The Effect of Donald Trump’s Effort to Subvert Democracy on the Republican Party

• In Event: Assessing the President's Impact on the Political System

Abstract

I propose to extend a long-term research project examining how modern presidents have shaped attitudes toward, beliefs about, electoral support of, and identification with the political parties (President and Parties in the Public Mind, 2019) to cover the effect of Donald Trump’s denial of and attempt to nullify his defeat in the 2020 election. Before these events, Trump had already had a more powerful on attitudes toward his party (and its rival) than any of his modern predecessors, with radically polarizing consequences. An examination of multiple public opinion surveys taken before and after the election and during the first 9 months of the Biden administration will be undertaken to determine the degree to which Trump-inspired mob’s trashing of the Capitol building, the ensuing efforts to remove him from office, and the divided responses of Republican leaders to these events either extended or modified the effects of his presidency on his party’s popularity, reputation, attractiveness as an object of identification, and demographic composition. It will explore the reactions of ordinary Republicans to Trump’s delusional claim of a landslide victory, and to the violence it provoked, to gauge the durability of the myth of a stolen election and Trump’s hold on the Republican base. Early indications (through January 2021) are that the myth is widely but not universally accepted by Republicans and others who voted for Trump; the extent to which it remains so after Trump has left the White House will have profound implications for Republican Party at both the mass and elite levels. The analysis will also cast light on the extent to which ordinary Democrats and Republicans live in separate cognitive worlds.

Author

• Gary C. Jacobson, University of California, San Diego