Former President Donald Trump echoed the sentiment of a majority of Americans on Sunday when he told NBC’s Kristen Welker that he doesn’t consider the United States “to have much of a democracy right now.” Trump argued that Democrats and the corporate media have undermined the country’s political norms, stating, “They indict their political opponents. Free speech is shot because the press is very dishonest, very dishonest.”
Even left-wing surveys – such as a recent one conducted by “The 19th” – appear to agree with the 45th President’s bleak assessment.
When asked “How well is America’s democracy working for you?” a net 52 percent of respondents answered “Not Well,” with just 12 percent said it was working “very well”.
Along demographic lines, The 19th/SurveyMonkey poll appears to show faith in American democracy is reflective of perceived changes in economic status and cultural representation rather than substantive political participation. Nearly 60 percent of Asians in the United States believe that democracy is working for them. The sentiment is shared by 58 percent of Blacks. Executive officers of Indian-origin now dominate many of the nation’s top tech companies, including some of the highest paid like Alphabet (Google’s parent company) CEO Sundar Pichai and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Black Americans, meanwhile, have seen record low unemployment and increased social assistance.
White and Hispanic Americans are less confident in American democracy. Hispanics are evenly split in terms of confidence. Whites are pessimistic with 57 percent saying democracy isn’t working well for them, and just 41 percent saying it is working well. Philip Bump at the Washington Post chalks this disparity up to former President Trump’s claims the 2020 election was stolen. In reality, the declining White population combined with the economic collapse of the white working class goes much further to explain the less than confident outlook in democracy.
