A new study reveals that Americans’ commitment to democratic norms might be weaker than previously assumed, as their willingness to accept actions that undermine these norms appears to depend significantly on whether their preferred political party is in power. The research, published in Public Opinion Quarterly, indicates that both Democrats and Republicans show a tendency to support behaviors that erode democratic principles when their own party controls the presidency. This partisan-influenced tolerance for norm erosion is further amplified when the government is divided, with different parties controlling the presidency and Congress.
In recent years, many have worried about the health of American democracy, and questions have emerged about why citizens would support policies that might concentrate power in the executive branch. To clarify this picture, the researchers decided to examine public opinion data over a long period, spanning multiple presidential administrations, and to gather new data to assess support for a range of potentially democracy-eroding actions. They aimed to determine if the observed tolerance for norm erosion was a unique phenomenon of the Trump era or a more consistent pattern influenced by partisan loyalty and the political context.
To conduct their investigation, the researchers utilized two primary sources of data. First, they analyzed existing survey data from the Americas Barometer project, a long-running study that includes the United States and is designed to monitor democratic attitudes across the Americas. This dataset provided survey responses from multiple years, ranging from 2006 to 2021, covering the presidencies of George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden. The specific question from this survey that the researchers focused on asked respondents whether they believed there could be justification for a president to shut down Congress. This question was considered a measure of tolerance for executive overreach and the weakening of checks and balances in government, a core democratic norm.
The Americas Barometer surveys employed different sampling methods over the years. The initial survey in 2006 involved contacting individuals through random telephone number dialing. Subsequent surveys, conducted between 2008 and 2021, utilized online panels managed by YouGov/Polimetrix, with sample sizes typically around 1,500 participants.
In addition to the Americas Barometer data, the researchers collected their own original survey data at two distinct time points. The first survey was conducted in August 2020, during the Trump administration, and the second in December 2021, after Joe Biden had assumed the presidency. These surveys were administered online using Lucid, a large platform for online survey panels.
These original surveys included a more comprehensive set of questions designed to gauge support for various actions that could erode democratic norms. They developed sixteen different questions covering four key aspects of liberal democracy: majority rule, limits on executive power, civil liberties, and the rule of law. These questions presented scenarios that ranged from actions that might be legally permissible but push the boundaries of established democratic practices, to more overt violations of democratic principles.
For example, some questions addressed the idea of expanding the Supreme Court, while others tackled more extreme scenarios such as banning protests or disregarding court decisions. The purpose of using a range of scenarios was to assess the extent to which people were willing to tolerate different types of norm erosion.
The analysis of the Americas Barometer data revealed a consistent pattern. Individuals who identified with the political party of the current president were more likely to agree that there could be justification for a president to shut down Congress. This trend was observed across different presidential administrations, both Republican and Democratic, from 2006 to 2021.
While support for such an action was notably high among Republicans during the later part of the Trump presidency, the longer-term view showed that the tendency for supporters of the president’s party to be more tolerant of this norm erosion was not unique to any particular party or administration. Statistical analysis of this data indicated that, on average, people whose preferred party held the presidency were almost 16 percent more likely to approve of a president dissolving Congress compared to those whose preferred party was out of power.
Furthermore, the researchers found that this partisan difference in tolerance for executive power grabs became even more pronounced when the government was divided. In periods where the presidency and Congress were controlled by different parties, the gap in support for presidential overreach between supporters of the president’s party and the opposing party more than doubled.
The findings from the researchers’ original surveys conducted in 2020 and 2021 corroborated the pattern of partisan-influenced tolerance for norm erosion. Examining the change in support for the sixteen democratic norm erosion items between the two survey periods, they observed what they termed “democratic hypocrisy.” Democrats, after Joe Biden became president, showed an increase in support for several norm-eroding actions, while Republicans, now in the opposition, generally became less supportive of such actions compared to when Trump was in office.
When considering the average support across all sixteen norm erosion items, the shift in attitudes related to partisan alignment with the presidency accounted for about a quarter of the total change in attitudes observed between the two surveys. The overall average level of support for norm erosion was quite similar between Republicans and Democrats.
“While leading intellectuals made sweeping claims about the greater proclivity of Republican voters to support democracy-eroding policies and showcased this as a novel tendency attributable to the emergence of Donald Trump, our empirical findings suggest otherwise,” the researchers wrote. “Looking at it across administrations, differences between Democrats and Republicans are found to be modest, as the supporters of both parties are more willing to look the other way when their own party leaders act uninhibited by existing norms. Nonnegligible numbers of Democratic and Republican voters, at least since 2006, have prioritized partisan preferences over democratic principles even if, on the elite level, Democrats are less norm eroding.”
However, one notable exception to the general pattern of partisan shift was observed regarding the rejection of election results by candidates. Republicans in 2021 became even more inclined to accept candidates rejecting election outcomes, irrespective of which party was in power. Democrats, in contrast, showed consistently higher approval for changing the size of the Supreme Court in both survey years.
It is important to note that in most norm erosion scenarios presented in the surveys, a majority of both Democrats and Republicans rejected positions that would weaken democratic norms. For instance, only about 33 percent of Democrats during the Biden administration supported the idea of adding more justices to the Supreme Court.
The exception to this was the issue of presidents governing through executive orders, which garnered higher levels of support. Approximately 71 percent of Republicans supported governing by executive order during the first Trump administration, a figure that dropped to 27 percent during the Biden administration. Similarly, around 52 percent of Democrats during the Biden administration supported this approach, compared to about 30 percent during the Trump administration.
“Not surprisingly, in an era of perceived partisan gridlock, the highest level of support in our surveys was to give the president more leeway to act without constraints from Congress: the use of executive orders,” the researchers said. “But the support across the parties for their own president to potentially close Congress or operate without congressional or judicial constraints represents a clear challenge to the balance of powers enshrined in the US Constitution and is reminiscent of executive coups in Latin America.”
Looking ahead, the researchers suggest that future studies should examine more deeply why voters are willing to accept actions that undermine established democratic practices. One area for further inquiry is the role of political polarization—the deep divide between supporters of the two major parties—in shaping these attitudes. Some past studies have suggested that extreme polarization might lead voters to prioritize their party’s success over broader democratic principles. Further research in different countries with lower levels of polarization might help clarify whether this is a uniquely American phenomenon or a common feature of democratic systems in general.
Another important direction for future work is to explore how individual views about democracy influence support for norm erosion. While many studies have focused on personal factors such as ideology or demographic characteristics, this study shows that the political context is also significant. Researchers could use longitudinal panel studies to track how individuals’ support for democratic norms changes over time, particularly when the party in power shifts. This type of research might help uncover the long-term effects of political leadership on public attitudes and could point the way to strategies for strengthening citizens’ commitment to democratic practices.
The findings of this study contribute to a growing body of literature that warns about the fragility of democracy in the United States. While many Americans claim to value democratic principles, the research shows that when their own party is in power, they can be surprisingly willing to support measures that might erode those very principles.
The study, “It’s Not Just Trump: Americans of Both Parties Support Liberal Democratic Norm Violations More Under Their Own President,” was authored by Levente Littvay, Jennifer L. McCoy, and Gabor Simonovits.
