Do Violations of Democratic Norms Change Political Attitudes? Evidence From the January 6th Insurrection

Abstract

How do citizens respond to extreme violations of democratic institutions, such as the January 6th, 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol? Using an online survey of 900 employed respondents conducted January 5–9, 2021, I find that those interviewed just hours after the insurrection were about 10% points less likely to identify as Republicans, reported greater dislike for Donald Trump, and expressed less attachment to conservatism even controlling for prior levels of party identification. Self-reported Trump voters interviewed after the insurrection were also less likely to identify as Republican and expressed a less favorable view of Donald Trump. The findings only reflect the short-term reactions of employed respondents but are robust to alternative specifications and the very narrow temporal window of the analyses helps to isolate the impact of the insurrection. These results offer evidence in the on-going debate over how to interpret the events of January 6th, 2021.

Keywords

elections democratic backsliding insurrection partisanship electoral subversion

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Albertus

Grossman

(2021). When do voters support power grabs. Journal of Democracy, 32(2), 116–131. https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2021.0023

Almond

Verba

(1963). The civic culture: Political attitudes and democracy in 5 countries. Princeton University Press.

Botero

Castro Cornejo

Gamboa

Pavão

Nickerson

D. W.

(2019). Are all types of wrongdoing created equal in the eyes of voters? Journal of Elections, Public Opinion, and Parties, 31(2), 141–158. https://doi.org/10.1080/17457289.2019.1651322

Broockman

Butler

(2017). Causal effects of elite position-taking on voter attitudes: Field experiments with elite communication. American Journal of Political Science, 61(1), 208–221.

Carey

Clayton

Helmke

Nyhan

Sanders

Stokes

(2020). Who will defend democracy? Evaluating tradeoffs in candidate support among donors and voters. Journal of Elections, Public Opinion, and Parties, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/17457289.2020.1790577

Classen

(2021). Does public support help democracy to survive? American Journal of Political Science, 64(January), 117–134.

Coppock

(2017). Did shy Trump supporters bias the 2016 polls? Evidence from a nationally-representative list experiment. Statistics, Politics, and Policy, 8(1), 29–40. https://doi.org/10.1515/spp-2016-0005

Eady

Hjorth

Dinesen

P. T.

(2022). Do violent protests Affect expressions of political ideology: Evidence from the Capitol insurrection. American Political Science Review, 117(3), 1–7.

Enos

R. D.

Kaufman

A. R.

Sands

M. L.

(2019). Can violent protest change local policy support? Evidence from the aftermath of the 1992 Los Angeles riot. American Political Science Review Political Science Review, 113(4), 1012–1028. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0003055419000340

10.

Fearon

J. D.

(2011). Self-enforcing democracy. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 126(4), 1661–1708. https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjr038

11.

Gonzalez-Ocantos

de Jonge

C. K.

Melendez

Nickerson

Osorio

(2019). Carrots and sticks: Experimental evidence of vote buying and voter intimidation in Guatemala. Journal of Peace Research, 57(1), 46–61. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022343319884998

12.

Graham

M. H.

Svolik

M. W.

(2020). Democracy in America? Partisanship, polarization, and the robustness of support for democracy in America. American Political Science Review, 114(2), 392–409. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0003055420000052

13.

Inglehart

(1977). The silent revolution: Changing values and political styles among western publics. Princeton University Press.

14.

Iyengar

Lelkes

Levendusky

Malhotra

Westwood

S. J.

(2020). The origins and consequences of affective polarization in the United States. Annual Review of Political Science, 22(1), 129–146. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-polisci-051117-073034

15.

Johnston

(2005). Party identification: Unmoved mover or sum of Preferences. Annual Review of Political Science, 9(1), 329–351. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.polisci.9.062404.170523

16.

Keeter

(2021). How we know the drop in Trump’s approval rating in January reflected a real shift in public opinion. Pew Research. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/01/20/how-we-know-the-drop-in-trumps-approval-rating-in-january-reflected-a-real-shift-in-public-opinion/

17.

Loving

Smith

D. A.

, 2022. “Riot in the party? Voter registrations in the aftermath of the January 6, 2021 Capitol insurrection,” party politics, vols. 1–14. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13540688221147666

18.

Mares

Young

, 2019. Conditionality and Coercion: Electoral Clientelism in Eastern Europe, Oxford University Press.

19.

Mason

(2018). Uncivil agreement: How politics became our identity. University of Chicago Press.

20.

Montgomery

J. M.

Nyhan

Torres

(2018). How conditioning on posttreatment variables can ruin your experiment and what to do about it. American Journal of Political Science, 62(3), 760–775. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12357

21.

Munoz

Falco-Gimeno

Hernandez

(2020). Unexpected event during survey design: Promise and pitfalls for causal inference. Political Analysis, 28(2), 186–206. https://doi.org/10.1017/pan.2019.27

22.

Peterson

J. C.

Smith

K. B.

Hibbing

J. R.

(2020). Do people really become more conservative as they age? The Journal of Politics, 82(2), 600–611. https://doi.org/10.1086/706889

23.

Przeworski

(1991). Democracy and the market: Political and economic reforms in eastern europe and Latin America. Cambridge University Press.

24.

Reuter

O. J.

Szakonyi

(2021). Electoral manipulation and regime support: Survey evidence from Russia. World Politics, 73(2), 275–314. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0043887120000234

25.

Saikkonen

Christensen

H. S.

(2022). Guardians of democracy or passive bystanders? A conjoint experiment on elite transgressions of democratic norms. Political Research Quarterly.

26.

Scroggins

(2023). When are democracies at risk of democratic decline? PsyArXiv Preprint, 1–37. https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/x4bw3

27.

Svolik

M. W.

(2020). When polarization trumps civic virtue: Partisan conflict and the subversion of democracy by incumbents. Quarterly Journal of Political Science, 15(1), 3–31. https://doi.org/10.1561/100.00018132

28.

van Noort

(2022). “How strongly do American voters react to anti-democratic behavior by politicians? Natural experimental evidence from the January 6 insurrection”. APSA Preprints American Government and Politics. https://preprints.apsanet.org/engage/apsa/article-details/633f57840847003a3397a56d

29.

Wasow

(2020). Agenda seeding: How 1960’s black protests moved elites, public opinion and voting. American Political Science Review, 114(3), 638–659. https://doi.org/10.1017/s000305542000009x

30.

Weingast

B. R.

(1997). The political foundations of democracy and the rule of the law. American Political Science Review, 91(2), 245–263. https://doi.org/10.2307/2952354

31.

Weitz-Shapiro

(2014). Curbing clientelism in Argentina: Politics, poverty, and social policy. Cambridge University Press.

Supplementary Material

Please find the following supplemental material available below.

For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.

For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.

0.00 MB

0.49 MB