For much of the 2024 election, concerns about President Joe Biden\u2019s age and job performance helped paper over the real and long-standing concerns Americans have had about Donald Trump\u2019s character, chaotic style and authoritarian tendencies. A slew of polls actually showed Biden had little to no advantage on the subject of which candidate was more trusted to protect democracy \u2014 despite months of Democrats focusing on democracy and the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, which dealt a blow to the bedrock democratic principle of a peaceful transfer of power.<\/p>\n
But as with many other facets of the race, Biden\u2019s exit and Vice President Kamala Harris\u2019s entry have significantly shifted the threat matrix, to the point where the fear factor again looms as a real problem for Trump.<\/p>\n
To the extent this election is about Americans worrying about the candidates harming the country, it seems Harris has a real advantage. New polling from CNN gets at this in a better way than anything else in recent weeks.<\/p>\n
The swing-state polling asked, as CNN has before, about whether voters viewed the candidates as \u201ctoo extreme.\u201d But then it took things a step further and asked people who agreed with the statement that a candidate was \u201ctoo extreme\u201d whether that candidate was also \u201cso extreme that they pose a threat to the country.\u201d<\/p>\n
Across six key swing states \u2014 Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin \u2014 an average of 54 percent of registered voters said Trump was \u201ctoo extreme,\u201d with 48 percent also saying that he threatens the country. In each state, at least half of voters said Trump was \u201ctoo extreme,\u201d and at least 46 percent said he was a threat to the country.<\/p>\n
Harris\u2019s numbers were significantly lower: An average of 44 percent said she was \u201ctoo extreme,\u201d and just 39 percent regarded her perceived extremeness as a threat to the country. In no state did a majority regard her as too extreme; most voters instead regarded her as \u201cgenerally mainstream.\u201d<\/p>\n
The gaps are similar among independent voters, with nearly half (an average of 47 percent) saying Trump was a threat to the country, compared to just 38 percent for Harris.<\/p>\n
And Republicans were significantly more likely to regard their own party\u2019s candidate as both too extreme and a threat to the country. Fully 14 percent of Trump\u2019s own party said he was too extreme, and 7 percent said he was a threat (compared to 6 percent and 2 percent, respectively, for Harris).<\/p>\n
An average of 3 percent of Trump supporters across these states actually said Trump was so extreme that he was a threat to the country but that they were still voting for him (perhaps either because they didn\u2019t see the threat as significant enough, and\/or because they felt he was still preferable).<\/p>\n
While this is the most substantial recent polling on how voters view the relative threats posed by the candidates, it\u2019s not the first to show Trump is viewed as a bigger threat \u2014 or even that about half that country views him as some kind of threat.<\/p>\n
A Syracuse University\/Ipsos poll last month showed a majority of Americans said Trump was either a major threat (43 percent) or minor threat (11 percent) \u201cto the American democratic system and rule of law.\u201d Four in 10 regarded Harris as a major (32 percent) or minor (8 percent) threat.<\/p>\n
These findings mark a significant shift in the relative perceived threats of the two major-party candidates from when Biden led the Democratic ticket.<\/p>\n
I mentioned at the top that being a \u201cthreat to democracy\u201d was more of a wash than Democrats had hoped. A Public Religion Research poll late last year showed something similar: 57 percent regarded a Trump 2024 victory as a \u201cthreat to American democracy and way of life,\u201d but 53 percent said the same of Biden.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a real question about how much this matters. The percentages in the CNN poll who labeled Trump a threat was shy of a majority, meaning this could largely be voters who are predisposed against him.<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s still majorities who say he\u2019s at least \u201ctoo extreme,\u201d and all his numbers are significantly higher than they are for Harris. That suggests Harris has a powerful motivating tool \u2014 fear \u2014 to get voters to turn out, in a way Trump no longer does.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
For much of the 2024 election, concerns about President Joe Biden\u2019s age and job performance helped paper over the real and long-standing concerns Americans have had about Donald Trump\u2019s character, chaotic style and authoritarian tendencies. A slew of polls actually showed Biden had little to no advantage on the subject of which candidate was more […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":8996,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8995"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8995\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}