Majority in new poll says democracy is not working well

Slightly more than half of Americans said in a new poll that they believe democracy is not working well.

The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll, published on Wednesday, found 52 percent of those surveyed said that democracy is not working well, while 46 percent of respondents disagreed.

Along political party lines, 68 percent of registered Republican respondents have pessimistic views on the state of democracy in the U.S., while 32 percent of registered Republicans think it is working well. 

By comparison, 59 percent of registered Democrats share positive views on the state of  democracy in the country, while 40 percent think otherwise.

And 49 percent of independent respondents share pessimistic views about the state of democracy in the U.S., while 48 percent somewhat think the country’s democracy is working well.

In a New York Times-Siena College poll published Tuesday, 71 percent of respondents said that they believe that U.S. democracy is under threat, while at the same time only 7 percent of those surveyed think democracy is a major issue in this midterm election cycle. 

When asked in the new AP survey if they have faith their midterm election votes will be counted accurately, 71 percent of respondents said they did, to some degree. An overwhelming majority of Democrats — 91 percent — said they think their votes will be counted accurately, compared to 55 percent of Republicans.

The poll released Wednesday was conducted from Oct. 6 to Oct. 10 with a total of 1,211 respondents participating in the survey. Its margin of error is 3.8 percentage points.