Americans far more likely to view politics as greatest threat to safety, study finds

Americans are 10 times more likely than people elsewhere in the world to regard politics as the greatest threat to their personal safety, according to a global survey that suggests the country’s deep partisan divisions are poisoning everyday life.

The latest Lloyd’s Register Foundation World Risk Poll found that one in 10 Americans identified politics as the biggest risk they face in their daily lives when asked an open-ended question. The figure is up from 6% in both 2021 and 2023 and well above the global average of 1% across 140 countries.

Although Americans remain far more likely to cite road accidents and crime as the worst dangers they face, the survey found the US to be the only country in which more people named politics than personal health conditions as the biggest risk to their safety.

“The US figure of 10% is unprecedented,” said Benedict Vigers, a senior global news writer at Gallup, which partnered on the research. “No other country ranked higher. It’s 10 times the global average.

“It speaks to how charged the political environment is and has been for many years in the United States that people are now saying that the political situation is not just an issue nationally but is a seeable daily risk to their safety as they go about their normal lives.”

The US has ranked among the countries most likely to cite politics as a personal safety risk in all three waves of the World Risk Poll but 2025 marks the first time it has reached the top of the global ranking.

It was effectively tied with Hungary, which recorded 9%; polling was conducted months before the country’s recent election. Serbia, Latvia and Lithuania followed at 6% while Slovakia, Russia, Myanmar, Spain and Israel each recorded 5%.

But the US in particular has witnessed a surge in political violence over the past decade, including three assassination attempts against Donald Trump, the 2025 killing of Charlie Kirk, the targeting of other national and state officials and a deadly insurrection at the US Capitol in January 6, 2021. There has been a rise in localised harassment, death threats against election administrators and the use of doxing and “swatting” to intimidate and silence political opposition.

The concerns cut across demographic and ideological lines. There were no statistically significant differences by age, gender, education or political affiliation, with Republicans, Democrats and independents all similarly likely to identify politics as their greatest concern.

Respondents often blamed the opposing political camp for creating an atmosphere of insecurity, while others pointed more broadly to the country’s increasingly fractured politics.

“I would have to say the state of polarisation of the American people,” said one 54-year-old Republican man.

A 42-year-old independent male respondent said: “I would say political extremism. I don’t have a lot of personal risk, but I do feel the biggest risk is people that are fanatical about their position and that they could be violent.”

A 69-year-old Democratic woman added: “The political situation has a lot to do with the fact whether if I am safe or not. I am concerned where we’re going or might go.”

Vigers said: “Almost all of the respondents who mention that politics is the top risk to safety mention or refer to polarisation whether directly or indirectly. It’s either Republicans saying the Democrats or it’s Democratic voters saying Trump and the Republicans are a big risk to my safety.

“But we have several other people who call it out directly and say, the political environment makes me fearful for my safety or the heightened sense of polarisation makes me fear for my safety. It is quite a uniquely American phenomenon.”

The findings echo other Gallup polling that has highlighted Americans’ growing disillusionment with politics. In 2025 a third of US adults identified politics and government as the country’s most important problem, well above the global median and exceeded only by respondents in the Philippines and Taiwan.

In 2024, 5% of Americans named the US as its own greatest enemy, the highest figure on record.

At the same time, confidence in government appears to have deteriorated. In 2025, 58% of Americans said the government does not care about them at all, the highest figure recorded and 11 percentage points higher than in 2021. Among OECD member states, only Colombia and Greece recorded higher levels of public alienation from government.