Most swing state voters say they fear violence if Trump loses

“These findings are discouraging,” said Mark Rozell, dean of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. “It tells us that we have lost a lot in a very short time, that we cannot assume that people will accept the legitimacy of the election results and that the peaceful transfer of power is automatic here. “

The peaceful transfer of power is considered an essential element of any functioning democracy, and in the United States it has long been taken for granted that the losing candidate would concede. That changed with the last presidential election, when Trump incited an angry mob to attack the U.S. Capitol to prevent the certification of Joe Biden’s victory.

Since then, Trump has used discredited claims of fraud to set the stage for undermining the results if they don’t go his way in 2024. He has repeatedly said that the only way to lose the election is if the other side cheats, while maintaining that the claim that one million foreigners can vote is false. (Non-citizen voting in federal elections is illegal and extremely rare.)

Harris has stated that she believes in elections and described her opponent as a threat to democracy, a position she reinforced in the final weeks of the campaign.

Officials have made a concerted effort to limit the potential for violence or other unrest related to claims of false voter fraud. Last week, former Democratic and Republican governors of Wisconsin and North Carolina, two battleground states, released videos in which they urged against political violence and asked people to have faith in the elections. More than 90 percent of local election officials surveyed in May by the Brennan Center for Justice said they had improved the security of voters, election workers and election infrastructure since 2020. The federal government will also increase security at the Capitol on January 6, 2025, designating the day of the electoral college vote count as a national security event that provides the same level of security as presidential inaugurations and political conventions.

While Biden was still running for president, his campaign focused on Trump as an existential threat to democracy and warned that America’s future would be at stake if Trump was re-elected. But Biden’s warnings have not resonated with much of the public, which has struggled to prioritize an abstract concept over more concrete issues like inflation and immigration.

When Harris became the Democratic nominee, she moved away from that message to a broader call to protect liberty that included issues such as abortion and gun safety.

But in her closing speech, Harris began to more clearly portray Trump as a threat to democracy. She focused on Trump’s comments about the “enemy within,” which experts said sounded like language used by an authoritarian.

He is also campaigning with former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming), who lost her congressional job because she disavowed Trump as dangerous following the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Harris also highlighted comments by Trump’s former chief of staff, John F. Kelly that the former president met the definition of a fascist and spoke favorably about Adolf Hitler. Last week, Harris told CNN that she agreed with the claim that Trump is a fascist.

Trump said he would be a dictator from his first day in office – but only on that day – and threatened to go after political enemies. Nearly 7 in 10 Trump supporters believe his false claims that the 2020 election was illegitimate, although a new poll shows more than 6 in 10 swing state voters overall believe Biden was legitimately elected.

More swing voters (45%) say they believe Trump will try to rule as a dictator than the 19% who think Harris would do so. Among Trump supporters, 37 percent believe Harris would try to become a dictator, while 85 percent of Harris voters believe Trump would seek unchecked power. Still, an overwhelming 81 percent, including 73 percent of Harris supporters, believe Congress, the Supreme Court or military leaders would block a would-be dictator, suggesting most people aren’t really worried about the collapse of the American government.

At a Harris rally this month in Flint, Michigan, Judge Patterson, 22, a Frito-Lay delivery driver, said that as a young gay black woman, she was afraid of what would happen if Trump won. She also said she was afraid that if she lost, another January 6-style event could occur.

“There are people who still don’t believe President (Biden),” she said. “It’s terrifying.”

A day earlier, about 40 miles away, at a Trump rally in Saginaw, Michigan, Kelly Streich, 45, an environmental engineer wearing a “Hillary for Prison 2016” T-shirt, said there was “no way” Trump lost in 2020 and that he should “absolutely” contest the results again if he loses. Streich said she doesn’t think America is a democracy under a Democratic government.

“I have no reason to believe any of the promises the Democrats are making because they have sunk this country for the last three and a half years,” she said. “They just want total control.”

The poll shows that slightly more voters in swing states trust Trump than Harris to handle threats to America’s democracy (43% to 40%).

“This disconnect bothers me,” Rozell said. “Consider what happened on January 6, Trump’s refusal to accept the results of the presidential election, the outgoing president refusing to attend the inauguration of the new president. And yet there was no clear majority who said Trump posed a greater threat to democracy than his opponent.”

Some barriers that could stop Trump in a second term have been weakened. For example, the Supreme Court ruled this year that presidents are entitled to absolute immunity from prosecution for actions related to their official duties. And unlike his first term, when there were people around Trump who rejected his most antidemocratic instincts – ideas like deploying the US military against citizens – Trump’s advisers have said that his priority will be loyalty when filling positions in the second administration.

Daniel Drazenovich, 39, a registered independent in North Carolina, is among those who believe guardrails will keep Trump from acting on his worst impulses. Drazenowicz, who voted for Trump in 2016 and Biden in 2020, is still not sure who he will support this time. He said he didn’t like Trump’s rhetoric, but he also didn’t like the fact that Harris wasn’t elected through the traditional primary process.

“He’s definitely a narcissist,” Drazenovich said of Trump. “I see him getting angry if things don’t go his way. However, I do not think that this will be the collapse of our democracy. “I don’t think either candidate has the ability to usurp the constitution at this point.”

The poll was conducted by The Post’s Schar School of Policy and Government and George Mason University from Sept. 30 to Oct. 15 among a stratified random sample of 5,016 registered voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The overall margin of sampling error is plus or minus 1.7 percentage points. The sample was drawn from the L2 database of registered voters in each state; All selected voters were mailed an invitation to participate in the online survey, with additional contact provided via live phone calls, text messages and emails. Sample design, data collection, and processing were performed by SSRS, Glen Mills, Pennsylvania.