Study: 23 Percent Of Trump Supporters Show Skepticism Of Democracy

TOPSHOT - Supporters of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump cheer during a rally at the Travis County Exposition Center on August 23, 2016 in Austin, Texas. / AFP / SUZANNE CORDEIRO (Photo credit sh... TOPSHOT - Supporters of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump cheer during a rally at the Travis County Exposition Center on August 23, 2016 in Austin, Texas. / AFP / SUZANNE CORDEIRO (Photo credit should read SUZANNE CORDEIRO/AFP/Getty Images) MORE LESS

A new study from the Democracy Fund’s Voter Study Group found that Americans who back President Donald Trump show the highest level of skepticism for democracy.

The study found that 23 percent of Trump supporters do not prefer a democracy and that 32 percent favor a “strong leader.” By comparison, 20 percent of Hillary Clinton supporters said they prefer a “strong leader.”

Despite those findings, the study found that about three quarters of those surveyed showed “at least some support for democracy” and that more than half showed “support for the strongest pro-democratic option.” The study also found that support for a strong leader declined for the first time and fell to levels found in 1995.

The Democracy Fund’s study focused on 5,000 people who were interviewed in July 2017 — those respondents had also been interviewed several times since 2011.

Read the results from the study here.

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  1. Avatar for ghost ghost says:

    Why is this not a surprise? The question is, what do they propose to replace democracy with?

    “Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…”

    Winston S Churchill, 11 November 1947

  2. I’m right now telling the 17-year-old me not to be too surprised to hear yourself someday telling the other side to love it or leave it.

  3. 23 percent of Trump supporters do not prefer a democracy …

    … and those are the “moderates.” The other 77 percent actively are trying to destroy it…

  4. This overlaps with the concept of social media siloing. Turns out Fritz Lang and Karl Marx were looking at the world of social strata from a 90-degree tilt. “Calcification of inequality” well captures the effect.

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