In two nationwide polls Nationhood Lab “stress tested” Americans’ professed commitments to the values in the Declaration of Independence, revealing soft support on the American right
By Colin Woodard
Most Americans say they support the liberal democratic values at the core of the American Experiment, but would they actually do so in practice when doing so might not help their “side” obtain or sustain power? The answer, according to our latest surveys, is “yes,” for most Americans, but not necessarily on the American right.
At Nationhood Lab, we’ve been developing and testing a new national story that can unite most Americans and hold the country together, one based on the natural rights propositions in the Declaration of Independence. Earlier this year our polls and in-depth interviews revealed that most Americans prefer such a story of national purpose, identity and belonging to alternatives based on more exclusionary notions like heritage, intrinsic character traits, or ancestral history. This was true for nearly every demographic category including men, women, whites, Blacks, Latinos, people with and without college educations, and across all generations. The major exceptions were Republicans and people who voted for Donald Trump in the 2020 election.
In a new poll conducted in August, we asked of 2734 Americans another key question: do they agree that, as Americans, we are obligated to protect one another’s natural rights as defined in the Declaration. Americans agreed by 97-2, one of the largest margins the pollster, Embold Research, had seen in any survey question they had posed. We Americans are in agreement, in the abstract at least, that we’re in a covenant to further the American Experiment to make these ideas a reality.
But, as the adage goes, words are cheap. We wanted to test if people would actually defend the Declaration’s ideals in real world situations. So in two separate nationwide polls conducted by different pollsters and with different methodologies, we offered a series of “stress tests,” asking if they supported actors in real world scenarios who were compromising these ideals. Here’s what we learned:
Aggressive book bans are very unpopular: Three-quarters of U.S. registered voters oppose local and state governments seeking to force public libraries to “remove books that some people might find offensive or inappropriate” by withholding funds or threatening to evict them (see graphic at the top of this article). Only 14 percent said they supported these types of actions, which was comprised of 29 percent of Republicans, 10 percent of independents, and 3 percent of Democrats. Significantly, white evangelicals also rejected these attacks on public libraries — which, unlike school libraries, serve adults as well as children — by a 23-point margin. And it was all downhill from there for would-be book banners, with every single segment we looked at disapproving by at least that much, and usually to or three times that margin, including all races, religions, genders, education and urbanity levels and combinations thereof, plus all the American Nations regions.
Election subversion roundly condemned: Almost seven in ten voters said they would oppose officials from their party refusing to certify election results to stay in power when there was no evidence of fraud having taken place. Democrats were overwhelming in their opposition to election subversion, even when committed by their party, with 87 percent opposed — including 80 percent strongly opposed – and only 4 percent in favor. Independents opposed such subversion by a 49-point margin (61-12), Republicans by 34 points (49-15), but with 36 percent unsure or wanting more information. Election subversion is even less popular than book bans, rejected by Trump 2020 voters by a 29-point margin and 40-, 50-, or 70-point margins in most every other demographic segment we parsed.
But partisan and ideological considerations split Americans on scenarios involving voter suppression and putting the nation’s leader above the law, a functionally authoritarian situation created by the Supreme Court’s controversial decision in Trump v United States.
Voter suppression ok with Republicans: Sixty-one percent of voters say they would oppose lawmakers eliminating same-day voter registration because voters who are “not on our side of the aisle” were making use of the policy. Democrats opposed the measure by a 77-point margin (84-7) and independents by 36 points (55-19). Republicans, however, supported partisan-minded voter suppression by 8 points (43-35), as did the related categories of Trump 2020 voters (by +12 points), evangelicals (+3 points) and white evangelicals (+9). The measure was underwater with all other segments, and within all the American Nations regions.
Presidential immunity deeply divisive: The partisan split was even wider when Americans were asked if they supported the recent Supreme Court ruling “that a president cannot be held accountable for crimes they commit as part of an official act.” While Americans overall oppose the ruling 58 to 32, a 26-point margin, Republicans support it by a staggering 51-point margin, with 67 percent in support and 16 percent against. Independents oppose the ruling 29-58 (or 29 points), Democrats by a near universal 90 points, (3-93). In addition to Trump supporters, this proposition had majority support from men aged 50-64 (+11 points) and 65 and older (+5 points) as well as evangelicals (+29) and white Evangelicals (+42). It was rejected by all other segments, by young men, ages 18-24, by -51 and young women by -69, a massive generational divide.
This poll of 2734 registered voters nationwide was conducted for Nationhood Lab by Embold Research between Aug. 8 and 15. A full methodology statement can be found here.
“Stress testing” the Hidden Tribes on commitment to Declaration
Nationhood Lab conducted a second national poll of More in Common’s Hidden Tribes respondents, who have been segmented based not on income, education, or race, but on their core underlying beliefs based on decades of academic work by moral and political psychologists. In 2017 More in Common has surveyed some 8000 Americans asking about their moral values, parenting styles, ideas about personal responsibility, identity, threats, and trust. They then sorted them into seven “tribes”: Progressive Activists, Traditional Liberals, Passive Liberals, Politically Disengaged, Moderates, Traditional Conservatives, Devoted Conservatives, which you read about at their site. Last year we worked with YouGov and More in Common to reveal how these personality archetypes are maldistributed across the American Nations regions.
Our new poll, conducted for Nationhood Lab by YouGov, asked the same “stress test” questions of 1000 Hidden Tribes respondents. Like the Embold survey of the national population, it again found strong support for presidential immunity and partisan voter suppression only amongst the right wing “tribes” and the level of support was very strong.
Far-right Devoted Conservatives – the committed MAGA demographic – supported presidential immunity by a 79-point margin and voter suppression by 35 points. For Traditional Conservatives those margins of support for these illiberal, anti-democratic stances were 35 and 23 points respectively. This poll also asked if respondents supported Trump’s promise to pardon convicted Jan. 6 insurrectionists, and these two groups said “yes” by 84- and 27-point margins.
None of the other five “tribes” supported any of these measures, with the most left-wing group, Progressive Activists, opposing each by 82- to 97-point margins. Of these five groups, the softest support for the liberal democratic stance came from the two tribes in what More in Common calls the “exhausted majority” of the country, Moderates and the Politically Disengaged. For these groups, the margins of support were between 9- and 53-points depending on the question and tribe. But for both groups, significant shares of the respondents said they didn’t know or needed more information, as high as 46 percent (of Politically Disengaged) in the case of the voter suppression question.
This second poll of 1000 Hidden Tribes respondents was conducted for us by YouGov between Aug. 20 and Aug. 29, with permission from our friends at More in Common.
Here’s what I said about the results for our press release: “While it’s encouraging that most Americans support the liberal democratic values in the Declaration of Independence in practice, it’s alarming that so many on the American right are willing to betray those ideals in the pursuit of power. The data from our surveys shows the threat to our democracy is overwhelmingly concentrated on the right and, especially, with groups that support Trumpism.”
Thanks to our partners at More in Common, YouGov and Embold Research (whose staff also created the graphics in this post.)
