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

Although public support for democracy, in the abstract, is widespread, people sometimes still support in-party members who violate democratic norms and principles. We investigated three possible explanations for this tendency in two experiments—one on college students, another on a demographically representative sample of American partisans. First, we used a question order manipulation to examine whether partisans have vague, flexible conceptualizations of democracy that they bend to accommodate co-partisans' behavior. However, participants’ reported commitment to democratic principles was consistently high, even after reading about several in-party senators who had violated those principles. Second, we manipulated the salience of senators’ violations to test whether partisans simply fail to notice co-partisan violations. Evidence supported this possibility; explicitly pointing out how in-party politicians’ behavior violated a core democratic principle reduced support for those politicians in Study 2. Finally, we combined the two manipulations to assess whether partisans consciously chose to support antidemocratic co-partisans. Consistent with this possibility, participants in Study 2 were consistently reluctant to vote against in-party politicians, even when participants had just reported high support for democratic principles and were explicitly told how their co-partisans had violated those principles. Our findings have implications for which interventions might reduce support for antidemocratic politicians. Educating Americans about democracy may have limited effects, but messages that call out undemocratic behavior may help reduce partisans’ tolerance for that behavior. To impact voting, though, advocates for democracy may need to actively persuade American partisans that democracy presents benefits that outweigh the accomplishment of short-term partisan goals.