Nearly half of all voters are skeptical that the American experiment in self-governance is working, with 45 percent believing that the nation’s democracy does not do a good job representing ordinary people, according to a new New York Times/Siena College poll.
Three-quarters of voters in the United States say democracy is under threat, though their perception of the forces imperiling it vary widely based on partisan leanings. And a majority of voters believe that the country is plagued by corruption, with 62 percent saying that the government is mostly working to benefit itself and elites rather than the common good.
The eroding faith in the nearly 250-year-old American system of government follows four years of unparalleled challenges: a violent riot in an attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election, the criminal conviction of former President Donald J. Trump and Mr. Trump’s continued insistence that the democratic process is rigged.
Coupled with stubborn inflation, divisive culture wars and geopolitical crises, voters are expressing exasperation with American politics and a government that they believe has failed to serve them at the most basic level.
“I even have to go to a food bank, and my husband and I make a decent salary, and we still can’t wholly make ends meet with three children,” said Tyra Jackson-Taylor, 51, a social worker from Norfolk, Va. “It’s just a lot, me having to work and him work overtime, just to try to make the ends meet.”
Such frustrations have left 58 percent of voters believing that the nation’s financial and political systems need major changes or a complete overhaul. Some wonder why the government seems unable to make significant progress on pressing issues.
“I’m 21 years old — it’s always a school shooting,” said Sarah Washington, a temporary worker in New Orleans. “There should be heavier laws in order to obtain a gun, for example. And there’s been discussion about how that should go, and nothing still being done about it. They talk about it, and then another one happens.”
But against those broader headwinds, voters expressed confidence in the American process of selecting leaders in the upcoming election. Nearly 80 percent of voters — including a majority of Republicans, Democrats and independents — trust that the 2024 presidential election results will be accurate. Such trust is an improvement from two years ago, when about 70 percent of voters said they had confidence in the results of the midterm election. Americans pointed to the mainstream media and social media as particularly bad for democracy, though Republicans were more likely than Democrats to blame news outlets. But political polarization is also affecting Americans’ perception of what’s to blame.
Republicans view Vice President Kamala Harris, President Biden and Democrats in general as bad for democracy. They also cite voting by mail, electronic voting machines, immigration and even the Department of Justice.
Democrats see one central threat to democracy: Mr. Trump.
“He is a dictator incarnate,” said Jeffrey Braman, 51, a military veteran in Lansing, Mich. He expressed concern that “more than 70 million Americans believe in him,” referring to the number of votes Mr. Trump received in 2020. “More than 70 million. That means they want a king. Someone to dictate to them.”
Such deep concerns about Mr. Trump could help explain the shift in Ms. Harris’s campaign rhetoric in the closing days, painting a second Trump presidency as a dark slide into fascism.
But few voters say that concerns about democracy are central to their vote. Just 7 percent of voters said democracy was the most important issue regarding their choice for president.
Still, voters, and not just Democrats, expressed an unease with autocratic tendencies from political leaders. Just 21 percent of all likely voters agreed that a president should be able to go outside of the law to do what the leader felt was best, rather than stay within existing rules and laws. Two years ago, 30 percent of voters agreed with the concept of a president acting outside of the law.
Voters are deeply concerned about how Mr. Trump will handle the results of the election if he loses. Six in 10 voters are not confident that Mr. Trump will accept the results. And nearly half of all voters — including 12 percent of Republicans — are worried that Mr. Trump and his allies will try to overturn the election through illegal means.
“Trump is just so radical,” said Katherine Muth, 74, from Elk County, Pa.
Most voters across the political spectrum are confident that Ms. Harris will accept the results of the election, and few are worried that she will try to overturn the results if she loses.
Yet while voters express broad concern about another attempt to subvert the election by Mr. Trump, they also appear to have been influenced by his repeated falsehoods about fraud in American elections. Although fraud is extremely rare and Mr. Trump has often made claims with no evidence, there are more voters concerned that people are voting illegally than there are about eligible voters being prevented from casting their ballots. This is a flip from two years ago, when there were slightly more voters concerned about voter suppression than about fraud.
Both Mr. Trump’s supporters and Ms. Harris’s supporters are about equally likely to say that democracy is under threat. Among the least likely to say that democracy is in a precarious state are voters who are newly supporting Mr. Trump in this election after either voting for Mr. Biden in 2020 or sitting that election out. None of these voters listed democracy as the most important issue motivating their vote.
“I think I’m going Republican this time because, really, the economy is the biggest issue for me,” said Oliver Funk, an Atlanta voter who supported Mr. Biden in 2020 but plans to vote for Mr. Trump this year. “I think Donald Trump will be better at handling just everyday prices than what we’ve seen in the past four years.”
He expressed skepticism that democracy was truly imperiled.
“I think that’s funny to say ‘American democracy is under threat,’” Mr. Funk, 25, said. “There’s actually democracy under threat around the world. We’re pretty coddled and pretty safe. Actually, extremely safe.”
The poll also showed that voters did not necessarily believe some of Mr. Trump’s most provocative statements. When asked about his recent threats that he might need to use the National Guard to handle Americans whom he called the “enemy from within,” just under half of all voters — including a quarter of Republicans — said they took Mr. Trump’s comments seriously. Mr. Trump’s allies often insist that voters should not take the former president literally when he makes these types of statements; the results suggest voters agree.
Voters do, however, believe some of Mr. Trump’s more consistent campaign rhetoric. Three-quarters of voters said they took it seriously that Mr. Trump would deport millions of undocumented immigrants living in the United States, and nearly 60 percent said they took it seriously that Mr. Trump would use the Department of Justice to prosecute his political opponents.
But Mr. Trump’s language about fellow Americans as “the enemy from within” has not necessarily taken hold with his base. Just 11 percent of Mr. Trump’s supporters described voters who chose Ms. Harris as the enemy. Instead, a vast majority said they were just fellow Americans with whom they disagreed.
In fact, Ms. Harris’s supporters are slightly more likely to describe voters who prefer Mr. Trump as the enemy; 16 percent said this.
Still, most voters believe that Mr. Trump fuels partisan divisions in the country: Nearly 60 percent of voters said Mr. Trump made the partisan divide in the country worse; 37 percent said the same of Ms. Harris.
A core group — roughly one-third of voters — believe the country’s problems are so bad that it is on the verge of failure. A majority of Republicans — and 16 percent of Democrats — hold a fatalistic attitude about the future of the nation.
“The Washington elite control everything, and the will of the people has been ignored,” said Randal Parr, 72, a retired farmer in Lebanon, Ind. “And it’s not just Democrat or Republican, it’s the Washington elite.”
“There’s just too much money floating around by lobbyists that are corrupting Washington, D.C.,” he added, “and it’s tearing us all apart.”
How This Poll Was Conducted
Here are the key things to know about this poll from The New York Times and Siena College:
Interviewers spoke with 2,516 voters nationwide from Oct. 20 to 23, 2024.
Times/Siena polls are conducted by telephone, using live interviewers, in both English and Spanish. Overall, 98 percent of respondents were contacted on a cellphone for this poll. You can see the exact questions that were asked and the order in which they were asked here.
Voters are selected for the survey from a list of registered voters. The list contains information on the demographic characteristics of every registered voter, allowing us to make sure we reach the right number of voters of each party, race and region. For these polls, interviewers placed more than 260,000 calls to more than 80,000 voters.
To further ensure that the results reflect the entire voting population, not just those willing to take a poll, we give more weight to respondents from demographic groups that are underrepresented among survey respondents, like people without a college degree. You can see more information about the characteristics of respondents and the weighted sample at the bottom of the results and methodology page, under “Composition of the Sample.”
The margin of sampling error among the likely electorate is about plus or minus 2.2 percentage points. In theory, this means that the results should reflect the views of the overall population most of the time, though many other challenges create additional sources of error. When the difference between two values is computed — such as a candidate’s lead in a race — the margin of error is twice as large.
You can see full results and a detailed methodology here. If you want to read more about how and why we conduct our polls, you can see answers to frequently asked questions and submit your own questions here.
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