WASHINGTON (AP) — In a politically polarized country, Americans appear to agree on one issue underlying the 2024 election: concern about the state of democracy and how the presidential outcome will affect his future.
They just disagree on who poses the threat.
LEARN MORE: Few American adults want a rematch between Biden and Trump in 2024, AP-NORC poll finds
An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll found that 62 percent of adults believe democracy in the United States could be in danger. depending on who wins next fall. Majorities of Democrats (72%) and Republicans (55%) think the same thing, but for different reasons.
President Joe Biden tried to paint a dystopian future whether Republican Party frontrunner and former President Donald Trump returns to the White House after vowing revenge on his opponents and refusing to rule out abusing the powers of his office. The former president has tried to turn the narrative around lately, saying election subversion and documents filed against him show Biden used the federal government as a weapon to pursue a political opponent. He called Biden “the destroyer of American democracy.”
“I think on the left side, it’s pretty obvious that they are worried about the election of a blatantly authoritarian president, someone who clearly wants to reduce the checks and balances in government to strengthen the presidency and do it in a way that gives the executive branch unprecedented reach among the population and sectors of government,” said Michael Albertus, professor of political science at the University of Chicago.
“On the right, Republicans think about government overreach, government impotence, threats to liberty and mandates to act a certain way or adopt certain policies,” he said.
In this context, the poll reveals that about half of American adults, or 51%, believe that democracy is working “not very well” or “not well at all.”
The poll asked about the importance of the upcoming presidential election on 12 questions and found that the percentage of people saying the outcome will be very or extremely important to the future of democracy in the United States (67%) ranks behind the economy (75%). . This was roughly equal to the percentage of people who said this about government spending (67%) and immigration (66%).
Tony Motes, a retired firefighter who lives in Monroe, Georgia, cited a number of reasons why he believes “we don’t live in a complete democracy.” This includes what he sees as a deterioration of rights, including parental rights, a failure to hold thieves and other criminals accountable, and a lack of border security.
The 59-year-old Republican also said the various criminal proceedings against Trump undermined the country’s democratic traditions.
“They’re trying to stop him from running because they know he’s going to win,” he said.
The poll results continue a trend of Americans’ lackluster views on how democracy works. They also believe the country’s system of government does not work well to reflect their interests on issues ranging from immigration to abortion to the economy.
Robert Lieberman, a political science professor at Johns Hopkins University, has studied the fall of democracies elsewhere and the common elements that fuel their demise.
These factors include polarization, growing ethnic or racial antagonism, growing economic inequality, and the concentration of power under a country’s executive branch.
“For several years now, the United States has been facing these four conditions, really for the first time in history,” he said. “We are therefore in a period ripe for challenges to democracy.”
Trump is not the cause of this trend, Lieberman said, but “seems to have an unerring instinct to make things worse, and he certainly has authoritarian impulses and many supporters who seem to validate or applaud him.”
The AP-NORC poll found that 87% of Democrats and 54% of independents believe a second Trump term would have a negative impact on American democracy. For Republicans, 82% think democracy would be weakened by another Biden victory, with 56% of independents agreeing.
About 2 in 10 American adults (19%) say democracy in the United States is “already so badly broken that it doesn’t matter who wins the 2024 presidential election.” Republicans (23%) are more likely than Democrats (10%) to say this, but relatively few members of either party think American democracy is resilient enough to withstand the outcome.
Social media platforms and news sites that reinforce bias accelerate the polarization that leads people of different political perspectives to believe that the other side poses the greater threat to national democracy, said Lilliana Mason, professor associate professor of political science at Johns Hopkins.
“I don’t think people are exaggerating. I think it’s because they live in information environments where it’s true for them that democracy is under threat,” she said.
Mason said one side feared what Trump said he would do if he won, while the other was responding to fear created in a media ecosystem that says Democrats want to destroy America and turn it into a socialist or communist society.
For some, the danger is about more than Trump’s statements and concerns that he could turn toward authoritarianism. This is also what is happening in states and courts, where political manipulation and threats against voting rights continue, as do measures that limit citizens’ ability to easily vote, such as reducing voting locations. drop boxes for absentee ballots and strengthening voter ID requirements.
“Look at all the barriers that have been put up to prevent people, especially people of color, from being able to vote,” said Pamela Williams, 75, of New York, who identifies as a Democrat. “This is not democracy.”
Douglas Kucmerowski, 67, an independent who lives in the Finger Lakes region of New York, is concerned about these actions at the state level and the continued use of the electoral college, which can allow someone to be president even if he loses the popular vote.
He also questions the state of the nation’s democracy when much of the country supports a candidate facing multiple criminal charges and who has spoken, among other things, of seeking retaliation and using the military to National level.
Trump also lied about the outcome of the 2020 election, which was confirmed by multiple reviews in battleground states where he contested his defeat, and called his supporters to a rally in Washington before they took stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. in a violent attempt to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s victory.
“This candidate, at any other age, would probably have been excluded. But for some reason, in this company, he’s one of the top picks,” Kucmerowski said. “If this country is so confused that it can’t tell the difference between right and wrong and past presidents declare that from day one he will be a dictator, no one cares about second or third or fourth day, while he is still a dictator?
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The survey of 1,074 adults was conducted from November 30 to December 4, 2023, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4.0 percentage points.
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