Trump Tweets and Democratic Attitudes: Evidence from a Survey Experiment

Abstract

During his tenure in office, President Trump made repeated attacks on democratic norms and practices in his public statements, in particular via Twitter. Does this type of anti-democratic rhetoric lead to an erosion of citizens’ democratic attitudes? We argue that reactions to Trump’s rhetoric are not likely to be uniform given the highly polarized political climate in the United States. In order to test this theoretical proposition, we fielded a survey experiment on a module of the 2019 Cooperative Congressional Election Study. Treated respondents were exposed to a range of tweets sent by President Trump attacking three critical institutions of a liberal democracy (the media, Congress, and the Courts). We find limited evidence that Trump’s rhetoric leads to an erosion of democratic attitudes. On the contrary, the results suggest there is significant pushback against anti-democratic messages, especially among Democrats.