Only 16 percent of Americans believe the country’s democracy is thriving, according to a poll conducted after the deadly January 6 Capitol riots.
But the vast majority accept that a people’s government is a very important principle of the United States, according to the poll.
Less than 1 in 6 Americans surveyed by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research said democracy works well or very well. 45 percent said democracy doesn’t work properly and 38 percent said it only worked a little well.
About half of those polled believe President Trump should then be sentenced in this week’s Senate indictment for “inciting insurrection.”
Nearly two-thirds of Americans believe the Republican Party is at least partly responsible for the riot by promoting baseless claims of electoral fraud.
The AP-NORC poll also found that Republicans, in particular, have lost faith in the U.S. system of government since Trump’s attack on election results.
In October, 68 percent of Republican Party supporters said democracy worked at least a little well. This figure fell to only 36% in January.
Confidence in representative government skyrocketed among Democrats during that time, going from 37% to 70%.
When the 2020 election came around, about two-thirds of Americans said President Biden was elected enough, but only a third of Republicans agree.
Seventy percent of Americans surveyed believe Biden, a Democrat, respects democratic institutions at least a good deal. Still, only 42% of Republicans hold that view.
Only 38% of respondents believed that Trump had at least fair respect for government institutions. It should be noted that 27 percent of Republicans said the former president had little or no respect for the government.
Survey respondents can overwhelmingly agree on one thing, though: 80% of Americans believe that democracy is very, very important to the nation’s identity.
Nearly half of Americans also think the country is heading in the right direction, compared to just 20% last summer.
AP-NORC surveyed 1,055 adults between January 28 and February. 1 using a sample extracted from the AmeriSpeak panel based on NORC probabilities, designed to be representative of the American population. There is a margin of error of 3.8 percentage points.