Karen Cyphers
When three ancient Greek kings signed a treaty establishing Ekecheiria – the tradition of the “Olympic Truce” – in the ninth century BC, they wanted to ensure safe passage and participation for competitors from their respective and endlessly conflicted, city-states.
Kings Iphitos, Cleosthenes, and Lycurgus also wanted to set the stage for athletes and spectators 2,000-plus years later to put aside ideological differences regarding gender, politics, vaccination status, doping, and age to enjoy the unifying experience of sport.
Just kidding, mostly.
Certainly, there have been some successes over the years when Olympic Games brought together individuals and nations, otherwise unlikely to align – think Jesse Owens and Luz Long in the 1936 Berlin Olympics or the more recent Joint North and South Korean Women’s Ice Hockey Team in the 2018 PyeongChang Games.
There have also been horrific exceptions to this rule: the killing of 11 members of the Israeli Olympic team in 1972 by the Palestinian terrorist group Black September, and the forced boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics by the United States and several other countries following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, to name a few. Plenty of other civil wars and international crises continued through multiple other Olympiads.
Just this year, two days after the 2024 Paris Olympics began, Iran-backed Hezbollah terrorists launched rockets into Israel’s Golan Heights, killing 12 children who were in the midst of a soccer game. These children – both Arab and Israel – were engaging together in precisely what the spirit of the Olympics should embody. Israel responded just days later, killing a top Hezbollah commander in a targeted strike in Lebanon.
And there’s surely no truce, or pause, in the many political battles waging within the U.S. as we approach the November presidential election. Nominees Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are locked in the polls … and locked in a war of who is “weirder” (or whether “weird” is good, as Vivek Ramaswamy defends).
These various tensions and the increasing ever-presence of politics in everything have taken a toll, including on how Americans experience the Olympics. For 4 in 10 Florida voters, political issues have begun to compromise their ability to enjoy the Olympics at all – a feeling expressed by 58% of Florida Republicans, 35% of nonpartisans, and 24% of Democrats. These findings, from our Sachs Media survey of Florida voters conducted August 1-4, also reveal that more than half of Floridians under age 45 feel that political issues have made it more difficult to enjoy the Olympics – 54% of them, along with 40% of middle-aged voters and 29% of those over age 65.
Importantly, however, even among those who feel that politics has dampened their enjoyment of the Olympic Games, the overwhelming majority — 87% — say they still like to watch at least one event. They may not enjoy it as much, or they may feel some tension or dissonance from what they see, but they’re still watching.
Among those who enjoy at least one Olympic event, Floridians are largely united in getting pleasure from two sports that aren’t what you’d immediately think of as perennial American athletic attractions: gymnastics and swimming. Three in four Floridians who watch the Olympics tune into gymnastics – including 93% of women and 60% of men.
Meanwhile, 2 in 3 enjoy watching swimming, including 77% of Democrats and 56% of Republicans. Half of those who watch enjoy track and field, with men (55%) tuning in at higher rates than women (42%). About 4 in 10 enjoy watching diving, while soccer, volleyball, basketball, and beach volleyball are enjoyed by about 1 in 3, respectively, with no significant differences among demographic groups in who likes to watch each.
Florida is surely well-represented in these Olympic Games, too.
The Sunshine State has sent 43 full-time residents to Paris – the second highest in the nation. These athletes call 21 different Florida counties home and are competing in 20 events.
Further, 97 athletes who do or did compete in NCAA sports for a Florida university are competing this year, too – including about 4 in 10 who can call themselves Gators. These Florida collegians or alumni have a truly international flavor representing 44 countries, with fewer than 1 in 5 playing for Team USA. This demonstrates the extraordinary reach of Florida universities in recruiting, training, and exporting elite athletes around the globe.
We didn’t ask why — or in what ways — Floridians believe politics has sullied the Olympic experience.
But the fact that even those who have this feeling still watch and enjoy is meaningful, and something I read as a cause for hope.
If we can feel a certain way, but still will ourselves to look past it for a moment of unity, maybe some can extend that experience beyond the Games and into other areas of life.
Maybe on the modern battlefield of ideology, we’re better at the Olympic Truce than we even know.
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Karen Cyphers, Ph.D., is a partner and Director of Research at Sachs Media. She can be reached at [email protected].
