A new national survey from Salve Regina University’s Pell Center finds that Americans who score highest on a measure of authoritarian attitudes are the most likely to support political actions that violate democratic norms, even as such support remains relatively low across the population overall.
The survey, directed by Pell Center Associate Director and Fellow Katie Sonder and fielded by Embold Research between May 4 and 12, gathered responses from 2,034 registered voters nationwide, with a modeled margin of error of 2.2 percent. It is the fifth installment of the center’s Voices of Value project on political polarization.
The report measures authoritarian attitudes using a scale long used by political scientists that is based on eight questions about child-rearing values rather than politics. Respondents choose between pairs of traits they consider more important in children, such as independence versus respect for elders, or being disciplined versus adaptable. Because the questions are not about politics, researchers say the scale is partially independent of partisan preference. Answers are scored on a five-point range, from low to high authoritarianism.
Researchers found that respondents scoring highest on that scale were more likely than any other demographic subgroup to support changing election rules or reducing polling locations to make it harder for the opposing party to win. Across the full sample, though, most voters opposed such measures, along with elected officials ignoring court decisions and the government censoring media.
The survey found that higher authoritarian scores were strongly associated with conservative political identification. Among those scoring highest, 80 percent were Republican or Republican-leaning, 37 percent identified as MAGA and 48 percent as conservative, according to the report. Among those scoring lowest, about three-quarters were Democrat or Democrat-leaning, and nearly half identified as progressive.
The report also documented a wide partisan gulf over the basic state of American democracy. It found that 95 percent of Democrats agreed the country is in a constitutional crisis, while among Republicans, nearly half agreed but a majority said the country has a strong system of checks and balances and a thriving economy. Researchers noted that respondents scoring highest on the authoritarian scale were the least likely to say the country faces a constitutional crisis and the most likely to call the economy strong, with 66 percent saying the economy is thriving compared with 32 percent of all registered voters.
On specific actions, the survey found sharp partisan splits. According to the report, 80 percent of Republicans and 2 percent of Democrats supported ICE officers regularly conducting surveillance and arrests at sensitive locations such as schools, hospitals and places of worship, and about three-quarters of Republicans supported stripping citizenship from and deporting U.S. citizens deemed a threat to the country, compared with 12 percent of Democrats.
The survey also asked respondents to name the biggest threats to democracy. Disinformation and fake news was the top choice overall, selected by 41 percent of registered voters and 56 percent of Republicans, while more than two-thirds of Democrats named President Donald Trump.
“It’s heartening that so few Americans support actions which run counter to core democratic values, but I continue to be concerned that Americans are evaluating the same political system through very different lenses,” Sonder said. She said Americans are assessing democratic health, institutional effectiveness and economic conditions along partisan lines, “making it increasingly difficult to build a shared understanding of reality.”
The center said additional analysis is planned, including work by Sonder on authoritarianism and affective polarization and by Colin Woodard, director of the center’s Nationhood Lab, on regional patterns. Full survey results and demographics are available from the Pell Center.
