Most Americans believe that they’re pretty respectful about their own political opinions, a new HuffPost/YouGov poll finds ? but few believe that their political opponents are paying them the same courtesy.
Nearly 80 percent of the public says that they are generally at least somewhat civil and respectful when it comes to politics, with 71 percent saying their friends and family are as well. But 40 percent or fewer think that civility is practiced by President Donald Trump, his supporters and opponents, the media, or politicians on either side of the aisle. Barely over a third consider it an apt descriptor of the nation as a whole.
Voters who supported Trump in the last election say that the president, his supporters and GOP politicians are usually respectful and that the media, Democrats and Trump’s opponents are not. Voters who backed Hillary Clinton take the polar opposite view, although both sides largely agree that the nation’s political discourse has become something less than genteel. The rest of the nation ? non-voters, and those who backed another candidate in 2016 ? largely don’t think that anyone beyond their immediate circle is being polite.
Whether each of these camps should try to be civil, of course, is far from a settled question ? one most recently most recently illustrated by the controversy over the…
