Shanto Iyengar, a Stanford University political scientist and pioneering researcher on partisan hostility, whose 2012 paper with Gaurav Sood and Iftak Relkes, “Emotions, Not Ideologies: A Social Identity Perspective on Polarization,” was published, wrote in an email response to my questions that one of the most significant dangers of partisan hostility is that
Parties are less able to hold their leaders accountable. The crux of the problem is that partisans have become so critical of the opposing party that they are unwilling to impose sanctions on their own leaders who engage in unethical or illegal activities.
The latest ANES survey examined partisan willingness to support candidates with questionable records. The pilot survey included four questions asking respondents whether a series of unethical or illegal conduct would be a “reason for not voting for a candidate for public office.” The conduct in question included felony convictions, accepting bribes from a foreign government, improper handling of classified documents, and accusations of sexual harassment.
Three of the conduct in question are likely associated with Donald Trump, while only one is likely associated with Joe Biden. Responses to these questions showed a strong partisan split, with Republicans far more likely to ignore unethical/illegal conduct: 62 percent said they would be prepared to vote for a candidate with sexual harassment allegations, and more than 40 percent said they would vote for a candidate who is a convicted felon and has endangered national security.
Overall, Iyengar wrote, “These data appear to support Trump’s now-infamous claim that he could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot someone and not lose any voters.”
In another study, “Uncategorized Partisanship and Anti-Democratic Tendencies among the American Public,” Ariel Malka of Yeshiva University, Thomas Costello of MIT, and Federico found that certain types of Democrats and Republicans are most drawn to anti-democratic ideas.
Cultural conservatism and Republican partisanship are reliably associated with anti-democratic tendencies among Democrats, with effect sizes exceeding those of key covariates such as education. Among Republicans, left-leaning economic attitudes are reliably associated with anti-democratic tendencies.
In other words, people who disagree with their party’s views are the most critical of democratic norms. I asked Federico if he could explain this, and he replied by email that the data doesn’t give a clear answer, but he’s willing to suggest two possibilities:
beginning:
Citizens who deviate from their party’s positions on a set of issues tend to be less politically engaged. Less politically engaged people also tend to be less supportive of democratic norms. So part of the reason for this may simply be that economically liberal Republicans and socially conservative Democrats are less politically engaged and therefore less likely to absorb democratic norms.
The second:
Populist beliefs, the combination of cultural conservatism and economic liberalism, also tend to be associated with lower support for democratic norms. Both Democrats with culturally conservative attitudes and Republicans with economically liberal attitudes fit the pattern of populist beliefs, so what we see for these two groups may simply reflect their stronger populist leanings.
While a majority of voters voice their support for democracy and fair elections, this reassuring view is nuanced.
In their 2023 paper, “Americans’ Professed Support for Democracy and Tolerance of Politically Preferred Authoritarian Behavior,” Malka and Costello explore a fundamental contradiction in American politics.
“Public opposition to democracy was relatively rare and most common among citizens who distanced themselves from politics,” Malka and Costello write, “but a different pattern of findings emerged when it came to attitudes toward blatant, politically expedient authoritarian policy actions and electoral subversion disguised as pro-democracy actions.”
