Nineteen percent of Republicans believe former President Donald Trump should do “whatever it takes” to return to power, even if that means calling the results invalid if he loses, a new national poll shows.
The group of Republicans willing to depart from democratic norms and possibly even use violence to get their way is getting bigger as Trump continues to falsely claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him and that November’s showdown has already been rigged.
The poll, conducted by the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute and the Brookings Institution, reveals how Trump has molded the Republican Party in his image as he motivates its most extreme members.
Democrats argue that Trump is a threat to democracy, and some in the party – 12 percent in the poll – say Vice President Kamala Harris should also reject the results if she loses.
The poll also shows that 29 percent of Republicans “believe that true American patriots may have to resort to violence to save the country.” Sixteen percent of independents and eight percent of Democrats say the same.
The president and founder of the research institute, Robert Jones, told Axios, “I’ve been doing this for 20 years, and these answers … are keeping me up at night.”
He added those saying that the loser of the election should do whatever it takes to assume power are essentially backing a coup, calling it “pretty dark and worrisome.”
Forty-one percent of Americans who trust conservative news outlets back the idea of using political violence to acheive political goals – and 30 percent of loyal Fox News viewers support the idea, according to the survey.
Among those who don’t watch TV news, 18 percent said they would support political violence, and the same was true for 13 percent of those who said they don’t trust mainstream media.
There are also differences in support for political violence along racial and religious lines, with 33 percent of Latter-day Saints and 28 percent of white evangelical Protestants believing that “patriots” may have to resort to violence to “save the country.”
Among Hispanic Catholics, that figure was 18 percent, among Black Protestants, it was 14 percent, and 10 percent of Jewish Americans backed the idea of using political violence.
However, there are some issues that appear to unite most Americans, such as limiting Supreme Court Justices to serve until a certain age or a specific number of years instead of for life, which 73 percent of Americans agreed with, according to the poll.
Meanwhile, 68 percent of Americans are also united in opposing legislation that would make it illegal to use or receive FDA-approved drugs, such as the abortion pill mifepristone, in the mail.
