4 in 10 Americans say they're afraid of President Trump


Some 42 percent of Americans say their reaction to Donald Trump winning the presidency is fear, new Gallup poll results released Friday show. The experience of fear is divided heavily along partisan lines: Seventy-six percent of Hillary Clinton voters say they are afraid because of the election outcome, and curiously, 5 percent of self-identified Trump voters say the same.
By contrast, only 36 percent of Americans in 2012 and 27 percent in 2008 said the presidential election results made them afraid.
More than fear, however, the single most common emotion poll respondents expressed was surprise. Majorities of Clinton and Trump voters alike did not expect the Republican to win.
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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