WASHINGTON (AP) – According to a new poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, only a small fraction of Americans believe that democracy thrives in the US, even though broad majorities agree that representative government is one of the most important principles of the country..
Only 16% of Americans say democracy works well or extremely well, a pessimism that spans the political spectrum. Almost half of Americans, 45%, think democracy doesn’t work well, while another 38% say it works only slightly well.
The core elements of democratic governance, including free and fair elections and the peaceful transfer of power, were severely tested by the baseless allegations of electoral fraud advanced by former President Donald Trump. Those allegations of fraud were a main cause of the deadly violence in the Capitol last month, damaging the country’s reputation as a model for democracy.
Trump will undergo an unprecedented second impeachment trial in the Senate this week for his role in fueling the violence. About half of Americans say the Senate must condemn the Republican former president.
“Each time it got worse and worse,” said Curtis Musser, a 55-year-old independent Republican in Clermont, Florida, who did not vote for Trump. ‘You could see it brewing before the elections. And from there everything just kept turning down. “
The poll’s findings broadly agree with how Americans rated democracy before the election. But there are signs that Trump’s attacks on the democratic process include his repeated and discredited argument that the election was ‘stolen’ because of voter irregularities., resonated with Republicans.
In October, about two-thirds of those who identified with the GOP, 68%, said democracy worked at least somewhat well. That figure plummeted to 36% in January. Democratic attitudes turned in the opposite direction, with 70% saying democracy worked at least somewhat well, compared with 37% in the fall.
Overall, about two-thirds of Americans say Joe Biden has been legitimately elected president, but only one-third of Republicans have that view.
That debate is now taking place in Congress, with clear divisions among Republican leaders such as Senator Mitch McConnell, Representative Liz Cheney and others who have rejected Trump’s claims and endorsed Biden’s victory. Still, more than 140 House Republicans refused to accept Biden’s victory, a sign of the far right’s hold on the party.
GOP officials in several battlefield states that Biden carried, including Arizona and Georgia, have said the election was fair. Trump’s claims were outright dismissed by the courts, including judges appointed by Trump and his former Attorney General William Barr.
Fred Carrigan, a 58-year-old industrial heating engineer in Portland, Indiana, said he doesn’t believe Trump’s argument that the election was stolen. But he also sees the pressure to impeach and condemn Trump as an insult to democracy. A conviction would allow senators to ban Trump from re-seeking office.
Trump has not done himself a favor by saying they should go on a march. But he didn’t tell them to destroy the Capitol, ”Carrigan said. ‘I don’t think it’s accusatory. Blaming him is small. They’re a bunch of kids trying to prove who’s right, when in the big picture it doesn’t matter. ”
“All these shows are that it’s just getting worse,” he said.
Biden, a Democrat, has pledged to use the power of the presidency to promote democratic ideals.
In one of the first tests of that commitment, he quickly condemned the military leaders who staged a coup in Myanmar last week., threatens sanctions and a “direct attack on the country’s transition to democracy and the rule of law”.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken, meanwhile, has said the Biden government is “deeply concerned” about Russia’s arrest of opposition leader Alexei Navalny..
An overwhelming majority of Americans, 70%, say they believe Biden respects democratic institutions at least fairly. But there is a major political division: About 96% of Democrats say Biden respects such institutions, compared to about 42% of Republicans.
Those are still much higher numbers than Trump earned: 62% say the former president has little or no respect for democratic traditions or institutions. That view is held by 93% of Democrats and 27% of Republicans in particular.
Linda Reynolds, a 64-year-old retired paper sales representative in Torrance, California, was a lifelong Republican until Trump captured the party’s presidential nomination in 2016. With Biden in the White House, she feels better about whether the US will rebuild democracy. will embrace.
“We clearly have a lot of problems,” she said. “But on the big picture, reason seems to have prevailed, hopefully in the eyes of the world.”
While Americans are gloomy about the current state of democracy, they are united that such a form of government is still the desired approach. Eighty percent say that a democratically elected government is very or extraordinarily important to the identity of the country.
Support persisted or was even higher for other central principles of the country’s democratic government. Eighty-eight percent say a fair judicial system and the rule of law are very or extremely important, and 85% had similar feelings about individual freedoms and liberties as defined by the constitution.
These principles of democracy are considered important by a large majority of Republicans and Democrats.
Despite bad views on how the US is run today, the poll finds heightened optimism about the country’s future. Almost half, 49%, say things are moving in the right direction, compared to 37% in December and 25% in October. Optimism hit rock bottom last summer, at 20%. Much of the wave of optimism came among the Democrats, who have faith in Biden and his ability to govern and manage crises across the country.
“We remain a great country and are doing a lot of good things,” said Reynolds.
___
Beaumont reported from Des Moines, Iowa. Associated Press authors Hannah Fingerhut and Emily Swanson in Washington contributed to this report.
___
The AP-NORC survey of 1,055 adults was conducted January 28 through February. 1 using a sample drawn from NORC’s Probability-Based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the US population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 3.8 percentage points.
___
Online:
AP-NORC Center: http://www.apnorc.org/.