RAPID: Shifting Values in Citizens’ Understanding of Democracy

This research responds to the unanticipated shift in political rhetoric during presidential campaigns. In prior elections, campaigns tended to highlight either the electoral dimension of democracy or the liberal dimension of democracy. The electoral dimension emphasizes political equality, government accountability to majority opinion, and expanding opportunities for meaningful participation. In contrast, the liberal dimension of democracy prioritizes individual freedom and liberty. Given the recent shift from one dimension to another in partisan rhetoric in 2024, this project supports the development of a survey that measures respondents’ attitudes toward democracy, how these attitudes have changed, and their consequences for political polarization. This allows us to more accurately measure and understand changes in public opinion in support for democracy. This project leverages five prior cross-sectional surveys of public opinion that were conducted by the investigators as part of a longstanding poll. Each included extensive sets of questions concerning support for democracy, the meaning of democracy and the meaning of freedom and liberty (both via open ended questions). By recontacting respondents from prior surveys and re-interviewing them, we create a unique data set of five different two-wave panel studies. This allows us to (1) precisely measure opinion change among a representative sample of over 4,000 respondents (both in direction and in terms of test-retest reliability), (2) determine whether changes in candidate and party rhetoric has consequences for support for democracy as a system of government, and (3) whether the adoption of an opponent party’s symbolic rhetoric has consequences for political polarization. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.