The NPR Politics Podcast - Poll: Most Americans Think Democracy Is Under Serious Threat

Episode Date: July 2, 2025

Most Americans are worried about democracy, have little faith in their political leaders, and disapprove of President Trump's job performance, according to the latest NPR/PBS News/Marist poll. We break down the results and look at the implications.This episode: White House correspondent Deepa Shivaram, senior political editor & correspondent Domenico Montanaro, and senior national political correspondent Mara Liasson. This podcast was produced by Bria Suggs and edited by Casey Morell. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This message comes from NPR sponsor, Subaru. During June, as part of the Subaru Loves to Care initiative, Subaru and its retailers partner with the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society to give warm blankets and messages of hope to patients. Learn more at Subaru.com slash care. Hi, my name is Jackson. I'm currently sitting in a hotel in Japan, catching up on American politics via the NPR

politics podcast while I get ready to head to the bullet train from Tokyo to Kyoto. This podcast was recorded at 1 21 p.m. on Wednesday, July 2nd, 2025. Sounds pretty cool. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but I'll be still trying to see the world to the extent that I can. All right, here's the show. Sounds like he's undercover. I hear those trains are so fast that you can't even get in an entire episode of the politics

podcast. I was going to say, is he listening to it on 2X speed? Hey there, it's the NPR politics podcast. I'm Deepa Sivaram. I cover the White House. I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And I'm Mara Eliasonaram. I cover the White House. I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And I'm Mara Eliasson, senior national political correspondent. And today on the show, Americans are still worried about the state of democracy.

That's according to the latest NPR PBS News Marist poll out this week. So Domenico, I want to start there. What does this poll say about how Americans feel about a very American thing? Yeah, well, three quarters of people say that democracy, they believe, is under serious threat. That included almost nine in 10 Democrats, 80% of independents, and a majority of Republicans. Three quarters also described politically motivated violence in this country as a major problem. So we're seeing a lot of people really feel like on this Fourth of July week that they don't have a lot of confidence in the direction of the country or frankly, their political

leadership. Just to put this into context, how do the numbers that you're looking at compare with previous polls that have been done? Are people getting more worried? Is it the same? What's this? Well, it's similar to what we found in April of this year, but it's different from 2023 when 87% said that they felt that there was a serious

threat to democracy. So what's the difference there? Is that that people think things are getting better? Not really. It's Republicans. When Democrat Joe Biden was president, 88% of Republicans said that there was a serious threat. In this survey, it was 57%. There wasn't much change among Democrats and independents. So we're seeing very different realities for what people in each party really see as the actual threat to democracy. No doubt Democrats see Trump and right-wing extremism as that threat. For Republicans, it's different. Danielle Pletka Does that mean these questions are really

a proxy for party ID? It's kind of like how when your own party's president is in office, you think the economy is pretty good, but if the other guy, you don't? To some extent, yes, but among Democrats, that wasn't the case. I think it's for Republicans mostly because in 2023, Democrats were about 87% saying that there was a serious threat to democracy. Now that's 89%, not much different. For independents, it was 88%.

Now it's 80, slight decline, but really not much outside the margin of error. Republicans being 31 points different, I think that shows you that they really feel good about where things are right now with Donald Trump for the most part. So democracy for Republicans is doing better under a Republican president in a way. Yeah, and I think we've seen that with a lot of different issues like Mara alludes to on the economy, for example, when one party sees it differently than the other. There's also other things that might be some overlap in Venn diagram, which we didn't ask about, but in interviews with people, we know that some people are very concerned, many people are very concerned about polarization in the

country, partisanship, civility, the way we talk to each other. And that does feel different than it did some 15 years ago. But so does that mean that voters define democracy as partisan? In other words, the democracy is doing better when my guy's in office? I think there's a broad range of what people define democracy as. And I think it's really a, you know, a temperature check for the health of the country. Yeah. Do you want to go something you mentioned earlier is political leadership. What did the poll say about how people feel about those in power? Yeah, they have very little confidence in their political leadership.

President Trump has just a 43% approval rating. Republicans in Congress are just at 35%, which is actually the highest in the time that Maris has been asking this question back to 2011. Democrats are just at 27%. And Democrats are the reason that the party is so low. Only 44 percent of Democrats approve of the job that Democrats are doing in Congress. It's a 30 point difference from how Republicans feel about Republicans. And I think this exposes a rift that we've seen in the party where we have younger progressives who don't really like how they've

seen their party or the party that they lean most toward fight against Trump and I think that that was highlighted you know in this past week with this mayoral election in New York we had a primary on the Democratic side where a young progressive who declares himself as a democratic socialist Zoran Mamdani won so if he wins in that kind of race and you had a lot of young voters going in his direction, it really does show this divide of younger voters who should be voting Democratic but are saying that they don't feel like they have somebody who expresses a vision for the future as boldly as they want to see it. But older Democrats see his vision of a democratic

socialist America as not one that can win nationally. And I think that's a rift that could play out and will probably continue to play out. Yeah. Well, Mara, I mean, we were talking yesterday on the pod about, you know, this big bill of Trumps that got passed through the Senate. And Democrats obviously have a lot to go through in 2027, 2028, but some of this stuff is playing out more immediately than that with how Democrats feel about Democrats in office. That's right. I think what's so interesting to me about polling is how disconnected some people's opinions are about the economy, about different bills in Congress from their approval of the president or

Congress. For instance, I wanted to ask Domenico, right now Donald Trump has a 43% approval rating. In the past we would have said that's pretty bad, but since it's so static he's been there for the almost the whole time, is that correct? Yeah, and I think that the polarization that we're seeing in the country just over the last 20 years or so lends itself to the fact that presidents just generally haven't been above 50%. One other thought I wanted to bring up with both of you, as people in this poll are saying that they disapprove of their parties in Congress or Democrats are disapproving of Democrats,

they disapprove of their political leaders. At the same time, incumbent politicians don't often get voted out. How do you explain that disconnect? You know, the funnel has sort of gotten tighter in this country for where these, you know, competitive seats and races are. We've seen a shrinking number of competitive seats over the long term, you know, some decades where both parties have been able to really redistrict and make compromise something that's not really incentivized. Because if you have a district that's really all one party, then that party wants to see you fight for those priorities, then you're seeing fewer and fewer people likely to wind

up losing because there aren't many people who are crossover voters to vote you out. So that's one thing, but I think there's also a lot of people who just don't feel at home in either party, but don't have any other choice. They're not approving of either party for the most part, but they've got to vote for someone or they stay home on the couch. And we're seeing that a third to 40% of people,

even in presidential elections, do make that choice, even though they're eligible to vote. They stay home. All right, we're gonna take a quick break and we'll be back in a moment. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things and other currencies. With WISE, you can send, spend,

or receive money across borders, all at a fair exchange rate. No markups or hidden fees. Join millions of customers and visit wise.com. T's and C's apply. And we're back. Dominico, I want to ask about something that was key to Donald Trump's presidential campaign and that of course is immigration policy.

A majority of people in this poll say they are displeased with what the administration has been doing. Yeah. And Trump's immigration approval mirrors his overall approval rating, which is 43% approved, 52% disapproved. So 43% of people say that Trump's deportation policies also have made the country safer. 54% of majorities think that Immigration and Customs

Enforcement, ICE, has gone too far in enforcing immigration laws. Broadly speaking, a significant majority, 64%, say America's openness to people from all over the world is essential to who we are as a nation. That included 85% of Democrats, 68% of independents. But on the flip side of this, 62% of Republicans agreed that if America is too open, it risks losing its identity as a nation. This has been a really fundamental divide. We saw that split also when it came to who people think should stay and who should go.

There's broad consensus on deporting those convicted of violent crimes and in the country without permanent legal status, 80% of people think that they should be deported. 58% also say to deport those who are convicted of nonviolent crimes. But it gets trickier here for Trump the further down you go, especially when it comes to students who have overstayed their visas. There's a real split in the country on that. And for industry workers, people in food and agricultural industries, 55% said that they oppose their deportations.

So actual views of immigration policy, much more nuanced than the politics certainly allows. And you could see Trump following those shifting feelings on immigration, almost like he was a metronome. I mean, you know, he said, oh, we're not going to deport people who work in agriculture or hotels. And, you know, he went back and forth on that. This is a complicated issue. We saw in Trump's first term, support for immigration in general went up over the course of his first term, and it might do the same in the second. Yeah. And he said this weekend that he wants to see a, quote, temporary pass for farmers and hotel owners. But we haven't seen that trickle down to the Department of Homeland Security, which says that these immigration raids at workplaces are, quote, cornerstone

to their deportation policies. Another message that Trump ran on, especially in 2024, was an economic message, right? All the talk about the price of eggs and all these other things. But in this poll, he's pretty underwater on the economy too. Yeah, it's really striking. It's the worst rating of any of the three things that we'd asked about when it came to immigration. Farm policy was 41% economics, the economy. He was at 39 percent economic approval, including six and 10 independents who said that they disapproved of the job that he was doing on the economy. That's a

real inversion of his first term. I went and looked back at Maris polling through the Trump first term and their range on Trump's handling of economics, his approval range from 45% to 53%. It was never this low. No, and we're still in the midst of this grand experiment. Will a weak dollar and high tariffs bring back the golden age of the American economy as Trump says it will? Or will the vast majority of economists be right and say that this could lead to a fiscal crisis and inflation? Mara, I want to take a quick step back here too, because even if Trump is unpopular with

these issues and even if his policies are unpopular, he's in a position where he doesn't have to run for reelection. And Republicans in Congress are largely supportive of his plans, but is this dissatisfaction with Trump, you know, potentially a warning for Republicans heading into next year's midterms? Well, there's certainly a lot of Republicans who think it is. When you say he doesn't have to run for reelection, the Constitution actually prohibits him from running for reelection.

He can't serve a third term, whether it's consecutive or nonconsecutive. But yes, the big question is, is Trump a kind of unique figure? Is the strong feelings that the Republican base have about Trump, are those transferable to other candidates who are gonna run in the midterms, to candidates who wanna succeed him in 2028? We don't know that.

What I thought was really interesting and I wanted to ask Domenico, his overall approval rating is 43%. That's very static, he's been there for a while, but 43% of people also strongly disapprove of the job he's doing. Now I can't remember a strong disapprove number that high of a president.

Well, we did start to see that creep up during the Biden presidency, where it was in the 40s of strongly disapprove, but the intensity of opposition to Trump certainly means that he has a high floor and a low ceiling. In other words, he's not gonna go much higher than where he is. He has a very small range of being able to get that approval rating up and I think that's part of why you see him cater to his base as much as he does because he has such a locked-in group of people.

You know, 85% of the people who voted for Trump in 2020 voted for him in 2024, according to the Pew Research Center and their validated voter study that they did. So he has this real locked-in base of people and he can't afford to lose them. All right, we're going to leave it there for today. I'm Deepa Shivaram. I cover the White House. I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And I'm Mara Liason, senior national political correspondent.

And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast. See, every time they let me be on with Domenico, I think it's a red letter day. Mara, I love how you say your name. When you say your name, it sounds like wind chimes. So nice. I have a really funny story to tell you, but what I'll do it over here.