The Guardian US and the Chicago Project on Security and Threats (Cpost) at the University of Chicago are co-hosting an event on Tuesday focusing on dangers to democracy and anticipated threats to the 2024 election.
The Guardian’s Fight for Democracy project has been working with Cpost since June 2023, reporting on the project’s Dangers to Democracy surveys which dive into Americans’ views on political violence, conspiracy theories and threats to US elections. The first survey found that a staggering 12 million American adults, or 4.4% of the adult population, believe violence is justified to restore Donald Trump to the White House.
The latest September survey found that Trump’s presidential candidacy and the now mounting indictments against him are radicalizing Americans on both sides of the aisle to support violence to achieve political goals.
More specifically, the survey found that 5.5% of Americans, or 14 million people, believe the use of force is justified to restore Trump to the presidency, while 8.9% of Americans, or 23 million people, believe force is justified to prevent Trump from being president.
The Guardian is committed to reporting on these threats as the 2024 election approaches, including what election officials and other policymakers are doing to combat them, how voters may be affected, how misinformation might amplify them, and how the country could be better prepared to prevent another violent attack like what occurred on 6 January 2021.
In the past few months alone, the Guardian has tracked Republican efforts to use conspiracy theories to oust Wisconsin’s respected and bipartisan top election official, reported on various rightwing attempts to skew electoral maps to dilute the power of minority voters, and featured deep dives into the people trying to hold Trump and his allies accountable for attempting to steal the 2020 election.
The Fight for Democracy team will continue to track these efforts and more as the next presidential election nears and threats become more pervasive, including publishing Cpost’s latest findings.
“We are now in the age of what I call ‘violent populism’ where violent ideas by a dedicated minority are moving from fringe to mainstream, creating an environment where incendiary political rhetoric can stimulate violent threats to our democracy,” said Robert Pape, a professor at the University of Chicago who directs Cpost.
The September survey found that Americans are more deeply distrustful of their democratic institutions and democratically elected leaders and more supportive of violence than in January 2023, when the survey about political violence was started, according to Pape.
The survey has been assessing nine measures of antidemocratic attitudes, including the beliefs that elections won’t solve America’s fundamental problems and that political elites are the most corrupt people in the US. Eight of the nine measures are worse today than at the beginning of 2023, Pape said.
Still, a vast majority of all Americans think Republicans and Democrats in Congress should make a joint statement condemning any political violence.
“We need to lean into this finding with bipartisan cooperation among our frontline democratic institutions to safeguard democracy,” Pape said. “If incendiary rhetoric stimulates political violence, calming rhetoric can diminish it.”
