It appears President Donald Trump's fear-mongering isn't working.
A new study of American's fears from Chapman University revealed most people are more afraid of politically-related issues than they are of things depicted in traditional horror films.
Each year, Chapman updates their survey as fears evolve over the year and release it before Halloween. Traditionally scary things like spiders, snakes, sharks and zombies are used to evoke horror. But they pale in comparison to things like environmental pollution, unsafe drinking water like in Flint, militias, Washington corruption (73.3 percent), an illness or that the U.S. will be involved in another world war.
"For the fourth year in a row the top fear of Americans is corrupt government officials," the survey explained. "And as in the previous four years, the fear that our government is corrupt far exceeds all others we asked about. Nearly 3/4 of Americans said they are afraid or very afraid of corrupt government officials in 2018. By comparison, the next highest level of fear was more than 10 points lower at 61.6 percent (pollution of oceans, rivers and lakes)."
Trump's Environmental Protection Agency has done much to deregulate protections from polluters for Americans.
A full 53.2 percent of Americans say that they fear global warming or climate change, while 55 percent are afraid of air pollution. As Flint struggles to find safe drinking water, their situation has generated fears among Americans. A majority of Americans (60.7 percent) are fearful of polluted drinking water. The drought in the American West this year may also be the reason that 37.7 percent of Americans fear a devastating drought sweeping the nation.
The shocking statistics prove that the Republican message that the economy is strong seems to be doing little to ease fears of financial instability. The study revealed that 57 percent of respondents are afraid of not having enough money for the future. Similarly, the Republican efforts to undermine guaranteed affordable health care for all Americans seems to have left many fearful a major illness (44.1 percent) and high medical bills (52.9 percent).
Trump is traveling the country for the final few weeks of the campaign and has been ginning up fears about undocumented immigrants, liberal mobs and men under attack from women accusing rape. Interestingly, a liberal mob didn't show up on the list, but 31.3 percent of Americans are afraid of militias and the so-called "patriot movement." Only 21.5 percent of Americans are afraid of undocumented immigrants while nearly double that (41.6 percent) are afraid of extreme anti-immigration groups.
Only 17.5 percent are afraid of "fake news," proving not even a majority of Trump's own supporters are afraid of it.
See the chart below:
