(Bloomberg) -- A large majority of Americans feel the nation’s political discourse has become more negative, as well as less respectful, fact-based and substantive -- and they say President Donald Trump is a major reason.

A Pew Research Center survey released Wednesday showed that more than half of the respondents said Trump has changed the tone and nature of political discussion for the worse, while only 24% said he’s changed it for the better. Half said talking about politics with people they disagree with is “stressful and frustrating.” And Republicans said that members of their party are less comfortable than Democrats in “freely and fairly” expressing their views.

At the same time, 54% of all respondents say they “at least sometimes feel entertained” by Trump’s comments, even though sizable majorities say his statements make them feel “concerned,” “confused,” “embarrassed” and “exhausted.”

The survey was released a day after Trump kicked off his 2020 re-election campaign at a rally in Orlando, Florida, where he attacked his usual targets, including the media, the “socialist” Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton.

Risk of Violence

Almost 80% of respondents to the Pew poll said “heated or aggressive” language by elected officials increases the risk of violence, with Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents more likely to take this view.

Each party holds the opposing side to a higher standard when it comes to insults; 72% of Republicans said it’s not acceptable for a Democratic official to offend them, but only 49% said it’s unacceptable for a Republican to insult a Democrat.

The survey also showed that most Americans are less comfortable talking politics and prefer discussing topics like sports or even religion with people they don’t know. While a majority of Americans agree that people are easily offended by the language that others use, there’s a discrepancy on what “offensive” means for different groups. About 51% said they can identify what others might find offensive, while 48% said it’s hard to know.

Similarly, a majority of those surveyed said social media companies have a responsibility to remove any “offensive” content from their platforms. Yet just 31% of them said they have confidence in these companies to determine what content should be removed.

The survey was conducted from April 29 to May 13 among 10,170 adults, and it had a margin of error of 1.5 percentage points.

To contact the reporter on this story: Misyrlena Egkolfopoulou in Washington at megkolfopoul@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Joe Sobczyk at jsobczyk@bloomberg.net, Max Berley, Laurie Asséo

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