Majority of Dems and GOP agree: US will likely ‘cease to be a democracy,’ poll finds
A majority of Democrats and Republicans believe the United States will “likely” not be a democracy someday, according to a recent poll.
The Yahoo News-YouGov poll released Wednesday, June 15, revealed that among the 1,541 US adults surveyed, 55% of Democrats and 53% of Republicans believe the country will “cease to be a democracy in the future.”
About 49% of Independents also shared this belief, the poll says. A quarter of those surveyed feel the end of U.S. democracy is “unlikely,” while another quarter was unsure.
Despite feeling the end of America’s democracy is impending, only a small percentage of those surveyed paid attention to the House committee hearings investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol as Congress worked to certify the Electoral College victory of then-President-elect Joe Biden, the poll says. Almost half said they did not follow the hearings at all.
There’s also a sizable portion of Americans who believe a civil war is likely in their lifetime, with 52% of Republicans, 50% of independents and 45% of Democrats agreeing on its possibility, according to the poll. Overall, slightly less than 40% believe a civil war is “unlikely.”
While the poll showed that about half of Americans would rule out “physical violence” and “taking up arms against the government” if such measures were “justified in order to protect the country from radical extremists,” about a quarter said violence and taking up arms could be justified.
The survey, which has a margin of error of about 2.9 percentage points, was conducted using a “nationally representative sample” of 1,541 adults who were interviewed online from June 10 to 13, according to Yahoo News.
This story was originally published June 16, 2022 at 8:39 AM.
