Voting for Violence? The Group-Bases of Political Violence in Election 2020

• In Event: Election Violence

Abstract

In the leadup and aftermath of the volatile 2020 presidential election, who supported violence against their political opponents? What roles did partisan affiliation and ethno-racial identity strength and group biases play in these anti-democratic attitudes, and how did they shift from October before Election Day to the November post-election period to soon after President Biden's inauguration? As close observers of the election may be aware, former President Trump's rhetoric and encouragement of violence shifted dramatically between these periods, from tacit silence in the pre-election period to a burgeoning vocalization immediately after the election, to explicit encouragement in early January, 2021, that led to a violent insurrection by his supporters on the nation's capitol on January 6, 2021.

Though Trump later recorded a short video ostensibly condemning the violence, it was deleted from social media because of its deceptive content and later media reports indicate Trump regretted making the video. In short, voters are likely to have received highly salient and changing information about Trump's views towards political violence in the pre- and post-election periods, but it is unclear from existing scholarship what we should expect about the extent or direction of any effects of these messages on Americans' commitments to democratic principles, nor how they might vary across partisan and ethno-racial subgroups. It is an open question whether Republicans and/or Democrats become more or less supportive of violence against their political opponents after encouragement from some political leaders.

To address these questions, we utilize a novel three-wave panel survey fielded on national samples of Latino, Black, Asian and White registered voters interviewed in October before the 2020 election, again in November and December after the election had been called for Joe Biden, and a third time starting at the end of January after President Biden's inauguration. In all three survey waves, we asked respondents the extent to which they "…feel that violence would be justified to stop what some have called the radical left (right)?" so we can trace support for anti-democratic violence over time and across subgroups within our survey. We also asked items capturing American, national origin, and ethno-racial identity strength, linked fate, and group biases in each wave of the survey, which allow us to assess whether political events between each survey wave primed these attachments and prejudices, resulting in shifts in support for anti-democratic violence.

Finally, in the second wave of the survey, before subjects were asked about support for political violence, we also included an experiment that manipulated information about the election results for control of U.S. Congress. One condition emphasized that Democrats maintained control of the U.S. House of Representatives, another emphasized that Republicans were likely to maintain control of the U.S. Senate (though this did not ultimate come to pass, at the time of the survey, it was unknown which party would ultimately prevail for control), and a third (control) condition that said only that new representatives from both parties were elected.

Though we designed this experiment for another project, in this paper we investigate whether framing post-election control of Congress in terms favorable for the partisan in-group (i.e., for Democratic respondents, Democrats maintain control of the House; or, for Republican respondents, Republicans likely maintain control of the Senate), which in previous work we have found reduces perceptions of political threat, also reduces support for violence directed at the radical fringe of the political opposition. Conversely, we also investigate whether subjects exposed to the more politically threatening control of Congress frame (i.e., the condition politically detrimental to respondents' partisan in-group) generates significantly higher levels of political threat and subsequently greater support for political violence, which would provide some insight into one mechanism driving such support: political threat.

Better understanding support for political violence and anti-democratic behaviors in contemporary U.S. politics is more urgent than ever before. We contribute to and expand the literature by demonstrating not only that political elites can foment negative ethno-racial attitudes and hostilities amongst the public, but also that this rhetoric and group biases can lead directly to violence. Moreover, with the data we have collected, we are in a unique position to address these questions over time and in a causally identified way.

Authors

• Ali A. Valenzuela, American University

• Loren Collingwood, UC Riverside

• Kassra AR Oskooii, University of Delaware