democratic norms

The PRL is now including “born again” identity status in our topline results. Insights across measures show interesting takeaways about those who identify as born again.

Affective polarization: Those who identify as born again are comparable to those who do not identify as born again. Those who are born again are also more trusting in other Americans and in institutional responses from the government.

Political violence: Those who are born again are significantly more likely to support political violence, but the magnitude of the difference is small.

Democratic norms: Those who are born again are much more likely to support norms violations than those who are not.

Relative to those who are not born again:

Support for reducing polling places is 5.5 point higher among the born again
Support for censoring media is more than 11 points higher among the born again
Support for being more loyal to the party than the constitution is 8.3 points higher among the born again

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You can always view the results of the America’s Political Pulse tracking poll to see major findings, explore over-time trends, or download top-line results.

Ahead of the mid-term elections, new results from the Lab highlight three surprising results on support for democratic norm violations. The democratic norms we measure are:

In-party elected officials should ignore out-party judges;
In-party should reduce polling places in out-party areas;
In-party president should use Executive Orders to circumvent out-party control of Congress;
Government should censor media that attack the out-party more than the in-party;
When elections are challenged, the in-party should be more loyal to the party than the constitution.

1. Democrats support anti-democratic behavior at levels that are similar to (or exceed) Republicans. Surprisingly, about 8% of Democrats want to reduce voting options for Republicans.

2. Americans who support a norm violation are not looking to subvert democracy wholesale, with most only supporting one or two violations and not a complete rejection of democratic principles.

3. Both Democrats and Republicans dramatically overestimate the extent to which the other side support democratic norms violations. People think things are much worse than they are.