Majority of swing-state voters say they fear violence if Trump loses

A majority of swing-state voters are concerned that supporters of former president Donald Trump will respond with violence if he doesn’t win the presidential election next month and do not believe he will accept defeat. Significantly fewer voters across those key states feel the same is true about Vice President Kamala Harris and her backers, according to a Washington Post-Schar School poll.

The poll of more than 5,000 registered voters conducted in the first half of October in six battleground states finds a 57 percent majority are very or somewhat worried that Trump’s supporters would turn violent if he loses, compared with 31 percent who think Harris voters would resort to violence. Two-thirds of voters are not confident Trump would accept a loss, while a little more than two-thirds are confident Harris would accept defeat.

“These findings are discouraging,” said Mark Rozell, dean of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. “It tells us we’ve lost a lot in a very short period of time, that we cannot assume that people will accept the legitimacy of the outcome of an election, and that a peaceful transfer of power is something that just automatically happens here.”

The peaceful transfer of power is considered an essential element of any functioning democracy, and it had long been taken for granted in the United States that the losing candidate would concede. That changed with the last presidential election, when Trump incited an angry mob to attack the U.S. Capitol to disrupt certification of Joe Biden’s victory.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/10/30/voters-fear-violence-trump-loss/