Significantly more swing-state voters view Trump as a "threat to the country" than Harris.

The fear factor is now hurting Trump
Significantly more swing-state voters view Trump as a “threat to the country” than Harris. It wasn’t always thus.

Analysis by Aaron Blake
Updated September 4, 2024 at 6:33 p.m. EDT|Published September 4, 2024 at 5:06 p.m. EDT

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/09/04/fear-factor-is-now-hurting-trump/

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For much of the 2024 election, concerns about President Joe Biden’s age and job performance helped paper over the real and long-standing concerns Americans have had about Donald Trump’s character, chaotic style and authoritarian tendencies. A slew of polls actually showed Biden had little to no advantage on the subject of which candidate was more trusted to protect democracy — despite months of Democrats focusing on democracy and the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, which dealt a blow to the bedrock democratic principle of a peaceful transfer of power.

But as with many other facets of the race, Biden’s exit and Vice President Kamala Harris’s entry have significantly shifted the threat matrix, to the point where the fear factor again looms as a real problem for Trump.

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Across six key swing states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — an average of 54 percent of registered voters said Trump was “too extreme,” with 48 percent also saying that he threatens the country. In each state, at least half of voters said Trump was “too extreme,” and at least 46 percent said he was a threat to the country.

Harris’s numbers were significantly lower: An average of 44 percent said she was “too extreme,” and just 39 percent regarded her perceived extremeness as a threat to the country. In no state did a majority regard her as too extreme; most voters instead regarded her as “generally mainstream.”

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