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49% Americans say government threatens them
Almost half of Americans believe the federal government poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens, according to the results of a new Gallup poll.
In their last annual End of Year poll, researchers for WIN and Gallup worldwide surveyed more than 66,000 people across 65 nations and found that 24 percent of all respondents answered that the United States is the greatest threat to peace in the world today. Pakistan and China fell significantly behind the United States on the poll, with 8 and 6 percent, respectively. When the polling outlet first posed the question to Americans in 2003, just 30 percent said the government was a threat.
The poll found that 49 percent of Americans think the government poses an immediate threat to their rights and freedoms, up from 46 percent in 2013.
Republicans are more likely to say that the government regulates business too much than their Democratic counterparts.
“… there is too much government in people’s private life”, the people surveyed agreed on.
Among the poll’s most frequently mentioned threats are violations to the Second Amendment of the Constitution, a definition that uses ambiguous language some interpret as guaranteeing the right of USA citizens to own guns, as well as violations of so-called freedoms and certain civil liberties.
“The fact that Democrats and Republicans have flipped in their probability of holding these views when the administration changed in 2009 shows that these attitudes reflect more of a response to the president and disagreement with his policies than a fundamental feeling about the federal government in general”, Mr. Newport wrote. Democrats were “somewhat less likely” to mention gun control and issues like marriage, taxes, immigration, government spending, or healthcare.
Its latest survey results are based on telephone interviews with 1,025 adults ages 18 or older conducted nationwide September 9-13. The survey has a 4 percent margin of error and a 95 percent confidence level.
