Nate Cohn
speaker
982 appearances
7 recordings
2 series
first heard Apr 2025
last heard 16 Sep
Nate Cohn’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 5 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 2.
Appearances
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.
But I guess I don't know that for sure.
Maybe if we'd asked in 1971 or something, people would have been similarly dark.
But I doubt it.
Now, I should say, just because people are so pessimistic about politics doesn't mean that they see the other side as the enemy.
You know, in this poll, more than 80 percent of voters said that they saw the other side as just fellow Americans who they disagree with, not as the enemy.
Yeah.
So, you know, you mentioned political violence as the sort of thing that might be likely to unfold as voters become more pessimistic about the political system.
And I will say with numbers like that and with the numbers that are produced by other polling firms, I don't see a groundswell of people who are.
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