New poll reveals Republicans are authoritarian curious, while Americans are starkly divided on Trump’s 2020 guilt

The Joe Biden presidential campaign is positioning the 2024 election as a referendum on democracy. But a new poll suggests that defending America’s constitutional system of checks and balances is no longer an electoral slam dunk.

A startling 39 percent of Americans, including 74 percent of Republicans, think it’s a decent idea for Donald Trump to act as a dictator for a day to begin his prospective second term, according to a University of Massachusetts Amherst survey released Wednesday.