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. 2020 Sep 15;117(37):22752-22759.
doi: 10.1073/pnas.2007747117. Epub 2020 Aug 31.

Ethnic antagonism erodes Republicans' commitment to democracy

Affiliations

Ethnic antagonism erodes Republicans' commitment to democracy

Larry M Bartels. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. .

Abstract

Most Republicans in a January 2020 survey agreed that "the traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast that we may have to use force to save it." More than 40% agreed that "a time will come when patriotic Americans have to take the law into their own hands." (In both cases, most of the rest said they were unsure; only one in four or five disagreed.) I use 127 survey items to measure six potential bases of these and other antidemocratic sentiments: partisan affect, enthusiasm for President Trump, political cynicism, economic conservatism, cultural conservatism, and ethnic antagonism. The strongest predictor by far, for the Republican rank-and-file as a whole and for a variety of subgroups defined by education, locale, sex, and political attitudes, is ethnic antagonism-especially concerns about the political power and claims on government resources of immigrants, African-Americans, and Latinos. The corrosive impact of ethnic antagonism on Republicans' commitment to democracy underlines the significance of ethnic conflict in contemporary US politics.

Keywords: ethnic antagonism; political polarization; support for democracy.

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Conflict of interest statement

The author declares no competing interest.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Social bases of Republicans’ antidemocratic attitudes.
Fig. 2.
Fig. 2.
Ethnic antagonism and antidemocratic attitudes. Predicted agreement based on statistical analyses in Table 3 (Left) and average agreement based on bivariate lowess regressions (Right).

References

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