Less than a quarter of Americans believe the nation is on the right track after President Joe Biden’s Justice Department and state prosecutors charged former President Donald Trump with wrongdoing in four separate cases.
Just 24 percent of Americans say Biden’s America is headed in the right direction, CIVIQs polling found Friday. Sixty-six percent say the nation is headed in the wrong direction.
Among independents, only 17 percent say Biden’s America is headed in the right direction. Nearly 75 percent say it is going in the wrong direction.
Less than half (49 percent) of Democrats say it is going in the right direction, while 33 percent say the opposite.
Just two percent of Republicans say the nation is going well. Ninety-six percent say it is going down the wrong track.
The CIVIQS survey is a rolling average of 490,009 responses tracked between January 19, 2017, and August 24, 2023. The CIVIQS tracking model is meant to capture the shifts in attitude of various groups over time across all 50 states and Washington, DC. These changes can happen either over time or rapidly.
Fulton County, Georgia, officials arraigned Trump Thursday on charges of allegedly trying to illegally overturn the 2020 Georgia election. It was his fourth arraignment in five months.
Legal scholars and media pundits warn the indictments of a former president could put the nation on a slippery slope toward a banana republic.
Trump argued Thursday the indictments are election interference by Biden, the former president’s main political opponent heading into the 2024 election.
“What they’re doing is election interference. They’re trying to interfere with an election. There’s never been anything like it in our country before. This is their way of campaigning,” Trump said. “This is one instance, but you have three other instances. It’s election interference.”
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.