Consider this Harvard-Harris poll from February 2021, a month after the riot at the capitol. It showed that, at the time, when voters were asked about the violent riots across American cities the previous summer and the January 6 riot, 55 percent of voters found the former was more concerning to the latter’s 45 percent. What’s more, at the time, more voters thought Antifa was a domestic terrorist organization than the Proud Boys.
The poll – again, from a month after the January 6 riot and several months after the summer Antifa riots – showed it wasn’t as big an issue. And in subsequent polls, voters never really seemed to buy in to the idea that democracy was really under threat from the GOP. They were, as Blake points out, more likely to see Trump as a threat to democracy.
But the Democrats’ campaigns have noticed the polling and they reacted to it. Over the summer, as campaigns really got underway, the Dobbs decision was driving a lot of political rhetoric. The Democratic Party switched to abortion as their primary campaign issue, and ad after ad was produced to rally the troops. We saw a surge in the polls. But the surge was temporary, and economic issues were not. Inflation, gas prices, supply chain issues, the stock market, and more have left voters uneasy about the Democrats’ ability to lead the country through an economic crisis.
So as the summer wound down, so did the surge, leaving Democrats with a slate of ads on abortion and voters mad at them for being focused on the wrong thing.
Approved ~ Primus Pilus
DarkGoldenMan