A recent poll conducted on Thursday found that 28% of Americans believed that it might “soon be necessary to take up arms” against the US government.
The poll indicated that 37% of respondents who said they did currently own guns.
A majority of Americans, both liberal and conservative, felt that their government was “corrupt and stacked against ordinary people like me,” according to the poll.
The University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics conducted the poll in May, which surveyed 1,000 US voters.
According to nearly identical percentages of Republicans and Democrats (73 and 74%) who disagree with the other side’s political beliefs, the other side “are generally bullies who want to impose their political beliefs on those who disagree,” the poll revealed stark ideological divisions among Americans.
The survey is released at the same time as the nation is watching the US House Select Committee’s probe into President Trump’s involvement in the violent January 6 uprising against the Capitol.
According to the survey, 49% of Americans as a whole concur that they “more and more feel like a foreigner in my own country.”
The political breakdown of those who expressed that sentiment was typical of the remainder of the survey: 69% of those who identified as “extremely conservatives” did so, compared to 38% of self-described “strong democrats.”
Similar trends may be seen in the public’s mistrust in elections, which sparked the January 6 riots. Despite the fact that 56% of Americans said they “usually believe elections to be handled fairly and counted accurately,” there were significant party differences among those who shared that belief.
Democrats had an 80% level of confidence in elections, compared to only 51% of independents and 33% of Republicans surveyed.
Thirty percent of Republicans, 35 percent of independent voters, and 20 percent of Democrats thought that armed opposition to the government could soon be required.
A quarter of respondents claimed they have lost acquaintances and avoided friends and family over politics, while nearly half of those polled said they avoid debating politics with individuals “because I don’t know where they stand.”
While party polarization in the country has been extensively recorded, Republican pollster Neil Newhouse claimed that the results of this poll “may be the starkest evidence of the vast gaps in partisan attitudes rippling through the country.”
Together with Democratic pollster Joel Benenson, he conducted the survey.