced data for triangulation, perception-gap evidence, and context:

• Pew Research Center — politics, polarization, civic-engagement research
• Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) — health-policy polling
• Gallup — politics, party identification
• More in Common — Hidden Tribes, Perception Gap research
• Harvard CAPS/Harris — current polling on contested issues
• Morning Consult, Quinnipiac, AP/NORC, CIRCLE (Tufts) — additional context where helpful

Source attributions appear in the look-up tool results and in Platform documentation.

What Common Ground does with the research

Common Ground curates, applies, and triangulates. We do not author.

• We curate: from rigorous existing research, we identify the policies on which Americans broadly agree.
• We apply: we translate that research into citizen-facing utility — searchable, scannable, usable.
• We triangulate: where multiple sources address the same policy, we cross-check for consistency and surface any meaningful discrepancies.

We do not commission our own surveys. We do not employ proprietary methodology. The research integrity stays with the researchers. Common Ground is the structured citizen-facing application that connects rigorous research to citizen use.

What Common Ground does not do

We do not author the data. We do not lobby for specific policies. We do not endorse candidates. We do not interpret what citizens “should” want.

We reveal what already exists — and trust citizens to draw their own conclusions.

For the full governance framework — including the three criteria that govern Platform selection (supermajority public support, cross-partisan agreement, and respect for individual constitutional rights) — see our Governance & Transparency page →