A new poll found most Americans concur on the majority of the nation’s fundamental principles such as the right to vote and freedom of religion.
The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research discovered that 91 percent of U.S. adults indicated that the right to vote is either extremely or very important to the nation’s identity. Eighty-four percent of U.S. adults surveyed expressed that freedom of religion is extremely or very important to the nation’s identity.
The findings showed “only small differences between Republicans and Democrats,” with the exception of views on the right to keep and bear arms, The Associated Press reported.
Sixty percent of Republican respondents ranked the right to keep and bear arms as extremely important to the nation’s identity, 41 percent more than the 19 percent of Democratic respondents who said so.
The limited consensus among Americans regarding the significance of the right to keep and bear arms to the U.S.’s identity reflects the prevalent political discord in the country on the issue of gun control, with Democrats typically backing advocating for stricter regulations on which firearms Americans should have access to and who is permitted to possess them, and Republicans often supporting less stringent gun regulation.
Sixty percent of Democratic respondents indicated that freedom of the press was extremely important to the nation’s identity, 15 percent more than the 45 percent of Republican respondents who said so.
Current presumptive GOP presidential nominee and former President Trump has also targeted the freedom of the press in the past, stating during his 2016 campaign that he intended to “loosen up” libel laws to sue media outlets.
“I’m gonna loosen up our libel laws, so when they write intentionally negative and awful, false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money,” Trump said at the time.
“We’re going to loosen up those libel laws,” he added. “So that when The New York Times writes a hit piece, which is a total disgrace, or when The Washington Post, which is there for other reasons, writes a hit piece, we can sue them and win money.”
The AP-NORC survey was carried out between March 21 and 25, with a sample of 1,282 individuals and a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.8 percentage points at the 95 percent confidence level.
