American Voters Do Punish Overt Undemocratic Behavior at the Polls: Natural Experimental Evidence from the 2021 Insurrection of the U.S. Capitol

Abstract

Existing research suggests that overt undemocratic behavior by elected officials is insufficiently punished by American voters to electorally discourage democratic backsliding. Evidence for this proposition comes primarily from hypothetical survey experiments with relatively weak treatments. I test this hypothesis using a natural experiment with a powerful treatment: Donald Trump's incitement of the insurrection of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. The insurrection was unexpected to the general public, did not coincide with other events that could plausibly affect public opinion, and occurred while Gallup was conducting a nationally representative survey using random digit dialing. Comparing vote choice intention among respondents that were interviewed just before, and just after, the insurrection occurred suggests that the insurrection caused a 10.8% decline in support for the Republican Party, and an 8.4% increase in support for the Democratic Party. Politicians interested in winning elections have strong incentives to avoid insurrection-like events from occurring.

Null Effects of Pro-Democracy Speeches by U.S. Republicans in the Aftermath of January 6th

“…Commentators first speculated whether this "failed coup attempt" (Solnit 2021) would mark a turning point in the process of American democratic backsliding that had set in after Donald Trump took office (Gricius 2022). There is some evidence that support for the Republican Party declined significantly in the direct aftermath of the Capitol riots, both when measured in Tweets (Eady, Dinesen, and Hjorth 2022), in voter registrations (Loving and Smith 2022) and at the polls (Noort 2021). However, in the weeks following the riots, many prominent Republican lawmakers downplayed the relevance of the incidents at the Capitol and most elected Republicans voted to acquit President Trump in the U.S. Senate, impeding his conviction for inciting an insurrection.…”