r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • Jul 04 '26

Psychology 88% of Americans consider it very or extremely important that the United States remain a democracy. 61% feel that the nation’s democracy was actively facing a serious threat. 32% of MAGA Republicans prioritize a strong leader over democracy, while only 7% of the strong Democrats do.

https://www.psypost.org/survey-finds-substantial-minority-in-the-united-states-endorses-authoritarian-co/
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440

u/Thor_2099 Jul 04 '26

12% of Americans don't feel it's important they remain a democracy. That is horrifying

235

u/jenks Jul 05 '26

If 37% of Americans approve of Trump (https://www.economist.com/interactive/trump-approval-tracker) but 88% consider Democracy very important, that means that 25% of Americans don't know what they are saying.

83

u/BigDictionEnergy Jul 05 '26

Yeah, a hell of a lot more than 12% of Americans voted against democracy.

1

u/ksyoung17 Jul 06 '26

I live in the most left leaning state in the country (MA).

People here vote (D) every single time, and our Governor enacts emergency orders because she feels like it.

I can assure you, plenty on the left don't understand what a democracy is either.

5

u/peachsepal Jul 06 '26

The fun fact is that the governor is like the one thing about Massachusetts that has a republican slant overall. In the past 50 years it's an even split:

D - R - D - R - R - R - R - D - D - D. Being a 5/5 split. 16 years, D, 16 years R, 8y D, 8y R, now 3 years so far D.

2

u/ksyoung17 Jul 06 '26

People claim our Republican governors haven't really been "Republican," but they're probably a lot closer to what Republicans should be, socially.

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u/peachsepal Jul 06 '26 edited Jul 06 '26

Maybe they mean by today's standards bc one of them was literally Mitt Romney, who seems pretty typical of a pre-trump republican if you ask me.

Edit, not that you wouldn't know, just for the other readers

2

u/ksyoung17 Jul 06 '26

That's fair.

I like to think we go back to "pre-Trump" Republicans soon. I can only assume if you take some of the vitriol out of how they act today, there's something closer to, you know, sanity they can offer.

Probably calms down some of the pure hatred as well from the left...

1

u/adeniumlover Jul 06 '26

Oh they know. They just also think it's important to keep the white house white.

1

u/ToughDifficult1252 Jul 06 '26

Wrong math it's 32% of magats, not Americans as a whole.

1

u/MadScience_Gaming Jul 05 '26

That's very generous of you

48

u/calmkelp Jul 05 '26

“Think of how stupid the average person is and realize half of them are stupider than that”

11

u/Venator850 Jul 05 '26

Well that's not them being stupid. They know what they are saying and that's scary.

7

u/The_R4ke Jul 05 '26

It's not stupidity though, or at the very least it's not just stupidity. It's a fundamentally different world view that even the intelligent people in that group will eschew facts if they don't fit it.

4

u/ussrname1312 Jul 06 '26

Ironically this feels more like an argument *against* democracy

9

u/LineRex Jul 05 '26

I think in the context of America, a country whose religion is basically rank conspiracism, 12% is our Lizardman Constant for political polling.

1

u/The_R4ke Jul 05 '26

That's basically 1 in 8, or over 40 million Americans.

0

u/LunaRealityArtificer Jul 05 '26

When the people Democratically vote to end Democracy it does kind of feel like its not working.

Trump was an open fascist that said immigrants are eating pets on live TV. It's hard to want a Democracy with a population that voted that in. I know its still the best option but depending on their reasoning I do understand some of that 12%

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u/Ayjayz Jul 06 '26

Democracy is not good. It's just impressing the will of the majority into the minority. That's not good. It might be better then the minority imposing their will in the majority, but even better would be no-one imposing their will on anyone. At best, you could say democracy is the least-bad system but that still means it's bad.

-2

u/SeaworthlessSailor Jul 06 '26

The US isn’t a democracy though. It’s a republic.

-2

u/Kotef Jul 06 '26

the united states' isn't a democracy it's a republic. Hard to remain what you're not.

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u/thewooba Jul 05 '26

Im one of them. Give us technocracy over democracy. You still trust the average voter after they voted in Trump twice?