Uncommon and nonpartisan: Antidemocratic attitudes in the American public

Significance

While American political elites increasingly exhibit an antidemocratic posture, our analysis of public attitudes reveals a clear democratic disconnect: Democrats and Republicans overwhelmingly and consistently oppose norm violations and partisan violence–even when their own representatives engage in antidemocratic actions. This commitment to democratic norms remains stable over time in both cross-sectional and panel data, suggesting that recent outbreaks of antidemocratic behavior on the part of political elites have yet to weaken the public’s support for democracy. However, a more ominous implication of our findings is that public support is not a prerequisite for elite backsliding.

Abstract

Democratic regimes flourish only when there is broad acceptance of an extensive set of norms and values. In the United States, fundamental democratic norms have recently come under threat from prominent Republican officials. We investigate whether this antidemocratic posture has spread from the elite level to rank-and-file partisans. Exploiting data from a massive repeated cross-sectional and panel survey ( $n$ = 45,095 and 5,231 respectively), we find that overwhelming majorities of the public oppose violations of democratic norms, and virtually nobody supports partisan violence. This bipartisan consensus remains unchanged over time despite high levels of affective polarization and exposure to divisive elite rhetoric during the 2022 political campaign. Additionally, we find no evidence that elected officials’ practice of election denialism encourages their constituents to express antidemocratic attitudes. Overall, these results suggest that the clear and present threat to American democracy comes from unilateral actions by political elites that stand in contrast to the views of their constituents. In closing, we consider the implications of the stark disconnect between the behavior of Republican elites and the attitudes of Republican voters.