In any political campaign, there's a moment that tells you which way the electoral wind is blowing. In this year's American presidential campaign, that moment arrived on Wednesday.  Joe Biden restated his support for peaceful protests but, crucially, condemned the violence that has come to dominate the months-long nationwide protest movement. When a candidate changes his tune three quarters of the way through a race, it is not because he knows he holds a winning hand. He does so because the electoral ground is shifting beneath his feet.

By a ratio of five-to-two, voters are more, rather than less, likely to vote for Trump due to the chaotic events in Wisconsin.

Such is the American voter’s growing appetite for a return to safe streets and peaceful neighbourhoods that, according to our poll, the issue is now clearly the most important one in deciding how they will vote in November. Last month, law and order did not make our poll’s list of top issue concerns.

Joe Biden and his Democrats have only themselves to blame. They have been completely tone-deaf on the issue. 

These past months, Democracy Institute/Sunday Express polling found that, while most Americans supported the original notion of peaceful protests against the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and against racial injustice generally, they drew the line when the protests seemed to become more about intimidation, arson, property destruction, political revolution, and even murder, of both police officers and innocent civilians.