Elite rhetoric can undermine democratic norms

Significance Democracies depend on candidates and parties affirming the legitimacy of election results even when they lose. These statements help maintain confidence that elections are free and fair and thereby facilitate the peaceful transfer of power. However, this norm has recently been challenged in the United States, where former president Donald Trump has repeatedly attacked the integrity of the 2020 US election. We evaluate the effect of this rhetoric in a multiwave survey experiment, which finds that exposure to Trump tweets questioning the integrity of US elections reduces trust and confidence in elections and increases beliefs that elections are rigged, although only among his supporters. These results show how norm violations by political leaders can undermine confidence in the democratic process. Democratic stability depends on citizens on the losing side accepting election outcomes. Can rhetoric by political leaders undermine this norm? Using a panel survey experiment, we evaluate the effects of exposure to multiple statements from former president Donald Trump attacking the legitimacy of the 2020 US presidential election. Although exposure to these statements does not measurably affect general support for political violence or belief in democracy, it erodes trust and confidence in elections and increases belief that the election is rigged among people who approve of Trump’s job performance. These results suggest that rhetoric from political elites can undermine respect for critical democratic norms among their supporters.

• Publication year

  2021

• Venue

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

• Publication date

  2021-06-02

• Fields of study

  Medicine, Political Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1073/pnas.2024125118PMID 34078668PMCID PMC8201918
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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