On October 25, ABC News published the results of a survey of 2,392 registered voters where 44 percent of the respondents said that Donald Trump is a fascist, while 23 percent said that Kamala Harris is a fascist. There was even a 5 percent overlap between the two groups—respondents who characterized both Trump and Harris as fascists. Only 32 percent of the respondents thought that neither candidate is a fascist. Is America really in danger of turning fascist?

The survey defined “fascist” rather broadly as “a political extremist who seeks to act as a dictator, disregards individual rights and threatens or uses force against their opponents.” This definition is misleading (perhaps intentionally so), since most Americans view communism as being an alternative form of political extremism and would hesitate to apply the fascist label to any communist. If the question had been reworded to ask whether or not a given candidate was “fascist or communist,” many more respondents would likely have moved Harris into the extremist category.