A new Yahoo News/YouGov poll shows that most Democrats (55%) and Republicans (53%) now believe it is “likely” that America will “cease to be a democracy in the future” — a stunning expression of bipartisan despair about the direction of the country.
Half of all Americans (49%) express the same sentiment when independents and those who do not declare any political affiliation are factored in, while just a quarter (25%) consider the end of U.S. democracy unlikely and another quarter (25%) say they’re unsure.
At the same time, however, a large number of Americans seem indifferent to the high-profile hearings by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol — an effort to get to the bottom of one of the most dramatic assaults on the democratic process in U.S. history.
In fact, the new survey of 1,541 U.S. adults — which was conducted from June 10 (the day after the committee’s first hearing) to June 13 (the day of its second) — found that fewer than 1 in 4 (24%) say they watched last Thursday’s initial primetime broadcast live. Only slightly more (27%) say they caught news coverage later. Nearly half (49%) say they did not follow the hearings at all.
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So while the data indicates that many Americans seem to be losing faith in the future of U.S. democracy, relatively few seem interested in reckoning with a real-life attempt to undermine it. That raises a disturbing question: Have Americans simply given up on democracy?
The poll doesn’t go quite that far. But it does suggest that Americans have largely given up on each other.
Read more: yahoo
