A new poll shows voters from swing states trust former President Donald Trump to protect America’s democracy more than President Joe Biden.
The Washington Post/Schar School released a survey Wednesday that found 38% of voters across six swing states favored Trump to handle threats to democracy, compared to 29% who backed Biden. The poll was conducted across Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
A similar PBS poll conducted earlier this month showed 29% of voters found preserving democracy to be their top priority, coming barely under 30% who said inflation was their top issue.
While an overwhelming majority of voters, both Republican and Democrat, agree that democracy is under attack, it’s unlikely they agree on what defines a threat. Most polls don’t specify the nature of threats, either who poses the danger or how it manifests throughout the country.
The poll didn’t define what participants meant by “democracy.” Respondents were asked questions such as, “How important are each of the following issues in your vote for president? Threats to democracy in the United States,” and, “How satisfied are you with the way democracy is working in the U.S.?”
The ambiguous nature of the question led to similar overall trends between both Democrat and Republican respondents.
It is clear that many Trump voters believe Democrats rigged the 2020 election and brought questionable indictments against the former president, making the Left a threat to democracy. It is equally clear that top Democrats believe Trump’s “stolen election” claims and the Jan. 6 protest constitute a similar threat to the country.
Both parties have tried to play the democracy matter up to their bases.
At one of his signature campaign rallies this spring, Trump told Ohio voters a failure to win the election would spell the end of democracy.
“I don’t think you’re going to have another election in this country if we don’t win this election … certainly not an election that’s meaningful,” he said.
The former president has also begun to use the phrase “Too Big to Rig” at recent rallies.
“We want a landslide,” Trump said during a March rally in Greensboro, North Carolina. “We have to win so that it’s too big to rig.”
Last year, a Rasmussen poll reported that 62% of voters believe cheating likely affected the outcome of the 2020 election. A poll released in January showed more than one-third of adults said Biden’s win in 2020 was illegitimate.
“We’re not the ones trying to undermine American democracy,” Trump told Alabama Republicans last August. “We are the ones fighting to save our democracy. We’re fighting to save our democracy. This ridiculous indictment against us, it’s not a legal case. It’s an act of desperation by a failed and disgraced crooked Joe Biden and his radical-left thugs to preserve their grip on power.”
The Left couldn’t disagree more, with the Biden campaign ramping up fears about what a Trump win this November would mean for the country.
“He’s willing to sacrifice democracy to put himself in power,” Biden said in January during his first campaign speech for the 2024 election. The president told the country, “Democracy is on the ballot. Your freedom is on the ballot.”
Top Democrats have joined Biden in painting a picture of a future Trump presidency that puts the state of America’s democracy in jeopardy.
“Try to see through the bluster and focus on the fundamentals at stake,” former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said to voters in an op-ed this week. “In 2016, Mr. Trump refused to say whether he would accept the election results. ‘I’ll keep you in suspense,’ he said. ‘That is not the way our democracy works,’ I responded. ‘Let’s be clear about what he’s saying and what that means.’ You can draw a straight line from that exchange to the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021,”
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Last month, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) added his voice to the warnings.
“Donald Trump seems to have no consideration for the sanctity and peacefulness and further functioning of our democracy,” the Democratic leader said on the Senate floor. His remarks came after he said Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was rigged was a “Big Lie [that] is poisoning our democracy.”