Poll: Americans say partisan tensions worse under Trump

More than two-thirds of Americans think the partisan divide in the country has worsened since President Trump was elected, according to a new NPR/PBS Marist College poll.

Seventy percent of respondents said that tensions between Democrats and Republicans have deteriorated further under the Trump administration. Twenty percent said they have remained about the same, and only 6 percent said that partisan tensions have improved, the poll released late Monday found.

By comparison, 35 percent of Americans said they thought partisan tensions worsened after former President Obama was elected in 2008.

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While respondents who identified as Democrats were most likely to say that the divide has grown since Trump’s election — at 81 percent — the sentiment was strong across party lines. Nearly two-thirds, 65 percent, of Republicans said they think partisan strain has gotten worse, and 70 percent of independents said the same.

Trump has called for unity in the wake of a bitter and controversy-ridden presidential race against Democrat Hillary Clinton. 

But Republicans and Democrats in Congress have clashed over a bevy of issues since Trump took office, including immigration, climate change and healthcare, which has been the subject of intense debate for months, as GOP members of Congress push forward with efforts to repeal and replace ObamaCare.

Also at issue is the ongoing investigations into Russian election meddling and possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Democrats and many Republican lawmakers have vowed to get to the bottom of the Kremlin’s role in the 2016 election. But Trump has slammed the probes as a “witch hunt” and an affront on his presidency by Democrats upset about his electoral victory in November.

Six in 10 Americans trust the intelligence community, though the numbers are higher among Democrats than Republicans, at 72 percent and 59 percent, respectively.

Amid Trump’s ongoing war with the press, the survey finds more Americans have faith in the White House (37 percent) than the media (30 percent) or Congress (29 percent). Those numbers are sharply divided among partisan lines, with 56 percent of Democrats but only 9 percent of Republicans expressing confidence in the press.

The NPR/PBS Marist survey was conducted from June 21 to 25; it has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percent.