Only about 1 in 10 American adults give high marks to the way America’s democracy works or represents the interests of most Americans, according to a new poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
What you need to know
A new poll finds that only 1 in 10 American adults give high marks to the way America’s democracy works or represents the interests of the majority of Americans.
Most adults say that U.S. laws and policies on key issues do not do a good job of representing what most Americans want, on issues ranging from the economy and government spending to gun policy, immigration and abortion.
According to The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll, 53 percent say Congress is doing a poor job of defending democratic values, compared to just 16 percent who say it is doing a good job.
Most adults say that American laws and policies do a poor job of representing what most Americans want on issues ranging from the economy and government spending to gun policy, immigration and abortion. The poll shows that 53 percent say Congress is doing a poor job of upholding democratic values, compared to just 16 percent who say it is doing a good job.
The findings illustrate widespread political alienation as a polarized country limps out of the pandemic and into a recovery dogged by inflation and fears of a recession. In the interviews, respondents cared less about the machinery of democracy—voting laws and ballot tabulation—and more about the results.
Overall, about half of the country, 49 percent, says democracy is not working well in the United States, compared with 10 percent who say it works very well or very well and 40 percent only somewhat well. About half also say each political party is doing a poor job of defending democracy, including 47% who say this about Democrats and even more, 56%, about Republicans.
“I don’t think any of them are doing a good job just because of the state of the economy — inflation is killing us,” said Michael Brown, a 45-year-old workers’ compensation adjuster and father of two in Bristol , Connecticut. . “Right now I’m winning as much as I ever have, and I’m fighting as much as I ever have.”
A self-described moderate Republican, Brown has seen America fall short of its democratic promise since learning in high school that the Electoral College allows someone to become president without winning a majority of the popular vote. national But now he is particularly disappointed with the Congress, seeing that its obsessions do not reflect the will of the people.
“They’re fighting for something and it has nothing to do with the economy,” Brown said, highlighting the GOP-controlled House’s investigation into President Joe Biden’s son.
“Hunter Biden, what does this have to do with us?” he asked.
The poll shows that 53% of Americans say the views of “people like you” are not well represented by government, with 35% saying they are represented somewhat well and 12% very or very well. About 6 in 10 Republicans and independents feel the government is not representing people like them well, compared with about 4 in 10 Democrats.
Karalyn Kiessling, a researcher at the University of Michigan who participated in the survey, sees troubling signs all around her. A Democrat, she recently moved to a conservative area outside the liberal center of the Ann Arbor campus, and worried that conspiracy theorists who believe former President Donald Trump’s 2020 election-winning lies would appear as to survey observers. His Republican relatives no longer identify with the party and are limiting their political engagement.
Kiessling investigates the intersection of public health and politics and sees many other ways to participate in a democracy besides voting, from being active in a political party to speaking at a local government meeting. But he fears the rise in partisan gerrymandering is scaring people away from these crucial outlets.
“I think people are less willing to get involved because it’s become more controversial,” Kiessling, 29, said.
That leads to alienation at the national level, he said, something he certainly feels when he sees what’s coming out of Washington. “When you have a base that’s a minority of what American generals think, but they’re the loudest voices in the room, that’s what politicians hear,” Kiessling said.
The polarization has turned some states into one-party domains, further alienating people like Mark Short, a Republican who lives in Dana Point, California.
“In California, I feel like I throw my vote away every time, and that’s just what you get,” said Short, 63, a retired businessman.
The poll shows that the vast majority of Americans, 71%, believe that what the majority of Americans want should be very important when making laws and policies, but only 48% think this is true in practice
And opinions are even more negative when it comes to specific issues: About two-thirds of adults say policies on immigration, government spending, abortion policy and gun policy are not representative of the views of most Americans. Americans, and almost as many say the same about the economy, as well as gender identity and LGBTQ+ issues. More than half also say the policies poorly reflect what Americans want about health and the environment.
Joseph Derito, an 81-year-old retired baker in Elmyra, New York, believes that immigration policy does not represent the views of most Americans. “Government today is all about the people who have nothing — a lot of them are able to work but they get help,” said Derito, a white independent politician who leans Republican and voted for Trump. “They just want to give everything to these people.”
Sandra Wyatt, a 68-year-old retired data collection worker and Democrat in Cincinnati, blames Trump for what she sees as an erosion of democracy. “When he got in there, it was like, man, you’re trying to bring us back to the day, before all the rights and privileges that everybody was fighting for,” said Wyatt, who is black, adding that he had previously voted for republicans too.
She sees these bad dynamics persisting after Trump’s presidency. “We always knew there was racism, but now they’re emboldened to go shoot people because of the color of their skin,” Wyatt said.
Stanley Hobbs, a retired Detroit auto worker and Democrat, blames “a few Republicans” for what he sees as the erosion of democracy in America. He sees these Republican politicians as beholden to a group of big businesses and points to issues like abortion as examples of how the laws no longer represent the views of the majority of Americans.
Try to stay optimistic.
“This always seems to happen in America and we always prevail,” Hobbs said, recalling how American politicians sympathetic to Nazi Germany rose to prominence before World War II. “I just hope we prevail this time.”
