Rather than celebrating the New Year, millions of Americans dread the arrival of 2016. More than 4 in 10 Americans say a terrorist attack is “very” likely to happen in the next few months.
Seven in 10 Americans now call ISIL a major threat to US security. Americans are more fearful about the likelihood of another terrorist attack than at any other time since the weeks after September 11, 2001, America’s most deadly attack in recent history. The fear has helped lift Presidential hopeful Donald Trump to a new high among Republican primary voters.
According to Gallup, since the attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California, Americans now fear terrorism above all else. Interestingly, Republicans are more likely than Democrats to say terrorism is the most important problem facing the US.
At the same time, satisfaction with the way things are going in the US dropped significantly to a 13-month low in December, and public trust in the government to protect them from terrorism is the lowest, Gallup has measured. Meanwhile, one fifth of Americans fear a broken American economy as the key issue for 2016 while fear of gun violence has more than doubled.