Half of the country sees the former president Donald Trump as fascist, amplifying concerns raised in recent days by Vice President Kamala Harris and former members of Trump’s own administration. Far fewer in a new ABC News/Ipsos poll level the same charge against Harris.

Nearly two-thirds also say Trump often strays from the truth, more than they say about Harris. But Harris is drawing more criticism than Trump for pandering to votes by promoting policies he has no intention of carrying out — underscoring the challenges for both candidates as fur flies in their increasingly heated presidential race.

Responding to one of the most incendiary salvos, 49 percent of registered voters in the national poll say Trump is a fascist, defined as “a political extremist who tries to act like a dictator, ignores individual rights, and threatens or uses force against their opponents. Less than half, 22%, see Harris as a fascist by that definition.

Harris said Wednesday that Trump is a fascista week after he agreed with an interviewer that his campaign was “about fascism”. A former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a former Trump chief of staff and a former defense secretary in his administration were also recently cited for describing Trump as a fascist, and the press secretary of at the White House, Karine Jean-Pierre, said on Wednesday that President Joe Biden thinks so too. Trump, for his part, has repeatedly called Harris a fascist, as well as a Marxist and a communist.

See PDF for full results.

The results for this question include 44% who say only Trump is a fascist, 18% who say only Harris is a fascist, and 5% who say both are. Only 32% say none are fascists in this poll, conducted for the ABC by Langer Research Associates with the field work of plaster.

It’s common for people to think very negatively of candidates or political figures they oppose, especially in the heat of a presidential campaign. That finding, regardless, marks the divisions — and the high stakes — of this particular contest.

Perceptions of fascism are tied to partisanship: 87 percent of Democrats call Trump a fascist, compared to 46 percent of independents and 12 percent of Republicans. Harris, for her part, is seen as a fascist by 41% of Republicans, 20% of independents and 3% of Democrats.

It is similar through candidate support. Eighty-seven percent of registered voters who support Harris for president see Trump as a fascist. Far fewer Trump supporters, 42 percent, label Harris a fascist. Among registered voters who think Trump is a fascist, 8% support him anyway.

Interviews for this survey were completed on Tuesday, ahead of The New York Times published an interview in which John Kelly, a retired general and former secretary of homeland security and Trump’s chief of staff, said Trump “definitely fits the broad definition of fascist, for sure.”

The veracity

Trump also comes in for disproportionate criticism in the truth-telling department. Sixty-five percent of registered voters say they often say things that are not true. Fewer, but still 49%, say the same about Harris. Even among his supporters, 30 percent say Trump often tells untruths.

Harris receives more criticism on another front. Registered voters by a 15-point margin, 57%-42%, say she mostly makes proposals “that are just meant to get people to vote for her,” not that she intends to carry out. Just more than half say the same about Trump, but it’s a closer margin, 52%-47%.

The two candidates are closer on another indicator — whether they mainly try to explain what they would do as president or mainly try to avoid explaining it. It’s 47%-52% (explain vs. avoid) for Harris and 48%-50% for Trump, hardly an encouraging score in either case.

Trump’s criticism of truth-telling reflects, at least in part, his false claim that Biden did not legitimately win the 2020 election. Registered voters reject that claim by a 2-1 margin, 65%-33% — and of those two-thirds who say Biden won, 86 percent say Trump says things that aren’t true very or somewhat often — including 72 percent who say he does it “very” often.

As with fascism, attitudes toward truth-telling, adulation, and avoidance of candidate explanations are closely related to partisanship and ideology. For example, 95% of Democrats and 93% of liberals believe that Trump often says things that are not true; 85% of Republicans and 83% of conservatives say the same about Harris.

Still, Trump gets more criticism about telling the truth in his base than Harris does in hers. Thirty-two percent of Republicans and 38 percent of conservatives say he often doesn’t tell the truth, as do, as noted, 30 percent of his supporters. In Harris’s case, far fewer Democrats (10%), liberals (12%) or Harris supporters (again 10%) say he often doesn’t tell the truth.

Crisis?

The disproportionate views of Trump as a fascist and prevaricater do not add up to a much larger sense of crisis if he is elected. Instead, it’s big for both candidates: Among registered voters who don’t support Trump, 68 percent say his election would be a crisis for the country. Among those who do not support Harris, nearly as many, 64 percent, say it would be a crisis if she wins.

The percentage of non-supporters who say there would be a crisis if Harris is elected is virtually unchanged since late August, though 9 percentage points higher than when asked about Biden in September 2020 (55%). It’s been mostly steady for Trump since then.

Concerns about the crisis are associated with perceptions of fascism. Among Harris’ non-supporters who call her a fascist, 84 percent say it would be a crisis for the country if she were elected. Among those who do not see it as fascist, fewer, although still 51%, think it would be a crisis.

The gap is even more striking for Trump. Among his supporters, 79% of those who think he is a fascist say his election would be a crisis. That drops to 22% of those who don’t see him as a fascist.

Opinions about truth-telling are also related to concerns about the crisis. Among non-supporters who think Harris or Trump “very” often say things that aren’t true, about eight in 10 see their respective victories as a crisis. Again, this drops sharply among those who believe candidates don’t tell the truth less often than that.

It’s a slightly weaker relationship in terms of pleasure. Seventy-three percent of non-supporters who view Trump as complacent think there would be a crisis if he were elected; it’s 68% for Harris.

Methodology

This ABC News/Ipsos poll was conducted online via the probability-based Ipsos KnowledgePanel® from October 18-22, 2024, in English and Spanish, to a national random sample of 2,808 adults, including 2,392 registered voters. Partisan splits are 29%-29%-30%, Democrat-Republican-Independent, among all respondents, and 32%-32%-29% among registered voters. The results have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2 percentage points, including the design effect, for both the full sample and registered voters. Sampling error is not the only source of differences in surveys.

The poll was conducted for ABC News by Langer Research Associateswith sampling and data collection by Ipsos. See details on ABC News’ survey methodology Here.