Most Americans Are Seeing the Dangers of Trump’s Authoritarianism
PRRI's new American Values Survey shows more fear of dictatorship than approval for a "strong leader"
“But the people refused to listen to the voice of Samuel; they said, “No! We are determined to have a king over us, so that we also may be like other nations and that our king may govern us and go out before us and fight our battles.”
In his famed pamphlet Common Sense, Thomas Paine reproduced nearly all of the eighth chapter of the biblical book of Samuel in service of his argument against the divine right of kings. In that passage, Samuel warns his audience of the calamities that follow the rise of all-powerful kings: conscription of sons and daughters to the king’s causes, confiscation of wealth and land, increased militarism and violence, and oppression of the people themselves, as all of society is transformed to serve the king’s personal interests. Paine concludes his biblical commentary: “These portions of scripture are direct and positive. They admit of no equivocal construction. That the Almighty hath here entered his protest against monarchical government is true, or the scripture is false.”
In the wake of the massive “No Kings” protests, which saw an estimated seven million Americans take to the streets in over 2,700 events to protest Trump’s authoritarian actions, national public opinion surveys are showing that Trump’s king-like behavior is alarming a broad swath of Americans.
In PRRI’s newly released American Values Survey, we fielded a two-part survey question to assess the public’s perception of President Donald Trump’s leadership. We asked Americans which of two statements (in randomized order) came closest to their views: “President Trump is a strong leader who should be given the power he needs to restore America’s greatness,” or “President Trump is a potentially dangerous dictator whose power should be limited before he destroys American democracy.” We found that only four in ten Americans (41%) see Trump as a strong leader who should be given the power he needs, compared to a majority (56%) who see him as a dangerous dictator whose power should be limited.
Notably, the percentage of Americans who see Trump as a dangerous dictator has increased a statistically significant four points just since the 100-day mark of his second term (from 52% in March 2025), when PRRI first asked this question. Nine in ten Democrats (91%, up from 87%) now see Trump in this light, and independents have also become markedly more concerned about his authoritarian tendencies. The proportion of independents who agree that Trump is a dictator whose power should be limited has increased by 9 percentage points since March, from 56% to 65%.
With the exception of white Christians, two thirds of whom cast their votes for Trump in 2024, majorities of all other religious groups and the religiously unaffiliated see Trump as a dangerous dictator. Even a majority of Latino Protestants (53%), six in ten of whom voted for Trump in 2024, now see Trump in this way, primarily because of his racist and inhumane targeting of undocumented immigrants and the thuggish behavior of masked ICE officers showing no warrants and no identification.
Yet these mounting fears are not shared among Trump’s MAGA base. Fully eight in ten Republicans (82%, consistent with 81% in March), along with nearly three quarters of white evangelical Protestants (73%, unchanged from March), see Trump as a strong leader who should be given the power he needs to restore America’s greatness.
The good news is that while we are polarized, we are not evenly divided. In the general population, Trump’s support crests at about four in ten across a number of measures: favorability (40%), job approval (42%), strong leader (41%), and operating within proper authority (41%). On each of these measures, approximately two thirds of independents hold negative views of Trump and are much closer to the sentiments of Democrats than Republicans.
We are experiencing a great asymmetrical stretching of the moral and political bounds of American society. Increasingly, self-identified Republicans (who represent approximately 30% of the public) and white evangelicals (who represent 13% of the public) are drifting farther from the American mainstream, drawn away by MAGA’s extreme gravitational pull.
Although our circumstances on the eve of the 250th anniversary of the nation are different from Paine’s at America’s birth, for most of us, his assessment of the nation remains resonant: “The present state of America is truly alarming to every man who is capable of reflection.” Paine’s struggle was independence from a British king abroad. Our struggle is independence from a would-be king at home.
While Republicans and white evangelicals may be “determined to have a king over us,” far more of us are united in seeing Trump as a fundamental threat to the future of American democracy. The question is whether we can galvanize this diverse majority into a political force while there is still time to save it.
Robert P. Jones, Ph.D. is the President and Founder of Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) and author of the New York Times bestseller The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy and the Path to a Shared American Future, the 2021 American Book Award winner White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity, and the 2019 Grawemeyer Award in Religion winner The End of White Christian America. Robert P. Jones writes a weekly Substack newsletter at WhiteTooLong.net.
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Seems to me that the asymmetry is primarily along religious grounds. We must continue to resist Christian Nationalists at every opportunity.
The fact is, 40% of the US population is either completely ignorant, willfully ignorant, racist or a millionaire/billionaire who will always vote for someone like the orange felon.
The really funny part are the so-called christians who continue to let the worst sinner in history be their "leader."