Nate Cohn

But they didn't have the same pessimism about the political system's ability to get us back on track.

Yeah, and I think that juxtaposition between voters being so pessimistic about the political system at a time when, in a lot of ways, material economic conditions aren't that bad is so telling, right?

It would be one thing for voters to be this pessimistic about the political system if things were just really, really bad, like the depths of the financial crisis and during the Iraq war.

But for it to be happening now, it really just shows how squarely voters are thinking about the politics itself as the problem.

Now, it's worth noting, I guess I should caution that that doesn't mean that voters are panicking about the imminent collapse of American democracy or a collapse of the government.

And, you know, I think it's fairly telling that we felt compelled to ask about this, but we did.

And only 18 percent of voters say that American democracy isn't strong enough to survive the Trump years.

That's a big number in one sense, but it's still well short of the majority of the public thinking that the end of democracy is right.

around the corner.

Only 31 percent say that the country is heading off on the wrong track to such an extent that we're in danger of failing as a country.

So Americans are getting more concerned about the political system itself, but they haven't yet become convinced that a calamity is right around the corner yet either.

The worst case scenarios may not be here.

At least to me, I interpret this to mean that voters think we're just going to kind of keep muddling through, that things could get worse, that we can't solve the problems that we already have, but they're not necessarily convinced that things are on track to culminate in the end of American democracy, that things will kind of just keep on going as they are for the foreseeable future, where we have a pretty flawed political system, but nothing necessarily catastrophic in the imminent future.

It's a great question, and it's a little bit hard to answer because in the past, pollsters haven't even thought to ask questions like this.

There have been lots of times in American history where things have looked pretty bad, but there haven't been too many times in the era of modern polling, which is, say, since the mid-1940s, when pollsters would have thought to ask about whether America could fail as a country or whether America might cease to be a democracy.

Those are things that Americans have basically been able to take for granted for the entire period.

when pollsters have been conducting public opinion research.

And so as a consequence, we don't have a long track record of questions like this to look back on.

My guess is that such a large share of the public hasn't had these attitudes before.

The fact that people haven't even thought to ask is what's ultimately telling.