Most Americans agree the government is “corrupt and rigged against everyday people like me” and more than one quarter of US residents feel so estranged from their government that they feel it might “soon be necessary to take up arms” against it, a poll released on Thursday claimed.
The survey data of 1,000 registered US voters published by the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics (IOP) suggests that extreme polarization in US politics – and its impact on Americans’ relationships with each other – remain strong. These statistics come as a congressional committee is holding public hearings on the January 6 insurrection which saw a violent mob breaching security officers to enter Washington’s famed center of power -the Capitol Hill.
The survey also documented a mutual distrust between Democrat and Republican responders. About 73% of the voters who participated in the poll who self-identified as Republicans said “Democrats are generally bullies who want to impose their political beliefs on those who disagree” while nearly 74% of Democrat respondents said the same about Republicans.
According to the Harvard Institute of Politics youth poll, released in April, roughly 36% of Americans under 30 believe politics “rarely has tangible results,” up from 22% in 2018. More than 40% believe their “vote doesn’t make a difference,” up from 31%. And more than half of young voters (56%) believe the political system is “no longer able to face the challenges” facing the country, up from 45% just before the last midterm.
Almost half of respondents also expressed averting political talk with other people “because I don’t know where they stand”. One-quarter described losing friends, and a similar proportion claimed to have avoided relatives and friends, due to politics, per the survey.
“While we’ve documented for years the partisan polarization in the country, these poll results are perhaps the starkest evidence of the deep divisions in partisan attitudes rippling through the country,” said the Republican pollster Neil Newhouse, who conducted the survey in May with and Democratic pollster Joel Benenson.
