NEW YORK — A poll shows that about 3 in 4 American adults believe the upcoming presidential election is critical to the future of American democracy. But which candidate they see as the greatest threat varies based on their political leanings.
The research of The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that most Democrats, Republicans and independents view the election as “very important” or “extremely important” to democracy, with Democrats expressing a higher degree of intensity about the issue. More than half of Democrats say the November election is “extremely important” to the future of American democracy, compared with about 4-in-10 independents and Republicans.
Democrat Pamela Hanson, 67, of Amery, Wisconsin, said she is deeply concerned about the future of democracy in the country if the Republican presidential nominee… Donald Trump is elected.
“His statements tend to be that he’s a king or a dictator, a person who’s just in charge,” Hanson said. “I mean, the man is, in my opinion, deranged.”
But Republican Ernie Wagner of Liberty, New York, said it is the administration of President Joe Biden — which includes Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee — that has abused the power of the executive branch.
“Biden has tried to forgive student loans, but the courts have told him it is unconstitutional to do so,” said Wagner, 85. “He has used the FBI as a weapon to target his political opponents.”
The poll results show that many Democrats still see Trump as a threat to democracy after he tried overturn the results of the Elections 2020embraced the rioters who attacked the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 and threatened seek revenge against his opponents if he is re-elected.
But they also indicate that many of Trump’s supporters agree with him that Biden is the real threat to democracy. Trump and his allies have accused Biden of the Ministry of Justice because it has filed charges against the former president for his efforts to stop the certification of the 2020 election and the retention of secret documents, although there is no evidence that Biden had any involvement or influence in the cases.
Trump has portrayed himself as a defender of American values and Biden as a “destroyer” of democracy. He said several times after he survived an attempted murder last month that he had taken “a bullet for democracy.”
The poll, which was held in the days after Biden withdrew of the race and Harris announced her campaign is a first glimpse into how Americans are looking at a new shape of the race.
Majorities of both Democrats and Republicans say democracy could be in jeopardy in this election, depending on who wins the presidency. These responses are generally consistent with the findings when the question was last asked. an AP-NORC poll in December 2023.
Hanson, the Wisconsin Democrat, said she worries that Trump could win a second term conservative dominated US Supreme Court to ignore important freedoms. She also worries that he would fill his cabinet with loyalists who do not care about the well-being of everyone in the country and that he would defund agencies that regulate important functions of society.
But Wagner, the New York Republican, dismissed those concerns, pointing to Trump’s time in the White House.
“When he was in the White House, we had peace, prosperity, energy independence,” he said. “What’s undemocratic about that?”
He said he did not believe Trump’s intentions leading up to and on January 6 were criminal.
“I think he just did the wrong thing,” Wagner said.
Some independents are also thinking carefully about what the upcoming elections will mean for the country’s democratic future.
“I believe this is the most important election of my lifetime,” said Patricia Seliga-Williams, 53, of LaVale, Maryland, an independent who is leaning toward voting for Harris.
Seliga-Williams said she barely gets by on $15 an hour as a hotel breakfast server and remembers Trump handling the economy and immigration well. But she didn’t like it when he recently joked that he plans to a “dictator” on day one in the office.
“We all know Donald Trump can run the country,” she said. “But he’s just too aggressive anymore, and I don’t think I can trust that as a voter.”
Not everyone agrees that this year’s presidential election will be a turning point for the country’s democracy, and the reasons given vary widely, according to the AP-NORC poll. About 2 in 10 Americans say democracy in the U.S. is strong enough to withstand the election’s outcome regardless of who wins, while another 2 in 10 believe democracy is so badly broken that the outcome won’t matter.
The poll also shows that commitment of democracy in the election are felt more by older adults than by younger ones. About half of adults 45 and older say the election outcome is extremely important for the future of democracy, compared with about 4 in 10 adults under 45.
“The claim that the other candidate is trying to destroy democracy doesn’t really move me,” said Daniel Oliver, 26, an independent from the Detroit suburbs. “I think we have things in place that protect against when you try to destroy democracy. We have other branches of government. We have people who believe in voting. So it would be hard for a candidate to take over and become some kind of dictator.”
He said he will look for candidates who can talk about issues that interest him more, such as reducing inflation and investing in clean energy sources.
Biden And Trump months of fighting over whose second term would be worse for democracy. The president nodded to the implications when he ended his campaign last month, saying in his Oval Office speech that “defending democracy is more important than any title.”
Harris has focused more on the concept of “freedom” in the early days of her campaign. She has said that Trump’s re-election could lead to Americans freedom to votethe freedom to be safe from gun violence and the freedom for women to make decisions about their own bodies. Her debut campaign ad last month was set to Beyoncé’s 2016 song “Freedom,” and it has since become a campaign anthem for her at rallies.
Harris didn’t mention democracy in her first two presidential campaign rallies, but she returned to it last week in her speech to members of the Sigma Gamma Rho sorority in Houston. “Our fundamental freedoms are on the ballot, and so is our democracy,” she said.
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The poll of 1,143 adults was conducted July 25-29, 2024, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4.1 percentage points.
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