… The worry that mass terrorism will reach our shores shot up after the attacks in 2001, and it’s never come down. In one poll this year, 51% of Americans said they worry that terrorism could harm someone in their family. “I thought there would be an erosion, but there wasn’t,” said John Mueller of Ohio State University, a longtime scholar of public opinion. …
Like so many other things, fear of terrorism turns out to be partisan. A poll by the Public Religion Research Institute found that 62% of Republicans say they worry that their families could be harmed by terrorists, compared with only 44% of Democrats.
“If there’s another attack, it might induce some waffling Republicans to vote for Trump, but it probably won’t win him many Democrats,” Mueller said. CONT.
Doyle McManus, Los Angeles Times