Uncommon and nonpartisan: Antidemocratic attitudes in the American public.

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 ([Formula: see text] = 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

SUBMITTER: Holliday DE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10990094 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature