Today in politics
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Poll: 71% say politics has reached dangerous low in Trump era
Poll: 71% of Americans say politics has reached a dangerous low point
Story highlights
- Some 70% of those polled said divisions today are at least as big as during the Vietnam War era
- Fifty-one percent said President Donald Trump deserves "a lot" of the blame for the dysfunction
- Forty-nine percent place "a lot" of blame on news media for causing the dysfunction
Washington (CNN)Amid a growing partisan gap between
Democrats and Republicans, a new poll shows that 71% of Americans
believe the country's politics have reached a dangerous low point in the
Trump era.
According to a Washington Post-University of Maryland poll
released Saturday, only 29% said they believed this period in American
politics is "similar to most periods of disagreement." And the majority
of participants who said politics have reached a dangerous low point
said the climate is a "new normal," not "temporary."
Some
70% of those polled from September 27 through October 5 said divisions
today are at least as big as they were during the Vietnam War era. For
individuals polled who were adults during the Vietnam War, the
percentage was higher than the average -- 77%.
A
majority of those polled, 51%, said President Donald Trump deserves "a
lot" of the blame for the dysfunction in the American political system,
below the share placing as much blame on money in politics (65%),
wealthy donors (56%) or people with extreme views (56%), but above the
share putting a lot of blame on either party (38% for Republicans, 32%
for Democrats) or members of Congress (47%).
In
addition, 49% place "a lot" of blame on the news media for causing the
dysfunction, and the same percentage say social media bears much of the
responsibility.
A
majority, 63%, say they are proud of the way democracy works in
America, but that's a low point compared to past polling, with the share
of those who aren't proud doubling in just three years, from 18% in
2014 to 36% now, according to the Post's report on the poll. In
addition, 42% of those polled said Trump's election was not legitimate,
including two-thirds of Democrats and 9% of Republicans. That compares
to about 14 percent who said former President Barack Obama's election in
2008 wasn't legitimate.
And those
polled said dysfunction is rampant across the federal government, with
70% saying the Trump administration is dysfunctional, 80% saying so
about Congress, and 56% saying so about the overall system of checks and
balances.
The Washington
Post-University of Maryland poll was conducted from September 27 through
October 5, with 1,663 adults interviewed by land line, cell phone and
online. The margin of sampling error for the overall results is plus or
minus 3.5 percentage points.
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