Only 1 in 10 Americans give high ratings to US democracy — poll

Only about 1 in 10 US adults give high ratings to the way democracy is working in the United States or how well it represents the interests of most Americans, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Most adults say US laws and policies do a poor job of representing what most Americans want on issues ranging from the economy and government spending to gun policy, immigration and abortion.

The poll shows 53 percent say Congress is doing a bad job of upholding democratic values, compared with just 16 percent who say it's doing a good job.

The findings illustrate widespread political alienation as a polarised country limps out of the pandemic and into a recovery haunted by inflation and fears of a recession.

In interviews, respondents worried less about the machinery of democracy — voting laws and the tabulation of ballots — and more about the outputs.

Overall, about half the country — 49 percent — say democracy is not working well in the United States, compared with 10 percent who say it's working very or extremely well and 40 percent only somewhat well.

About half also say each of the political parties is doing a bad job of upholding democracy, including 47 percent who say that about Democrats and even more — 56 percent — about Republicans.

"I don't think either of them is doing a good job just because of the state of the economy — inflation is killing us," said Michael Brown, a 45-year-old worker's compensation adjuster and father of two in Bristol, Connecticut.

"Right now, I'm making as much as I ever have, and I'm struggling as much as I ever have."

A self-described moderate Republican, Brown has seen the United States falling short of its democratic promise ever since learning in high school that the Electoral College allows someone to become president while not winning the majority of national votes, but he's especially disappointed with Congress now, seeing its obsessions as not reflective of the people's will.

Not well represented

The poll shows 53 percent of Americans say views of "people like you" are not represented well by the government, with 35 percent saying they're represented somewhat well and 12 percent very or extremely well.

About 6 in 10 Republicans and independents feel like the government is not representing people like them well, compared with about 4 in 10 Democrats.

Karalyn Kiessling, a researcher at the University of Michigan who participated in the poll, sees troubling signs all around her.

A Democrat, she recently moved to a conservative area outside the liberal campus hub of Ann Arbor, and worried that conspiracy theorists who believe former president Donald Trump’s lies that he won the 2020 election would show up as poll watchers.

Her Republican family members no longer identify with the party and are limiting their political engagement.

"I think people are less willing to get involved because it's become more contentious," Kiessling, 29, said.

That leads to alienation at the national level, she said — something she certainly feels when she sees what comes out of Washington.

"When you have a base that's a minority of what general Americans think, but they're the loudest voices in the room, that's who politicians listen to," Kiessling said.

Polarisation has transformed some states into single-party dominions, further alienating people like Mark Short, a Republican who lives in Dana Point, California.

"In California, I kind of feel that I throw my vote away every time, and this is just what you get," said Short, 63, a retired businessman.

The poll shows that the vast majority of Americans — 71 percent — think what most Americans want should be highly important when laws and policies are made, but only 48 percent think that's actually true in practice.

Negative views on specific issues

And views are even more negative when it comes to specific issues: About two-thirds of adults say policies on immigration, government spending, abortion policy and gun policy are not representative of most Americans' views, and nearly that many say the same about the economy.

More than half also say policies poorly reflect what Americans want on health care and the environment.

Joseph Derito, an 81-year-old retired baker in Elmyra, New York, sees immigration policy as not representing the views of most Americans.

"The government today is all for the people who have nothing — a lot of them are capable of working but get help," said Derito, a white political independent who leans Republican and voted for Trump.

"They just want to give these people everything."

Sandra Wyatt, a 68-year-old retired data collection worker and Democrat in Cincinnati, blames Trump for what she sees as an erosion in democracy.

"When he got in there, it was like, man, you're trying to take us back to the day, before all the rights and privileges everybody fought for," said Wyatt, who is Black, adding that she's voted previously for Republicans as well.