Voters split on guns, most everything else

Supporting the argument of a divided America, Hillary Clinton voters expressed starkly different views than Donald Trump voters on the issue of guns and just about everything else.

Seventy-three percent of Clinton voters said gun violence was a “very big problem” in the U.S. while 31 percent of Trump voters agreed, according to survey results published by Pew Research Center.

To no surprise, those surveyed differed in their support for the National Rifle Association, which endorsed Trump for president. Sixty-nine percent of Trump voters also described themselves as NRA supporters whereas only 8 percent of Clinton supporters expressed the same.

Following election results, both pro- and anti-gun groups took credit for being on the winning side of the issue. Organizations like the NRA argued gun rights won the election as Clinton strongly advocated sweeping gun control measures and lost because of it in swing states. On the flip side, gun control groups took credit for unseating a New Hampshire senator and passing several ballot initiatives.

According to Pew, voters generally agreed that little progress had been made in the last eight year across major areas. Trump backers said things had gotten worse while Clinton supporters saw more improvement, especially on the economy.

When it came to crime, there was a 17 percentage point difference as 38 percent of Clinton supporters saw crime as “very big problem” along with 55 percent of Trump supporters.

Additionally, 57 percent of all voters said crime has gotten worse since 2008, when President Obama took office, while a scant 15 percent saw it as getting better. That larger figure breaks down to 78 percent of Trump supporters saying crime had gotten worse and 37 percent of Clinton supporters.

Realistically, crime has been down for the better part of a decade and the crime rate has remained at a historic low point since the mid-1990s. The FBI’s annual Uniform Crime Report, released in September, showed violent crime down from rates 5- and 10-years ago.

Pew surveyed 3,788 voters from across the country in the two weeks leading up to the presidential election. The organization published the results on Nov. 10.

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