Have attitudes toward democracy polarized in the U.S.?

Abstract

Attitudes toward and about democracy have shown a decline in the United States and elsewhere. Further, there have been clear indications that some elected officials are increasingly willing to forego longstanding traditions and norms. A key question is whether the public is influencing such elite behavior, or if certain segments are merely tolerating it. In other words, is an increase in partisan differentiation observed in attitudes toward democracy? If the behavior of Republican elected officials in the aftermath of the 2020 election was driven in part by constituent demands, we ought to see partisan polarization of attitudes about democracy prior to January 2021. In this note we trace attitudes about democracy, conditioned on partisanship, to examine the extent that such attitudes have polarized in recent decades, using data from the American National Election Studies, General Social Survey, and World Values Survey from 1996–2020. We find no evidence that attitudes toward democracy are meaningfully different across the two parties. A subsequent analysis similarly indicates that the winner–loser gap has not widened as the parties have polarized over the last 25 years.