Party over Democracy? When and Why Americans Stand by Democratic Principles

People sometimes support their party’s representatives even when their behavior violates fundamental democratic principles. We investigated the conditions under which people prioritize democracy over party goals, testing two interventions intended to promote this behavior. The first intervention manipulated question order to force some participants to report their support for some important components of democracy prior to evaluating politicians engaged in undemocratic behavior. The second intervention explicitly pointed out how an in-party politician’s behavior (e.g., banning public gatherings of their opponents) violated a core democratic principle (e.g., free assembly). Neither intervention had a significant effect in our first study, which relied on a convenience sample of undergraduates who nearly uniformly opposed undemocratic politicians. In Study 2, however, which recruited a demographically representative sample of American partisans, both interventions (and especially the second) reduced participants’ support for undemocratic politicians. Cues and messages that call out politicians’ undemocratic behavior may therefore help reduce partisans’ willingness to tolerate that behavior. However, the effect sizes we observe are relatively small, suggesting that some Americans knowingly prioritize party over democracy. To be successful, advocates for democracy may need to actively persuade these individuals that democracy presents benefits that outweigh the accomplishment of short-term partisan goals.