The majority of Americans do not support anti-democratic behavior, even when elected officials do
Despite rampant political polarization, the majority of Democrats and Republicans support democratic values and oppose political violence
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AMERICANS HAVE LOW LEVELS OF SUPPORT FOR DEMOCRATIC NORM VIOLATIONS
view moreCREDIT: DEREK E. HOLLIDAY, SHANTO IYENGAR, YPHTACH LELKES, AND SEAN J. WESTWOOD
Recently, fundamental tenets of democracy have come under threat, from attempts to overturn the 2020 election to mass closures of polling places.
A new study from the Polarization Research Lab, a collaboration among researchers at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, Dartmouth College, and Stanford University, has found that despite this surge in anti-democratic behavior by U.S. politicians, the majority of Americans oppose anti-democratic attitudes and reject partisan violence.
From September 2022 to October 2023, a period which included the 2022 midterm elections, the researchers surveyed more than 45,000 Democrats and Republicans on their attitudes toward five specific democratic norm violations:
- Reducing polling stations in areas where the other party is popular
- Being more loyal to party than election rules and the Constitution
- Censoring partisan media
- Believing that the president should circumvent Congress
- Believing that elected officials of one’s own party should consider ignoring court decisions when the judges who issued these decisions were appointed by a president of the other party
They also gauged these Americans’ feelings about four acts of political violence — assault, arson, assault with a deadly weapon, and murder — as well as their perceptions about the other party.
Broad Opposition to Political Violence
After a year of weekly polling, researchers found that supermajorities of Americans oppose violations of democratic norms and political violence of all kinds.
“Public opposition to anti-democratic actions and political violence was not only overwhelming, but also remarkably stable throughout the year,” says paper co-author Yphtach Lelkes, Polarization Research Lab Co-Director and Associate Professor of Communication at the Annenberg School.
Of the five norm violations included in the surveys, 17.2% of Democrats and 21.6% of Republicans supported one norm violation. Only 6% of Democrats and 9% of Republicans supported two violations or more, suggesting that broad anti-democratic attitudes are very rare.
“Although any support for anti-democratic behavior is a cause for concern, the data show there is not a large anti-democratic constituency in America. Those who are the most likely to support anti-democratic actions are also less likely to be electorally important,” says Lelkes.
Throughout the year, support for political violence within both parties was always below 4%.
The researchers also found that both Democrats and Republicans overestimate the opposing party’s support for norm violations, in some cases by four to five times.
"Democracy is under threat in America, but these data show we are not on the brink of a citizen-supported push toward authoritarianism,” says Sean J. Westwood, Polarization Research Lab Co-Director and Associate Professor of Government at Dartmouth College.
Americans have low levels of support for political violence
CREDIT
Derek E. Holliday, Shanto Iyengar, Yphtach Lelkes, and Sean J. Westwood
Elected Officials and the Public
Once survey results showed that the majority of Americans oppose anti-democratic actions and political violence, the researchers wondered whether the politicians who do endorse democratic norm violations and political violence — such as the denial of election results and the January 6 insurrection — might merely be reflecting the sentiments of their specific constituents.
To test this, they gathered data on the U.S. House Representatives who either voted to overturn the 2020 election results or publicly denied the legitimacy of the 2020 election results.
They then examined whether survey respondents represented by a Member of Congress who denies election results were more inclined to prioritize party loyalty over adherence to election rules and the Constitution. However, they discovered that in these instances, there was no significant correlation between constituents' opinions and policymakers' actions.
"The real gap in support for democracy is not between Democratic and Republican voters, but between Republican voters and Republican representatives,” says lead author Derek Holliday, Polarization Research Lab Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University. “While it is encouraging to see Republican voters, like Democrats, broadly support democratic norms, it is alarming that election-denying Republicans continue to win elections despite their democratic backsliding behavior."
“Uncommon and Nonpartisan: Anti-Democratic Attitudes In The American Public” was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and authored by Derek E. Holliday, Shanto Iyengar, Yphtach Lelkes, and Sean J. Westwood.
JOURNAL
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
METHOD OF RESEARCH
Survey
SUBJECT OF RESEARCH
People
ARTICLE TITLE
Uncommon and Nonpartisan: Anti-Democratic Attitudes In The American Public
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
18-Mar-2024
COI STATEMENT
All authors declare no competing interests.
Americans support democratic norms, elected officials don't
Study shows a strong divide between the attitudes of citizens and elected officials.
Following the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, many Americans have raised concerns about the future of democracy in the United States.
Yet the American public, including Democrats and Republicans alike, strongly oppose anti-democratic actions and partisan violence, according to a new study by the Polarization Research Lab.
"Democracy is under threat in America, but these data show we are not on the brink of a citizen-supported push toward authoritarianism," says the lab's director and study senior author Sean Westwood, an associate professor of government at Dartmouth.
The results are co-authored by researchers at Stanford University and the University of Pennsylvania, and are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The research team surveyed the public to measure support for violations against democratic norms, political violence, and partisan animosity.
The researchers drew on two data sets: approximately 45,100 Americans of which 1,000 individuals were interviewed each week, from September 2022 to October 2023, which included the 2022 midterm elections; and a subset of 5,230 Americans, who were interviewed at multiple time points.
"When it comes to anti-democratic behavior, there is a misperception that citizens of one political party are more likely to violate democratic norms than the other but that's just not the case," says lead author Derek Holliday, a postdoctoral fellow at the Polarization Research Lab.
Respondents were surveyed on their support for four democratic norm violations: 1) if the number of polling stations in areas that typically support the other political party should be reduced; 2) if a candidate who questions an election outcome should be more loyalty to their own political party than election rules and the Constitution; 3) if current elected officials should consider ignoring court decisions issued by judges appointed by the opposing political party; and 4) if the government should be able to censor media that spends more time attacking their own political party than the other party.
The results show that most Americans support democracy with 17.2% of Democrats and 21.6% of Republicans supporting one or more of the four norm violations.
When the researchers looked at the data, support for each of the four democratic norm violations was almost identical for both parties. For example, support for reducing polling stations in areas dominated by the other party was 8.8% for Republicans and 9.2% for Democrats.
The norm violation that had the most support pertained to censoring partisan media, and had just under 20% support.
The findings also reveal decreasing levels of support for political violence. Although up to 59% of Americans think that members of the other political party support assault, actual support was 3% for assault, 2.4% for arson, 1.9% for assault with a deadly weapon, and 1.7% for murder. "There's a massive mismatch between actual attitudes and how Americans view the other side," says Westwood.
“Public opposition to anti-democratic actions and political violence was not only overwhelming, but also remarkably stable throughout the year,” says co-author Yphtach Lelkes, Polarization Research Lab co-director and associate professor of communication at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.
While both Democrat and Republican respondents indicated that they strongly oppose loyalty to their own party rather than the Constitution in contested elections, a near majority of elected Republicans indicated they would be comfortable violating that democratic norm.
The researchers also examined if respondents who were represented by an elected official who supported overturning the 2020 election were more likely to support anti-democratic norms but found no such evidence.
"Support for norm violations doesn’t appear to form a divide between everyday Democrats and Republicans, but it is instead a divide between ordinary Americans who support democracy and elected officials who are pushing back against democratic governance," says Westwood.
"It's good news that the public are so uniformly opposed to democratic norm violations, but it's bad news that everyday Americans continue to vote for elected officials who pose a threat to democracy."
Polarization Research Lab co-director Shanto Iyengar, a professor of political science at Stanford University, also contributed to the study.
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JOURNAL
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
METHOD OF RESEARCH
Survey
SUBJECT OF RESEARCH
People
ARTICLE TITLE
Uncommon and Nonpartisan: Anti-Democratic Attitudes In The American Public
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