Majority of US voters say democracy is in danger but are divided over who is responsible, poll shows | US elections 2024

According to one of the final polls before the Nov. 5 presidential election, nearly half of U.S. voters think the government does a poor job of representing ordinary people, half are skeptical about whether self-government works and three-quarters say democracy is in danger.

The poll, released Sunday by The New York Times in collaboration with Siena College, outlined a deeply divided political landscape. Both sides of the divide expressed distrust of the other — and doubts about democracy in the United States in general.

But they agree with an overall perception: A majority said the country is plagued by corruption, and 62% said the government works primarily to serve itself and elites rather than a broader goal of collective good.

58 percent of voters surveyed said the country's financial and political system needed major changes or a complete overhaul.

A separate national poll released a day earlier showed Kamala Harris deadlocked with Donald Trump as he seeks a return to the White House – a three-point loss for the vice president from a similar poll in early October.

That poll sparked fears among some that the Democratic candidate could lose the popular vote, a reversal from the last four elections. Both candidates are at 48% nationally, down from 49% for Harris and up from 46% for Trump weeks earlier.

One positive glimmer from the latest poll on trust in U.S. democracy: Nearly 80% of voters in both major parties and independent parties said they trusted next week's results would be accurate, despite Trump's continued efforts to undermine the integrity the vote in this race and the one he lost to Joe Biden in 2020.

That's an improvement compared to two years ago, when only about 70% said they were confident in the results.

But the poll numbers also suggest a deep distrust of the information universe: 21% said mainstream media is good for democracy and 55% said it is bad. When it comes to social media, 21% of survey respondents said it was good for democracy and 51% said it was bad.

According to a Times poll, assigning overall blame for the split depended on political affiliation.

The Democrats defined Trump as the central threat to democracy. Republicans viewed Harris, Biden and Democrats generally as bad for democracy – but also pointed to a range of concerns, including mail-in voting, electronic voting machines, immigration and the Justice Department.

The Times suggested that Democrats' concerns about Trump may explain why Harris' campaign has shifted from its initial euphoric tone to a sustained message about a Trump victory representing “a dark descent into fascism.”

21 percent — 9 percent less than two years ago — said it was permissible for a president to abandon the rule of law to achieve his goals. And six in 10 said they were not confident Trump would accept the results of the Nov. 5 vote if he lost.

But the poll also found that voters “didn’t necessarily believe” some of Trump’s most inflammatory rhetoric, even though authoritarianism experts have warned against taking them seriously.

Less than half said they believed his threat to deploy the National Guard to deal with what Trump called the “enemy from within.” But three-quarters said they took his threats to deport illegal immigrants on a large scale seriously.

Separately, a CNN poll released Monday found that 56% of registered voters said they had some or no confidence in the U.S. Supreme Court and its conservative majority — including three justices appointed during Trump's presidency — across all of them to make the right decisions in legal cases in connection with the 2024 election.