President Biden and his Democratic allies have cast his reelection campaign as a battle for the country’s survival, warning that a second Donald Trump presidency would present an existential threat to American democracy.
In speeches and campaign ads, Biden points to Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, his incitement of an angry mob that ransacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and the former president’s boasts that he will use the powers of his office to punish his political enemies.
But that message may not be resonating with the voters Biden needs in order to win another term in the White House.
In six swing states that Biden narrowly won in 2020, a little more than half of voters classified as likely to decide the presidential election say threats to democracy are extremely important to their vote for president, according to a poll by The Washington Post and the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University.
Yet, more of them trust Trump to handle those threats than Biden. And most believe that the guardrails in place to protect democracy would hold even if a dictator tried to take over the country….
Among key-state voters who identify themselves as locked-in Biden supporters, 78 percent see threats to democracy as extremely important. Among Trump backers, that’s true of 71 percent. Threats to democracy are second only to the economy in the percentage of swing state voters overall who describe the issue as extremely important.
But definitions of what constitutes a threat to democracy vary depending on which candidate voters are supporting. On the campaign trail, Biden and Trump have described threats to democracy in sharply different terms.
Trump has tried to flip the democracy issue, claiming falsely that he and his allies are facing multiple criminal investigations because Biden is weaponizing the judicial system against him. The former president also continues to undermine the legitimacy of elections with baseless claims of widespread fraud.
Biden, meanwhile, has pointed to Trump’s own vow that he will direct the justice system to prosecute his enemies in a campaign of “retribution.” The president has also highlighted Trump’s boast that he will be “a dictator” on his first day in office and the former president’s refusal to accept the results of the 2020 election. While 64 percent of key-state voters and 69 percent of Deciders say Biden’s 2020 election win was “legitimate,” that falls to 19 percent of locked-in Trump voters.
Among the Deciders, more than 7 in 10 believe that Trump will notaccept the results of the election if he loses, compared with one-thirdwho say the same for Biden. Nearly half, 47 percent, say Trump would try to rule as a dictator if he is elected to another term as president, compared with 15 percent who say Biden would. The poll finds that just over half of Deciders think Trump is guilty of criminal charges of lying about voter fraud in an attempt to overturn the 2020 election, and more say he has been treated fairly rather than unfairly by the criminal justice system….