Survey reveals the ugly difference between conservative and liberal voters

President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that any election he loses is stolen and talked about rigging the 2026 midterms so he does not lose control of either chamber of Congress. Yet a new comprehensive study reveals that Trump may have already erected long-term barriers to American democracy by playing upon a common emotion tying conservative voters together.

“A recent study in the journal Party Politics analyzed data from the 2024 American National Election Study involving more than 4,200 participants and discovered a major motivating factor uniting conservatives to vote appears to be distrust, while liberals vote the same regardless of trust issues. PsyPost reporter Eric W. Dolan elaborated on exactly what these findings reveal.

“Political scientists Erin B. Fitz and Kyle L. Saunders from Colorado State University conducted the new research to better understand the relationship between election trust and political behavior,” Dolan wrote. “Their work focuses specifically on non-voting political participation. This type of participation includes activities outside of casting a ballot, such as attending protests, signing petitions, donating money to campaigns, or attending political meetings.”

“This finding suggests that distrust acts as a mobilizing force primarily for conservative voters,” Dolan wrote. “To better understand why these patterns persist, Fitz and Saunders took their analysis a step further. They examined a subset of 1,857 individuals who participated in the American National Election Study in both 2020 and 2024.”

He added, “Following the same group of people over four years allows scientists to track how attitudes and behaviors influence one another across time. The researchers used statistical models to test whether a person’s ideology in 2020 predicted their election trust and participation in 2024, or if the reverse was true. The tracking data provided evidence that operational ideology acts as a stable foundation that shapes future attitudes.”

Ultimately the authors found that liberal operational ideologies in 2020 correlated closely with greater trust in elections and higher non-voting participation in 2024, while conservative operational ideologies corresponded with lower trust and lower participation in 2024.

“This indicates that policy preferences tend to remain stable and guide how individuals interpret political events over time,” Dolan wrote. “Trust and participation appear to be downstream effects of these deeply held ideological commitments. The researchers noted that these differences are not just a reflection of party loyalty, as their models accounted for the strength of participants’ partisan identities.”

Overall, these conclusions bode poorly for the health of American democracy.

“High levels of political participation and trust are typically viewed as signs of a functioning democracy,” Dolan explained. “This research suggests that participation can sometimes be driven by a fundamental distrust of democratic processes, complicating how we measure the stability of a political system.”

Speaking with AlterNet in June, Dan Vicuña — the Senior Policy Director for Voting and Fair Representation at Common Cause — stressed that Trump is undermining faith in American democracy so he can more easily make sure he does not lose the 2026 midterm elections.

“What they all add up to is a desire to avoid any accountability to the voters in the midterm elections — to ensure, to preordain the outcome of a midterm that he thinks is going to go badly for him,” Vicuña said to AlterNet. “We know, from the Big Lie of the 2020 election to spurring on a violent revolt to overthrow a free and fair election, that he has no respect for democratic norms, for the voice of the people. This is entirely about his own power and his own ego. He will even invest in protecting that ego and protecting his power at the expense of the needs of the public. People are suffering with high gas prices and affordability issues, and he does not care. All that matters is protecting his power, and he has no interest in whether he does that through democratic means.”

He added, “I think this all adds up to a desire to ensure that his party stays in power and his ability to do what he wants — to attack vulnerable communities — remains intact.”

from Alternet.org https://ift.tt/T4jpIm3
via sinceretalk