Fear of a violent overthrow of the United States government is no longer a fringe anxiety. It has become a genuine concern for many Americans, and this study set out to understand what drives it. Using Wave 8 of the Chapman University Survey of American Fears, which polled a random sample of 1,020 adults in April 2022 with a margin of error of about four percent, I examined how political affiliation and news consumption shape how seriously people take the threat of governmental overthrow, especially after the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol.

What I found is that this fear is not spread evenly across the population. It follows clear partisan and media lines. Democrats consistently reported greater fear of a violent overthrow than Republicans. Among respondents who said they were very afraid, 22.3 percent were Democrats while only 8.5 percent were Republicans. The news channel people watch mattered just as much. Viewers who received their coverage of the Capitol riot from FOX News were far less likely to be afraid, with 60.1 percent of daily FOX viewers reporting fear compared to 88.9 percent of daily CNN viewers, a gap of nearly 23 points. These results line up with what other scholars have observed. Villarreal found that FOX News, CNN, and MSNBC all framed January 6th as a breach of democratic norms, but each did so through its own partisan tone. Stelter argued that FOX News built a separate information universe for its audience, distorting reality in the process. Levitsky and Ziblatt warned that extreme polarization can lead partisans to justify violence against the other side, a dynamic that fits these findings well.

At the same time, Americans were not divided on everything. A striking 80.9 percent of respondents strongly disagreed that the people who attacked the Capitol were patriots, and a majority agreed that Donald Trump was to blame for the violence. Still, the small group that saw the rioters as patriots were far less likely to hold Trump responsible. About 17.4 percent agreed the rioters were patriots, and a nearly identical 17.7 percent disagreed that Trump was to blame, suggesting those beliefs tend to travel together.

These findings suggest that Americans are not simply divided over politics; they are increasingly divided over their understanding of reality itself. Political identity and media consumption shape not only opinions but perceptions of democratic threats. If citizens cannot agree on what constitutes an attack on democracy, finding common ground to protect democratic institutions becomes far more difficult. Understanding these divides is an essential first step toward addressing them.

<Brayden Choe 학생기자 트로이 고교 11학년>