Lately, democracy’s basic rules have been in danger. Politicians have tried to overturn the 2020 election, and many polling places have been shut down.
A new study by the Polarization Research Lab, which involves researchers from the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, Dartmouth College, and Stanford University, looked into this. Despite politicians behaving undemocratically, most Americans are against anti-democratic actions and don’t support partisan violence.
Breaking the rules
Between September 2022 and October 2023, during the 2022 midterm elections, the researchers asked over 45,000 Democrats and Republicans about their thoughts on five democratic rule violations:
- Closing polling stations in areas where the other party is popular.
- Putting party loyalty over following election rules and the Constitution.
- Censoring media that supports a certain party.
- Thinking the president should avoid Congress.
- Believing officials from your party can ignore court rulings if the judges were appointed by the other party’s president.
They also asked about feelings on four types of political violence: assault, arson, assault with a deadly weapon, and murder, as well as how they view the other party.
After a year of weekly surveys, the researchers found that most Americans oppose breaking democratic rules and any kind of political violence.
“Public opposition to anti-democratic actions and political violence was not only overwhelming, but also remarkably stable throughout the year,” the researchers explain.
Widespread opposition
Out of the five rule-breaking behaviors asked about in the surveys, 17.2% of Democrats and 21.6% of Republicans were okay with one rule being broken. But only 6% of Democrats and 9% of Republicans were okay with two or more rules being broken. This shows that most people don’t support breaking democratic rules very often.
“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,” the authors say.
During the whole year, backing for political violence from both sides was consistently under 4%. The researchers also discovered that both Democrats and Republicans think the other party supports breaking the rules way more than they actually do. Sometimes, they overestimate it 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,” the authors continue.
An ideological gap
After finding that most Americans are against undemocratic behaviors and political violence, the researchers pondered whether politicians who do support breaking democratic rules and political violence, like those who denied the election results or were involved in the January 6 events, were just reflecting their constituents’ views.
To test this, they looked at data on U.S. House Representatives who either voted against the 2020 election results or publicly claimed they weren’t legitimate.
Then, they checked if people represented by a Congressman who denied the election results were more likely to prioritize party loyalty over following election rules and the Constitution. But they found no significant link between what constituents thought and what their representatives did in these cases.
“The real gap in support for democracy is not between Democratic and Republican voters, but between Republican voters and Republican representatives,” the authors conclude.
“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.”
