A new poll from the Center for Strategic Politics, conducted by pollster Chance Phillips, has surfaced numbers that are difficult to read as anything other than a rupture between Democratic voters and the existing American political order. The survey, which The Federalist highlighted this week, found that 31 percent of registered Democrats said they want President Trump assassinated, and 59 percent said they would support the U.S. military overthrowing a validly elected president if the coup were framed as a move to “protect the Constitution.”
Those two findings drew most of the attention. But the rest of the poll paints a broader picture of a Democratic electorate that has moved well past conventional partisan disagreement with the Trump administration and toward outright rejection of core institutions.
Down the line: courts, borders, and the Senate
According to the results cited by The Federalist, 69 percent of Democrats want the next Democratic president to expand the Supreme Court — a move the outlet characterizes as turning the judiciary into a partisan rubber stamp. Sixty-eight percent said the United States should admit more immigrants. Seventy-seven percent want Trump administration officials prosecuted for carrying out immigration laws already on the books. A slight majority, 52 percent, want the Senate filibuster eliminated. And 17 percent — nearly one in five Democrats — said the Senate itself should be abolished.
On cultural questions, the poll found that majorities of Democrats believe billionaires should not exist and that the party should not moderate on transgender issues. The Federalist frames the latter finding as an endorsement of policies like the California bill backed by Gov. Gavin Newsom that would allow minors to receive gender-related medical care without parental consent or knowledge.
Asked to describe themselves ideologically, 34 percent of Democratic respondents identified as “very woke” and 25 percent as “somewhat woke.” Only 12 percent called themselves “very unwoke.”
The Federalist argues that this is more than an outbreak of anti-Trump sentiment. It points to a longer-running strain of progressive argument that treats the Constitution itself as an obstacle. The piece cites several examples: College of the Holy Cross president Vincent Rougeau, writing in the Jesuit magazine America this June, said the Constitution “has passed its sell-by date.” Aziz Rana, writing in The New York Times in April 2024, warned that “the Constitution won’t save us from Trump.” Jennifer Szalai, also in the Times, wrote in August 2024 that the Constitution is “one of the biggest threats to America’s politics.” Nicholas Goldberg in the Los Angeles Times in 2022 called the Constitution the “problem” underlying the Supreme Court, and constitutional law scholar Richard Albert argued a decade ago in The Boston Globe that the time had come to write a new constitution “rooted in an infrastructure of equality, not of slavery.”
To The Federalist, those arguments amount to power grabs dressed in the language of democracy and equality — an effort to remove a roadblock to one-party rule rather than to improve governance. The piece compares them to a 2014 New York Times op-ed by David Schanzer and Jay Sullivan urging then-President Obama to cancel that year’s midterm elections to save his agenda.
Immigration enforcement framed as ‘war’
The Federalist ties the poll numbers to recent rhetoric from Democratic officials, pointing to Texas Rep. Greg Casar describing immigration enforcement as “war” and saying Austin would only be safe if authorities stopped enforcing immigration law entirely. It also points to Illinois Rep. Delia Ramirez, who has introduced legislation to dismantle the Department of Homeland Security, arguing that is the only way “our people” can be safe.
The outlet seizes on that phrase, asking whom Democrats mean when they say “our people,” and answering that the party’s coalition no longer centers native-born Americans. It cites California’s “shadow welfare system” for illegal aliens, which it says redistributed $11 billion from American taxpayers to non-citizens in the last fiscal year, along with Democratic support for birthright citizenship and for the idea of white Americans becoming a minority in their own country.
Two specific cases anchor the piece’s conclusion. The Federalist criticizes Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen for elevating Kilmar Abrego Garcia — whom the outlet describes as an illegal alien, MS-13 gang member, and alleged human trafficker and domestic abuser — into a figure comparable to Rosa Parks. It also cites Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz pardoning an illegal alien convicted of child rape in order to block his deportation.
The article ends not with a policy proposal but with a call to political action, quoting a post from Jesse Kelly on X urging readers to “get MORE involved than you’ve ever been.” The Federalist tells readers to vote in the midterms, bring friends to the polls, donate, volunteer, and then pick a fight — whether that means targeting progressive district attorneys, organizing to elect conservatives to school boards, or remaking local Republican parties.
The poll’s topline numbers are likely to be contested by Democrats and independent observers, who will note that survey questions about assassinating a president and military coups can draw protest answers that do not reflect real-world intentions. The Center for Strategic Politics has not yet released the full methodology and crosstabs alongside the results highlighted here. Even so, the findings arrive at a moment when trust in institutions is low across the board, and they will almost certainly become fodder in the ongoing fight over the direction of both parties heading into the next election cycle.
Source: thefederalist.com — https://thefederalist.com/2026/09/29/poll-shows-democrats-want-to-deep-six-not-just-trump-but-the-entire-american-order/