Study: Half of Americans believe civil war will happen ‘in the next few years’

About half of all Americans believe a civil war will occur “in the next few years” in the United States, according to a new study.

The study was done by the University of California-Davis Violence Prevention Research Program and the California Violence Research Center. It was released on Wednesday, The Hill reported on Thursday.

Researchers reported that 50.1 percent of survey people said they at least somewhat agree that a civil war will happen soon, while 47.8 percent said it will not take place.  

Some 14 percent of respondents said they “strongly” or “very strongly” agree that a civil war is looming, while 36 percent said they somewhat agree.

The researchers said the study’s results may also point out reasons for concern about the future of democracy in the US where thousands of Donald Trump supporters occupied the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 while lawmakers were in the process of reviewing the certification of state electors which indicated Joe Biden's victory.

Some Trump supporters had hoped that this process could have resulted in some of the electors being disqualified, thus overturning the outcome of the presidential election.

It is claimed by some that the demonstrators were infiltrated and incited by provocateurs from US intelligence agencies, who orchestrated the “false flag operation” in order to get rid of Trump.

Some among the crowd clashed with police, and some made threats to beat up a number of Democratic lawmakers. Some also inflicted damage on parts of the Capitol building.

Some 66 percent of respondents said there is a “serious threat” to the American democracy, and almost 90 percent said it is “very” or “extremely” important for the United States to remain a democracy.

However, over 40 percent of people said having a “strong leader” for the US is more important than having a democracy. Nearly one in five said they agreed “strongly” or “very strongly” with that statement.

About 20 percent strongly or very strongly approved violence to protect democracy if elected leaders will not, while more than 15 percent said they agree strongly or very strongly with using violence to save “our American way of life,” which is “disappearing.”

At least 20 percent of respondents said using political violence is at least sometimes justified in general.

About 25 percent of respondents said violence is sometimes justified to stop an election from being stolen.

More than 10 percent said violence would be at least sometimes justified to reinstall former President Trump into office this year.

Trump has been casting doubt on the outcome of his loss by insisting it was the result of fraud. He has said that the 2020 presidential election was “the greatest Election Hoax in history.”

Trump’s claims have significantly delegitimatized the democratic process in the United States. A poll has found that at least 50 percent of Republican voters surveyed believe their vote will not be counted accurately the next time they cast a ballot.

The researchers claimed that their findings are in line with numerous polls taken on this topic in the past two years.

“The motivating premises for this survey were that current conditions in the US create both perceived threats and actual threats to its future as a free and democratic society,” they wrote. “The findings bear out both premises.”

A recent Yahoo News-YouGov poll found that nearly half of all Americans believe the country will “cease to be a democracy” in the future.

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