Trump trusted more than Biden on democracy among key swing-state voters [View all]

[Celerity]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/06/26/biden-trump-swing-state-poll-democracy/

https://archive.ph/p816n



President Biden and his Democratic allies have cast his reelection campaign as a battle for the country’s survival, warning that a second Donald Trump presidency would present an existential threat to American democracy.
In speeches and campaign ads, Biden points to Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, his incitement of an angry mob that ransacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and the former president’s boasts that he will use the powers of his office to punish his political enemies. But that message may not be resonating with the voters Biden needs in order to win another term in the White House.

In six swing states that Biden narrowly won in 2020, a little more than half of voters classified as likely to decide the presidential election say threats to democracy are extremely important to their vote for president, according to a poll by The Washington Post and the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. Yet, more of them trust Trump to handle those threats than Biden. And most believe that the guardrails in place to protect democracy would hold even if a dictator tried to take over the country. The results offer troubling indicators for Biden, who needs voters who may be unenthusiastic about his candidacy to decide they must reject Trump to preserve America’s system of representative government.

“Many Americans don’t recognize Biden’s custodianship of our democracy, which is a bad sign for his campaign,” said Justin Gest, a professor of policy and government at George Mason University. The poll surveyed the views of 3,513 registered voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in April and May. Of those surveyed, 2,255 were classified as “Deciders” — those who fit into one or more categories: They voted in only one of the past two presidential elections; are between ages 18 and 25; registered to vote since 2022; did not definitely plan to vote for either Biden or Trump this year; or switched their support between 2016 and 2020.



For many voters, democracy is an abstract idea, less tangible than issues like the economy, abortion or immigration. Still, most voters, regardless of party, report that the issue matters to them. Gest noted that “the vast majority don’t want to tip toward more authoritarian control,” with systems of representative or direct democracy polling far more favorably. Among key-state voters who identify themselves as locked-in Biden supporters, 78 percent see threats to democracy as extremely important. Among Trump backers, that’s true of 71 percent. Threats to democracy are second only to the economy in the percentage of swing state voters overall who describe the issue as extremely important.



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