It’s Tuesday, the traditional day for elections and for our pause-and-consider newsletter on politics and policy. We think of it as a mini-magazine in your Inbox.

By Lisa Desjardins
@LisaDNews

This weekend, President Donald Trump and the American military announced a major victory in the war on terror groups with the killing of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the former leader of the Islamic State.  

• Far fewer Americans consider terrorism a  “very big problem.” According to Pew’s latest figures, last year roughly 34 percent of people felt that way.  That is a big drop from  2016 when 46 percent believed terrorism was a “very big problem

• There is a partisan divide. In 2016, some 65 percent of Republicans surveyed told Pew that terrorism is a “very big problem” to them.  Just two years later, that figure is now 38 percent. 

• Meanwhile, other fears have grown, particularly gun violence. This year, Gallup found roughly the same percentage of people - 46 percent - were worried about becoming a victim of terrorism (or having a family member become a victim) as becoming a victim of gun violence.

• There’s a fast-growing generational divide as well.  A Harvard Public Opinion survey conducted in the spring found that people aged 25-29, were 30 percent more likely to say that terrorism is their top concern than people aged 18 to 24. And that last group includes Americans with little to no memory of 9/11.

Not surprisingly, the further we get from 9/11, the fewer Americans see terrorism as the country’s “most important problem,” according to Gallup.  In 2002, over 20 percent of Americans ranked terrorism as the nation’s number one problem. However, in September of this year, that figure fell to less than one percent. A long list of issues ranked higher, including the environment, race, drugs, poverty and even the judicial system.

#POLITICSTRIVIA
By Kate Grumke, @KGrumke
Politics producer