Majority of Republicans would like the country partitioned, study finds

A majority of Republicans who voted for the former US President Donald Trump are in favour of partitioning the country, according to a new study by the University of Virginia Center for Politics (UVA).

The survey of Republicans and Democrats examined the increasing polarisation that has swept US politics in the last few years.

Even Democratic voters who voted for Joe Biden, roughly 41 percent agree that the country should be split between blue and red states. Whereas an even more significant portion of Republicans, approximately 52 percent, believed in a similar idea.

Observers have been increasingly sounding the alarm bell that the country is heading into uncharted political territory with profound differences between opposing voting blocs taking a violent turn.

A recent column in the Washington Post warned that the US "heading into its greatest political and constitutional crisis since the Civil War, with a reasonable chance over the next three to four years of incidents of mass violence, a breakdown of federal authority, and the division of the country into warring red and blue enclaves."

One of the most significant cleavages in the country is that Trump, who has successfully channelled discontent in the country, is increasingly set to run in the 2024 presidential election.

While not officially making an announcement, Trump increasingly teases observers and the media about his potential candidacy.

The study by the UVA found that 20 percent of Trump and Biden voters were willing to circumvent the democratic process and strongly agreed with the idea that it would be better if a "President could take needed actions without being constrained by Congress or courts."

In the study, a large majority of voters from both parties believed that their opposite counterparts were an existential danger to the country.

Roughly 80 percent of Democrats and almost 85 percent of Republicans believe that elected officials from the opposite party present a "clear and present danger to American democracy."

A large majority of voters, more than 70 percent on both sides, were open to censoring media platforms from the opposite side in the pursuit of stopping what they believed were "dangerous lies."

More strikingly, the study found that most Democratic voters believed that there was no difference between Republicans and fascists. At the same time, an overwhelming majority of Republican voters thought that there was no difference between being a Democratic and a socialist.

While the survey found that the vast majority of voters believed that democracy was still a preferable system of governance, increasingly, both Democratic and Republican voters think that the system is stacked against them and favouring the wealthy.

Majorities of Americans believe that many "radical and immoral people" are trying to ruin society and that it's the responsibility of individuals to help "eliminate the evil that poisons the country."

The ongoing pandemic in the US, which is killing more than 2,000 people per day, is symptomatic of the country's worsening polarisation, which has been made worse as both sides have used it as a political football to consolidate their base.

However, Americans did agree that the country's ailing infrastructure needs to be modernised and improved - whether that's in the same country or not remains to be seen.