A new poll showed that a near majority of U.S. adults believe there will be violence over future presidential election losses, Axios reports. Three years out from the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and only months away from the 2024 presidential election, over two-thirds of Americans feel that democracy is under threat. Some 51% of respondents expect the losing side to accept their losses peacefully, according to a CBS/YouGov poll released Saturday. However, 49% expect violence over those losses. Additionally, most of the respondents believe U.S. democracy is under threat, while only 30% feel that democracy is secure.
This comes as 39% of respondents do not consider President Biden to be the legitimate winner of the 2020 presidential election. Yet, multiple probes and recounts of 2020 election votes have disprove claims of widespread election fraud. The poll also revealed that 78% about a majority of the respondents disapproved of the "actions taken by the people who forced their way into the U.S. Capitol" on Jan. 6, 2021. The percentage of Republicans who strongly disapprove of those actions on Jan. 6 (32%) has dwindled nearly 20 points since January 2021, according to the poll. Over a third of respondents described the actions of "the people who forced their way into the U.S. Capitol" on Jan. 6 as "defending freedom."