For Democratic and independent voters in New Hampshire this year, the most important issue facing the United States isn’t the economy, the sort of kitchen-table quandaries that more often than not determine presidential elections.
It’s the future of democracy.
A new USA TODAY/Boston Globe/Suffolk University Poll two weeks before the Granite State’s pivotal primary finds half of Democrats (49%) and nearly 3 in 10 independents (29%) rank that solemn and even philosophical question well above such concrete concerns as health care or crime − defying the conventional political wisdom of decades that “It’s the economy, stupid.”
The survey was taken amid a series of stress tests for the nation’s democratic institutions, including a federal appeals court hearing Tuesday to consider whether Donald Trump should be immune from criminal prosecution for actions he took while president. A few weeks later, the Supreme Court has scheduled oral arguments in a case that considers whether Trump can be bumped off state ballots because of a constitutional ban on insurrectionists.
