Questionnaire Democrats? Reconsidering the Relevance of Abstract Democracy Support in the American Public

Abstract The American public largely favors “democracy,” yet many citizens tolerate undemocratic actions and candidates. This raises doubts about the relevance of abstract democracy support to actual democratic commitment. In contrast, we argue that abstract democracy support is a normatively significant dimension of attitude variation among Americans. Using nineteen surveys fielded between 1995 and 2024, we show that a sizable segment of the public expresses only tepid support for democracy, and that a nontrivial minority expresses opposition. Moreover, commonly used abstract democracy support items converge on a single latent construct which displays high rank-order stability, but also meaningful within-person variation, over a two-year period. Abstract democracy support negatively predicts openness to a wide range of electoral and liberal democratic violations and is associated with greater likelihood of electorally punishing anti-democratic candidates. In panel data, positive within-person deviations in abstract democracy support precede negative within-person deviations in openness to authoritarian governance, suggesting that individual-level shifts in abstract support predict later change in substantive democracy attitudes. Overall our findings suggest that the value of ‘democracy’ is contested among Americans, with potential implications for democratic erosion. We recommend that efforts to understand the American public’s role in democratic backsliding and restoration treat abstract support as a distinct attitude construct, measure it with multi-item scales, and explore whether or not it possesses causal significance.