WASHINGTON — Ask Americans about bad manners in the 2016 presidential campaign and the conversation shifts immediately to Donald Trump, the GOP front-runner who has branded his critics “little,” “lyin’,” “low-energy” and worse.
“He’s a bully,” says Kellie Zangrillo, 53, of Auburn, Wash., an independent. Trump not only may have set the tone in the campaign, she suggested, but his nasty words could have real consequences if uttered as president. “I think he’d get us into World War III.”
When it comes to rudeness in 2016 politics, the Republican presidential contest wins in a landslide, a new poll by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research has found. The survey shows that 78 percent of Americans, including most Republicans, see the GOP race as discourteous. Only about half as many — 41 percent — say the same about the Democratic campaign.
Eight in 10 people say remarks about race or gender and sexuality are unacceptable in public places, and that political leaders should be held to a higher standard of behavior than other people.
It’s not just politics. Nearly three-quarters say people in general are ruder these days than 20 or 30 years ago, a finding similar to one seen in an Associated Press/Ipsos poll taken in 2005.
Even so, two-thirds see political campaigns this year as outdoing the public in levels of rudeness.
