'Sobering' study shows Americans  'disregard' democratic principles when it's convenient

On Thursday, January 4, Democracy Fund released a report titled "Democracy Hypocrisy: Examining America's Fragile Democratic Convictions."

The Bulwark's Charlie Sykes analyzes the study in a January 5 column, laying out some reasons why he finds it "sobering."

The Never Trump conservative argues, "How fragile are our liberal constitutional norms? On Thursday, the Democracy Fund released a sobering study that is very much worth your attention. They found that the overwhelming majority of Americans say that having a democracy is a good thing. But when it comes to the details…. here are the key findings."

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Sykes notes that according to Democracy Fund's study, the "vast majority of Americans claim to support democracy" — but "support for democratic norms softens considerably when they conflict with partisanship."

According to Democracy Fund, "Only about 27 percent of Americans consistently and uniformly support democratic norms in a battery of questions across multiple survey waves, including 45 percent of Democrats, 13 percent of Republicans, and 18 percent of independents. When adding responses to hypothetical scenarios about unilateral action by the president, the share of Americans who consistently support democratic norms over this time period drops to just 8 percent, including 10 percent of Democrats, 5 percent of Republicans, and 11 percent of independents."

Democracy Fund added, however, "On the other hand, the portion of the public who are consistently authoritarian — Americans who consistently justify political violence or support alternatives to democracy over multiple survey waves — is also relatively small: 8 percent. This leaves most Americans somewhere between consistent democratic and authoritarian leanings, a position often heavily shaped by partisanship."

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Charlie Sykes' full article for The Bulwark is available at this link.