NEW POLL: Most Americans See Media as Bigger Threat to Democracy Than Electoral College, Supreme Court, Biden or Even Trump
Registered voters have demonstrated in multiple recent polls a concern that democracy is under threat in the United States. But a new New York Times/Siena poll shows that the direction of that threat is not singular, or even partisan. In fact, among the voters who expressed that concern, more agreed the media was a threat than agreed on any other source individually, including President Joe Biden, ex-president Donald Trump, Republicans as a party, Democrats as a party, or even just the federal government generically.
The poll conducted October 9-12 was taken just before the final January 6 committee hearing, but during the height of campaign messaging from both parties ahead of the November midterm elections.
The NYT/Sienna result was broadly devastating news for Democrats, with inflation and the economy a dominant concern. Appearing on MSNBC on Tuesday, Speaker Nancy Pelosi literally dismissed the poll’s finding that Republicans have the edge, insisting that abortion is the number one issue.
“I dismiss that,” she said to Andrea Mitchell.
Although it did not come up in that interview, it is likely Pelosi would also dismiss the poll’s finding that more registered voters see Democrats as a threat to democracy than see Republicans as one.
The Washington Post‘s Aaron Blake noted that it is not mere partisan bias pushing that number, as “independents are significantly more likely to view Democrats as a major threat than Republicans.”
But as Fox News’s Joseph Wulfsohn pointed out, there’s an even bigger villain in the crosstabs: the media. Wulfsohn highliughted that, “Among those who fear for democracy, 84% of them, or roughly 60% of all registered voters, view “mainstream media” as some sort of threat.”
Among registered voters and likely voters, 59% see the mainstream media as a major threat and 24% a minor threat. That beats Trump, Biden, the Supreme Court, and the other answers.
That means even among Democrats, 70% see the MSM as a threat to democracy.
Aaron Blake argued in his Washington Post analysis that Democrats have failed to “make 2022 about the threat to democracy.” Essentially, Blake argues that the Democrats have been ineffective, especially in individual races across the country, at convincing voters about the threat to the very Democratic process posed by the GOP at large — a key talking point among Democratic leaders and pundits, and echoed daily by the mainstream press.
In the abstract it’s true that the noted intent among Democratic leadership to get that message across seems unrealized. But the argument that Democrats failed to make the election “about the threat to democracy” could be slightly off-point.
It might be more accurate to say that Democrats and the media have indeed made the election in large part about the threat to democracy. They just didn’t anticipate where voters will think that threat is originating.
Read the likely voter crosstabs here, or the New York Times analysis here.
