Half the country sees former President Donald Trump as a fascist, amplifying concerns raised in recent days by Vice President Kamala Harris and past members of Trump’s own administration. Far fewer in a new ABC News/Ipsos poll level the same charge against Harris.
Nearly two-thirds also say Trump often departs from the truth, again more than say so about Harris. But Harris gets more criticism than Trump for pandering for votes by promoting policies she doesn’t intend to carry out — underscoring challenges for both candidates as the fur flies in their increasingly heated presidential race.
Responding to one of the more incendiary salvos, 49% of registered voters in the national survey say Trump is a fascist, defined as “a political extremist who seeks to act as a dictator, disregards individual rights and threatens or uses force against their opponents.” Fewer than half as many, 22%, see Harris as a fascist by this definition.
Harris on Wednesday said Trump is a fascist, a week after agreeing with an interviewer that his campaign is “about fascism.” A former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a former chief of staff to Trump and a former defense secretary in his administration have been quoted recently also as describing Trump as a fascist, and the White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Wednesday that President Joe Biden thinks so, too. Trump, for his part, repeatedly has called Harris a fascist, as well as a Marxist and a communist.
Results to this question include 44% who say only Trump is a fascist, 18% who say only Harris is a fascist, and 5% who say both are. Just 32% say neither is a fascist in this poll, produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates with fieldwork by Ipsos.
It’s common for people to think highly negatively of candidates or political figures they oppose, especially in the heat of a presidential campaign. This finding, regardless, marks the divisions — and the high stakes — of this particular contest.
Perceptions of fascism are tied to partisanship: 87% of Democrats call Trump a fascist, compared with 46% of independents and 12% of Republicans. Harris, for her part, is seen as a fascist by 41% of Republicans, 20% of independents and 3% of Democrats.
It’s similar by candidate support. Eighty-seven percent of registered voters who support Harris for president see Trump as a fascist. Many fewer Trump supporters, 42%, apply the fascist label to Harris. Among registered voters who think Trump is a fascist, 8% support him anyway.
Interviews for this survey were completed Tuesday, before The New York Times published an interview in which John Kelly, a retired general and former secretary of homeland security and Trump chief of staff, said Trump “certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure.”
Trump also comes in for disproportionate criticism in the truth-telling department. Sixty-five percent of registered voters say he often says things that are not true. Fewer, but still 49%, say the same about Harris. Even among his own supporters, 30% say Trump often speaks untruths.
Harris gets more criticism on another front. Registered voters by a 15-point margin, 57%-42%, say she mainly is making proposals “that just are intended to get people to vote for her,” not that she intends to carry out. Just more than half say the same about Trump, but it’s a closer margin, 52%-47%.
The two candidates are closer in another gauge — whether they are mainly trying to explain what they would do as president or mainly trying to avoid explaining this. It’s 47%-52% (explain vs. avoid) for Harris and 48%-50% for Trump, hardly a rousing score in either case.
Criticism of Trump on truth-telling reflects, at least in part, his false claim that Biden did not legitimately win the 2020 election. Registered voters reject this claim by a 2-1 margin, 65%-33% — and among the two-thirds who say Biden won, 86% say Trump says things that are not true very or somewhat often — including 72% who say he does this “very” often.
As with views of fascism, attitudes on the candidates’ truth-telling, pandering and avoiding explanations are strongly tied to partisanship and ideology. For example, 95% of Democrats and 93% of liberals think Trump often says things that are not true; 85% of Republicans and 83% of conservatives say the same about Harris.
Still, Trump gets more criticism on truth-telling in his base than Harris does in hers. Thirty-two percent of Republicans and 38% of conservatives say he often doesn’t tell the truth, as do, as noted, 30% of his own supporters. In Harris’ case, many fewer Democrats (10%), liberals (12%) or Harris supporters (again 10%) say she often doesn’t tell the truth.
Disproportionate views of Trump as a fascist and a prevaricator don’t add up to a much higher sense of crisis if he’s elected. Instead, it’s high for both candidates: Among registered voters who don’t support Trump, 68% say his election would be a crisis for the country. Among those who don’t support Harris, almost as many, 64%, say it would be a crisis if she won.
The share of non-supporters saying it would be a crisis if Harris were elected is essentially unchanged since late August, though 9 percentage points higher than when asked about Biden in September 2020 (55%). It’s been largely steady for Trump since then.
Crisis concerns are associated with perceptions of fascism. Among non-supporters of Harris who call her a fascist, 84% say it would be a crisis for the country if she were elected. Among those who don’t see her as a fascist, fewer, albeit still 51%, think it would be a crisis.
The gap is even more striking for Trump. Among his non-supporters, 79% of those who think he’s a fascist say his election would be a crisis. That drops to 22% of those who don’t see him as a fascist.
Views on truth-telling are related to crisis concerns as well. Among non-supporters who think Harris or Trump “very” often say things that are untrue, about eight in 10 see their respective victories as a crisis. Again this drops sharply among those who think the candidates don’t tell the truth less often than that.
It’s a somewhat weaker relationship on pandering. Seventy-three percent of non-supporters who see Trump as pandering think it would be a crisis if he were elected; it’s 68% for Harris.
This ABC News/Ipsos poll was conducted online via the probability-based Ipsos KnowledgePanel® Oct. 18-22, 2024, in English and Spanish, among a random national sample of 2,808 adults, including 2,392 registered voters. Partisan divisions are 29%-29%-30%, Democrats-Republicans-independents, among all respondents, and 32%-32%-29% among registered voters. Results have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2 percentage points, including the design effect, for the full sample and registered voters alike. Sampling error is not the only source of differences in polls.
The survey was produced for ABC News by Langer Research Associates, with sampling and data collection by Ipsos. See details on ABC News survey methodology here.
