privacy as a right in the constitution and precedence as a force on the court, everything is up for grabs. so kitchen table democracy. and then again our role in the world i think is a very important issue. not everybody response to that, but we are going, we to be true to who we are as we go for that three to 4% that isn't there. but also to get out the vote. times found linking to keep us together. the times have found us now proof to the night that our flag is still there. >> we are going to have to stop there. so lots of hopeful hands up, brilliant questions online. thank you a whole lot on the middle east, a lot on migration. thank you from tanzania.

what would you like remembered for? we'll have timed at it but thank you for asking. megan richardson why didn't nancy pelosi run for president? looking at the candidate should there be an upper age limit on entering politics? i think her performance has dismissed that one. lots of fascinating questions and we didn't even get on really two out of five children and become speaker of the house. but please, thank you for coming first and can y announcer:'s's "washington journal," i live for them it will be new to discuss latest issues and politics and public policy. sunday morning, we talk about this year's presidential campaign in the battleground state of michigan with a senior correspondent and an open

university political science professor. during the conversation live at 7:00 eastern sunday morning on c-span, c-span now, or online at c-span.org. announcer: this week democratic presidential nominee kamala harris down for an interview with charlamagne tha god i discussed read to get to provide forgivable loans for black entrepreneurs, or support for legalizing marijuana and other topics. watch the full interview sunday at 1:00 p.m. eastern on c-span, c-span now, and online at c-span.org. announcer: c-span is your unfiltered view of government. we are funded by these television companies and more, including charter communications. >> charter is proud to be recognized as one of the best

internet providers, and we are just getting started. building 100,000 miles of new infrastructure to reach those who need it most. announcer: charter communications supports c-span as a public service along with these other television providers, giving you a front row seat to democracy. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2024] announcer: next to look at the findings from an annual survey examining the public's views on immigration, abortion, the economy, and the recent fashion. joy stoddard was among a participant of the event from the working institution in the public research institute. it is one hour and 40 minutes. >> i want to welcome everyone here today and everyone who

watches or hears this. this is a very exciting day for us. this is the 15th joint effort by brookings and prri, cooperating on prri's extraordinary annual survey. 15 years is a long time for an institutional marriage. robbie jones of prri said we are way past the seven year itch and this is been a fruitful partnership for my colleagues and i. it has been a wonderful partnership. we have learned a lot from robbie, from melissa who is the ceo at prri. we are grateful to be here. some of you may have read columns lately by ezra klein in new york times and my colleague jean robinson in the washington post and also our friend and

colleague elaine said stop reading polls, stop doom scrolling. after this event you can stop reading polls. not just because i am obviously biased, but also because the survey really sheds important light on issues we should be thinking about as election day and perhaps its aftermath approach. in a campaign where the words "enemies within" have become part of the campaign dialogue, this catches out not only polarization. you thought we couldn't get more polarized? this survey suggests we are even more so. also as robbie will show -- no one does power points as well as

robbie in his presentation in a moment, there is real division about the role of violence in our society and in the electoral process. it is a very troubling time that is a country we need to come to terms with now but also after this election is over. i want to thank catalina navarro of brookings who has done so much, particularly to pull this together today. one of the great things about this partnership is we have always had awesome some respondents to this survey. a veteran and somebody who has been there with us is joy reid from msnbc. at the brilliant a.b. stoddard of the bulwark has joined us today. even if you are not a numbers guy, which i confess i am, you are in for a real treat today.

in the process of enjoying that treat you will learn a lot of stuff you did not know. welcome, everyone, and i want to welcome, the president and founder of prri, the author of some extraordinary books. robbie has been at the forefront of demonstrating the racial and racist past within our religious traditions but also pointing the way towards reconciliation. his last book -- let me plug the last book. title should have written down. it is "the hidden history of white supremacy." it has a section on efforts communities have made to achieve reconciliation. a profit of problems but also a profit of solutions and he knows

a lot about numbers, robbie jones. [applause] robbie: welcome, everyone. it is great to see a full room. we are coming back from covid, still. it is nice to see everyone in the same room. a quick thank you to ej and bill , i feel old, joy told me i should use the word seasoned. i thought before i jumped into the numbers i would give a highlight reel of the 15 years and some findings that have had a long shelf life as we have gone along. just a few quick ones. i will not take too much time. all the way back, the 2010 to the present. if you can think back to what politics looked like in 2010

compared to what they look like today. we've been tracing these trends along the way. remember the tea party? we were one of the first people to break that the tea party was actually a rebranding of the old christian right. that half the people who claim to be a follower of the tea party also claim to be part of the christian right. that was not how the tea party was branding itself. there were branding itself as a libertarian movement. we found that only about one in 10 americans were true libertarians. in america if you are economically conservative you tend to be socially conservative as well. the other thing we've been paying attention to is the sorting of political parties by race and religion. remarkable today that the republican party is 70% white and christian in a country that is 41% white and christian. the democratic party today is 25% white and christian.

the racial and religious polarization, in addition to the ideological and political polarization. the other thing we -- in 2016 when trump first entered the scene there was a lot of debate of the role of the white working class. is it economic anxiety or cultural anxiety? it turns out it is both. we were able to quantify that if you're going to make a recipe for white working-class attraction to trump it would have to be two parts cultural anxiety and one part economic anxiety. one of the things i constantly still get lack jaws when i mentioned is sometimes the assumption about where religious groups are on particular issues are completely wrong. among american catholics, the catholic church, the hierarchy

has staked out a strong position on lgbtq rights and abortion. it is not at all where catholics in the pews are. most of the time we tracked this they look pretty much like the general population. that is to say supportive of abortion rights and supportive of marriage equality. that is something people often do not know. we've been tracking demographic shifts as well and we were able to track -- we were one of the first just put a spotlight on the fact that during the tenure of our first african-american president we experienced a seachange in our religious demographics. we went from being a majority white christian country graphically speaking, if you take all white christians together, we were 54% white and christian in 2008. that number today is 41%. that seachange happened during

barack obama's presidency. part of the thing that sets the stage for a lot of anxieties and nostalgia and resentment we are seeing is the shifting demographics in the country when we had a very visible symbol of that change in the white house. finally, one of my favorites and one that has the longest shelf life and is still getting you to print almost 10 years after we asked the question is the question about candidates character and how much it matters for people. in 2011 we asked the question was do you agree or disagree that a candidate who commits an immoral act in their private life can still behave ethically and perform their duties and their public life? when we asked white even chuckle protestants this question in 2011, only about 3 -- when we asked white evangelical protestants in 2011, only about three in 10 said yes. and we asked this after trump received the nomination in 2016,

it went from three in 10 to seven in 10. during that same period trump's favorability went from the mid-40's percent up to about 70% in that same period. with that i will jump in to where we are today and hopefully we have some things that will stand the test of time today to the very challenging moment we find ourselves in in this election cycle. 15 years of doing this survey, you see the long-term trends in the presentation. this is a fairly large survey, over 5000 interviews. the typical political poll you see run by me, this is about five times as big as typical poles in the media. we want to thank the carnegie corporation of new york who has been a long time supporter of this since the beginning. also the ford foundation, the

uua project as founding this year -- for funding this year. where are we? we asked the standard question if we are heading in the right direction or wrong direction. we will count three levels and give you a sense of where people think we are. in the country it is pretty dark out there. it is only democrats who are a majority saying we are headed in the right direction. independence bank to 29%. report -- independents down to 29%. republicans at 6%. in the local community the pattern still holds but the numbers go up. about half of republicans say things are going in the right direction. they are divided. independents and democrats at 7%. there is my personal life and

hear the partisan split goes away. most americans think in my personal life things are going in the right direction. that tells you a little bit about how to read those big numbers, it is more complex a picture in the top numbers often tell you. another question along these lines, this is been a standard question. we first asked in 2013, not just today, i will to hat to bill on this one. we were sitting around a table and thinking about how to ask questions about the countries changes. i think a lot of people think of the 1950's as a benchmark time. they think things were better or worse in that somewhat mythical golden age. sure enough, when we asked this question it has all along the way been a huge divider by party. we asked it in 2013. it was 55% democrats and 23%

republicans saying things have changed for the better in this country. the gap is still there but it has gone up. among democrats it is 68%. republicans remain fairly steady. this little blip of 46% is the end of trump's term. there was this one moment at the end of trump's term people thinking things were going for the better and as soon as he loses it drops back down to this historic place. this is a big divider in the country today. what about this year? we had about 10 questions about what were the most critical issues for your vote in this election year? i will give you democrats and republicans. there is some overlap but not a lot. here are the top things democrats say are critical issues for voting in the country. there are four that reached a

majority of democrats. the health of our democracy, the cost of housing, abortion, and health care. abortion is unusual for democrats historically. this is a post dobbs phenomenon that we are seeing abortion jump up as this high of a priority. you see crime and immigration are quite low for democrats. i will leave these up and put up the republican numbers. you will see there is agreement on the health of our democracy, barely, although as we will see democrats and republicans mean something very different by the health of our democracy. where there is agreement is the increasing cost of housing and everyday expenses. we also have jobs and the economy here, it is not jobs in the economy, it is inflation. it is not just generic economics. it is this increasing cost

component that is driving democrats and republicans. the things that are really driving the vote among republicans, immigration and crime. e.j. mentioned the enemy within, the fear on things within the country going wrong, that is part of what this is reflecting. these are also obviously racially changed things. look at abortion among republicans. way down, particularly compared to democrats. almost twice as many democrats say that is a critical issue for voting as republicans. that is an inverse of what we have historically seen until the last few years with the striking down of roe v. wade. just to give you this comparison , here is what critical issues look like in 2020. the last election cycle, immigration and abortion the two t election cycles. in 2020 far more republicans at

abortion was a critical issue for voting and immigration. look at 2024, how these things have changed position. today abortion 29, immigration 71. you see how this is driving the election in different ways. we asked the question another way. the last one is what you think is critical. we ask you -- we asked it in a harder way that was a litmus test. would you not vote for a candidate that disagreed with you, would it be a dealbreaker on the question? i will show you immigration and abortion. these are the percentages that say they would only vote for canada to shares their views on these issues. here are the parties, republican, independent, democrat. even when we ask it this way it is far more republicans who say immigration is a dealbreaker that abortion is a dealbreaker and the inverse is true among democrats.

a majority of democrats say i would not vote for a candidate who disagrees with me on the issue of abortion. the other one i will show you are christian nationalism adherence. we also attract the support for christian nationalism in the country today. to give you the overall numbers, about three in 10 americans today affirm tenets of christian nationalism. the u.s. should declare itself a christian nation. u.s. law should be based on the christian bible. christianity should exercise dominion over all areas of u.s. society. among those who share those views, they look kind of like republicans. a majority of republicans do affirm christian nationalism. that is part of the reason you see this overlap.

among those who say they agree with christian nationalism is being driven more by immigration than abortion. among those who are skeptics, it is more abortion than immigration. seeing immigration, one of the other long-standing questions we asked is what do we do with the 11 million undocumented immigrants currently in the u.s.? what is the right policy to deal with them. we did a lot of good work back in 2013 to come up with a three-part question. i will show you one part. the question basically says how should we handle people in the country illegally? should we allow them a to become citizens provided they meet certain requirements, allow them to become permanent legal residents but not citizens, or identify and deport them? it has all three parts. this is just the top part. these are the people who say we should allow them away to become

citizens provided they meet certain requirements. what is noticeable was until 2016 we had a majority of republicans agreed with this statement. it was a consensus across party lines. as you can see it drops and drops. one little blip in 2019 where it goes back up, and then it consistently drops and now the bottom has dropped out. only 36% of republicans today agreeing with that statement, down from 53% when we first asked this question in 2013. democrats have remained pretty steady. you can see this divide, you can see the mouth opening. it is basically a 20 point gap in 2013 that has now blown up to a 40 point gap between the two parties in 2024. here is one -- e.j. mentioned

the rhetoric we are hearing. there are number of questions that eyes the social scientists never thought i would write. this is one of them. we need to know how many americans believe that immigrants are poisoning the blood of the country. less it be lost on any of you, that language is straight out of mein kampf. it turns out that one in three americans agree with that statement today. you'll see where that one in three come from. this is a classic case of asymmetric polarization. republicans are far more outside the general population then democrats are. 61% of republicans today affirm the statement. only three in 10 independents and only 13% of democrats.

there is only one religious support that has majority support. this is what evangelical protestants. this is the group that supported trump eight in 10. you can see the effect. white catholics are the next group out, but they are still below the majority. are there groups are at the general population or below the general population in terms of the religious landscape. this is a truly alarming situation to find this kind of rhetoric finding this kind of support among one of our two major political parties. this is a national poll and where it is really true if you're trying to figure out who will win the election a national poll will not answer that question. it only swing state polls that will make the difference. i want to see the religious landscape. we like many others, these

numbers are from the large sample from the end of august and the beginning of september. we did go back to check the numbers again a few weeks ago and they have not really moved. i am showing you the bigger sample. the basic divide among registered voters at the national level and here is the divide. as always in the american religious landscape, the two groups always at the polls are white evangelical protestants and african-american protestants. there is no group that votes more and has been more supportive of trump than white evangelical protestants. no group has been more opposed than african-american protestants. the other thing you will see is the groups that tend to support trump are white christian groups. one shorthand way you can describe the american electorate

since 1980's you can boil it down to this. white christian groups vote republican and everybody else tends to vote majority democrat. that has been a clean divider since ronald reagan and all the way through. trump has largely held onto that voting pattern over the last few election cycles. not a lot of changes. what might be the most remarkable thing is there are not a lot of shifts given what a different kind of candidate we have at the top of the ticket in the last few election cycles on the republican side. when we first started doing the survey, every year there was news articles writing about the god gap and said the more likely you are to go to church the more likely you are to vote republican. i always thought there was something wrong with that. what is wrong with that is it is mostly true for white people. if you break it down it looks quite different.

here is white americans by attendance. those who attend weekly or more, the bottom a tent seldom or never. those who attend weekly or more, 76% voted for trump, only 20% went for harris. it trips by the time you go seldom or never. even among white people that is largely ineffective white evangelical protestants and is partly structural. there are many mainline protestant churches, methodist, presbyterian, episcopal, who do not offer more than one service a week. the category that is weekly or more is stacked into white evangelical protestants. here are hispanic americans. the pattern still holds but it is the attend monthly part where it crosses the line. it is only the weekly or more group that is most likely to support trump. once you get to the monthly or more it tilts the other way.

here are african-american protestants. it is the exact opposite. the more likely you are to go to church the more likely you are to support harris among african-americans. you see the pattern tilting the other way. r.i.p. the god gap. threats to democracy in the 2024 election. we only go back to 2021 because we started asking questions about political violence after the insurrection on january 6. we do not have to go back before that because it is not something we imagine it would be a likely thing to ask about. the question asked is because things have gotten so far off track american patriots may have to resort to violence. you're the group divides on that question. it remains fairly steady. ups and downs.

the main thing to say is we have three in 10 republicans today agreeing that true patriots may have to resort to violence to save the country. only 8% of democrats and 18% of independents. three in 10 is nowhere near a majority, but three intent is a lot of people. one of our major political parties saying we may have to resort to violence. we decided to ask two other questions that had violent implications to them. i will show you the patterns on both. we cannot just cherry pick one question. we asked one about armed poll watchers. there is been a call for people to show up to the polls armed to the teeth to watch and verify the vote. this question, do you agree or disagree that to ensure fair presidential election we'd need everyday citizens to show up even if it makes some people uncomfortable.

the second question is the same one i just showed you, in general we may need to resort to save the country. the third is about voter fraud and everyday americans needing to rise up even if requires violence. if the 2024 election is compromised by voter fraud, everyday americans we need to ensure the rightful leader takes office, even if it requires taking violent actions. here is the first question about armed poll watchers. about three in 10 republicans. these are people who are sympathetic or adherent to christian nationalism, it is a full one third of that group who favors armed poll watchers. democrats it is around one in 10. the second is when we saw. three and 10 republicans saying true american patriots may have to resort to violence to save the country. the last