A stunning shift in American anxiety has emerged, with one in 10 people now naming politics as the greatest risk to their personal safety, according to new global survey data. The figure represents a sharp climb from 6% just two years ago and dwarfs the worldwide average of 1% across 140 countries surveyed.
The Lloyd's Register Foundation World Risk Poll marks the first time the United States has topped global rankings for citizens identifying political threats to their wellbeing. The only other nation approaching this level was Hungary at 9%, while Serbia, Latvia and Lithuania each recorded 6%.
The American figure stands without parallel in polling history. "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."
Road accidents and crime remain the dominant safety concerns for Americans, yet the political dimension has become unusually prominent. The United States is the only nation in which more respondents cited politics than personal health conditions as their top safety worry.
The concern spans demographic and ideological boundaries. Republicans, Democrats and independents expressed similarly high levels of anxiety about political risk, with no statistically significant differences by age, gender or education level. This cross-party uniformity underscores how broadly the unease permeates American society.
A 54-year-old Republican blamed "the state of polarisation of the American people." An independent voter pointed to "political extremism" and the fear that "fanatical" individuals "could be violent." A 69-year-old Democrat voiced worry that "the political situation has a lot to do with the fact whether if I am safe or not."
Nearly all respondents who mentioned politics as a safety threat referenced polarization, either naming the opposing political camp directly or speaking broadly about fractured national divisions. Vigers noted the pattern reflected a distinctly American phenomenon, with voters across the spectrum expressing fear tied to escalating partisan hostility.
The polling arrives amid a decade of visible political violence. Three assassination attempts against Donald Trump, the 2025 killing of Charlie Kirk, targeted attacks on national and state officials, the January 6 Capitol riot, escalating death threats against election workers, and the use of doxing and swatting tactics have all marked American political life in recent years.
The anxiety about politics aligns with other signs of American disillusionment. One-third of US adults identified politics and government as the nation's most pressing problem in 2025, exceeding the global median and rivaled only by respondents in the Philippines and Taiwan. Government trust has eroded sharply, with 58% of Americans saying the government does not care about them at all, the highest recorded level and 11 percentage points higher than in 2021.
Among wealthy democracies measured by the OECD, only Colombia and Greece recorded higher levels of public alienation from government than the United States. In a separate measure, 5% of Americans named the US itself as its greatest enemy in 2024, the highest figure on record.
Author James Rodriguez: "A country where one in 10 people fear their own political system as their biggest daily threat has crossed into genuinely dangerous territory."
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