The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election

Democratic Norms and Group Perceptions

Daniel E. Bergan, Bruce I. Newman, Daniel E. Bergan, Bruce I. Newman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000588163
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Citizens, journalists, and scholars have shown increased interest in candidate violations of democratic norms, ranging from former President Trump's campaign rhetoric to the Capitol riot. But how unusual are the former President's actions on the campaign trail? And to what extent do norm violations benefit – or harm – presidential candidates?

Other campaign strategies involve social norms around non-elites. For example, some campaign messages emphasize group norms in order to influence turnout and correct misinformed beliefs. How do communications based on group behaviors, beliefs, and attitudes affect voters during presidential campaigns?

Chapters in this edited volume explore the communications of the President, and other actors, including groups promoting turnout and fact-checking candidate statements. It uses the historic 2020 U.S. Presidential Campaign to explore the relationship between campaign messages and democratic norms, as well as the potential of social norms to shape election-year behaviors, attitudes, and perceptions among voters. This volume highlights different features of the changing role of democratic and group norms in presidential elections.

The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Political Marketing.

Democratic Norms, Social Projection, and False Consensus in the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election

Aaron C. Weinschenk, Costas Panagopoulos and Sander van der Linden

ABSTRACT

We examine individuals’ views about democratic norm violations related to the peaceful transfer of power and acceptance of election results and the link between those views and broader perceptions about support for social election norms in the American public. Using data from an original national survey fielded after the 2020 presidential election, a number of important findings emerge. First, sizable majorities of Americans personally support the peaceful transfer of power (89%) and accept the 2020 presidential election results (74%). Second, individuals perceive these social norms to be widely held by the public. Respondents believe that 67% of Americans support a peaceful transfer of power and that 63% of Americans will accept the results of the 2020 election. Third, there is a strong link between personal views about these election norms and social perceptions about election norms. Consistent with research in psychology on the false consensus bias, people expect the public at large to share their views about election norms. Finally, we demonstrate that political ideology moderates the relationship between personal views about election norms and public perceptions about these norms. Among conservatives who do not support the election outcome, the perception is that only a small portion of the general public supports the election. On the other hand, among conservatives who do support election norms, the perception is that a large share of the public shares their views.

We will never give up, we will never concede. You don’t concede when there’s theft involved. Our country has had enough, we will not take it anymore.

—Donald J. Trump (January 6, 2021).

Even before Donald Trump was elected president in 2016, political observers expressed concern about his violation of political norms, or, “the unwritten rules and conventions that shape political behavior” (Nyhan 2017). One of the most highly publicized of Trump’s norm violations during his presidential campaigns was his unwillingness to release his tax returns. While presidential candidates are not legally required to release their tax returns to the public, it had been the norm for them to do so for decades. Although scholars have devoted considerable attention to the role of formal institutions (e.g., laws, constitutions, etc.) in political life, Donald Trump’s behavior while running for office and serving as president has heightened interest in, and concern about, informal institutions, such as norms, in the United States (Carey et al. 2019; Lieberman et al. 2019; Panke and Petersohn 2017). Indeed, in the days following the 2016 election, author Amy Siskind began tracking norm violations by President Trump. She ultimately wrote a book called The List (Siskind 2018) that chronicles the president’s norm violations, and, in October 2020, just a few weeks before the November 2020 presidential election, Siskind published a list of several hundred of Trump’s norm violations in The Washington Post.¹ Following Joe Biden’s victory in November of 2020, Siskind continued to track Trump’s norm violations, identifying nearly 300 of them since the election.²

The violations identified by Siskind and other political observers are wide ranging³, but in this study, we are interested in norm violations related to the 2020 presidential election. More specifically, we are interested in the norm violations that occurred when Trump refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power following the election and when Trump indicated, on numerous occasions, that he would not accept the election results.⁴ In fact, Trump encouraged his followers to attend a “Save America” protest rally to coincide with the electoral vote count and certification by Congress on January 6, 2021, noting it “will be wild.”⁵ Following Trump’s inflammatory speech, riot supporters stormed the Capitol in what has been described by media commentators as an unprecedented insurrection.⁶ The peaceful transfer of power and acceptance of election results—even when one loses—are important norms in democratic systems. We should note that although we are interested in Trump’s norm violating behavior during the 2020 election, he did violate norms related to the election during the 2016 election as well. For example, during a 2016 presidential debate, Trump indicated that he might not concede if Hillary Clinton was declared the winner of the election.⁷

Although there has been some research on the effects of norm violations by President Trump (Carey et al. 2019; Clayton et al. 2020; Helmke and Ozturk 2020), scholars are only just starting to understand public reaction to President Trump’s norm violations, especially those related to the 2020 presidential election. In the current study, we interested in several questions about election-related norms. First, how do people perceive levels of support for the peaceful transfer of power and acceptance of the 2020 election results among the American public? That is, in the aftermath of the election, do people think that support for these norms is widespread in the public? Second, what factors influence the perceptions that people have about public support for norms related to the election? We are particularly interested in understanding the link between peoples’ personal views about election-related norms (i.e., whether they personally support a peaceful transfer of power or accept the election results) and their perceptions about support for such norms in the U.S. population at large. Various studies (Wallen 1943; Mullen et al. 1985) have found that people have a “tendency to attribute their own sentiments to others” (Wojcieszak and Price 2009, p. 27). Thus, people often believe, or project, that their individual views are widely held by the public, something known as the “false consensus effect” or “consensus bias” (Ross, Greene, and House 1977). An example of consensus bias would be the fact that college students consistently perceive that binge drinking is the norm or that their peers drink more than they do (Baer, Stacy, and Larimer 1991). While consensus bias occurs in the context of a wide range of topics, including racial attitudes, social issues, and environmental issues (Fields and Schuman 1976; Fabrigar and Krosnick 1995; Leviston, Walker, and Morwinski 2013), we are not aware of research that has examined the relationship between personal support for election norms and perceptions about public support for those norms. Thus, we add to the literature by examining whether there is a consensus bias in the context of political norms surrounding the 2020 presidential election.

We proceed as follows. In the next section, we discuss how presidential norm violations are communicated to the public, highlight previous research on the effects of President Trump’s norm violations, and discuss our expectations about election-related norms. We then turn to our data and measures. As a brief overview, we developed and fielded an original national survey following the 2020 election in which we asked respondents about their own views on election-related norms and about their perceptions of public support for such norms. We next present our empirical results and discuss the implications of our findings. We conclude by suggesting some ideas for future research.

Elite messages, norms, and the American public

Decades worth of research on public opinion and political communication has shown that the public takes cues from political elites about many issues (Zaller 1992; Popkin 1991; Lupia 1994; Lau and Redlawsk 2001; Lenz 2012; Endres, Panagopoulos, and Green 2020). In short, people often learn about what is important and what to think about different issues by observing what political leaders (e.g., the president, members of congress, etc.) and groups (e.g., political parties) say and do. Not surprisingly, people are especially likely to adopt the views of leaders and groups with whom they agree and to reject the views of leaders and groups with whom they disagree (Zaller 1992; Rahn 1993; Druckman, Peterson, and Slothuus 2013).

Overall, we argue that the public likely picks up elite cues not only on political issues but also on political norms (and violations of those norms). In the context of the 2020 election, a number of pieces of evidence support the idea of public responsiveness to elite cues on norms. For instance, President Trump’s comments about a peaceful transfer of power and unwillingness to accept the election results generated considerable media attention in the months and weeks that followed. And it appears that the public almost immediately became aware of the president’s remarks. For example, in a national survey fielded from September 24-26, 2020, just a few days after President Trump’s first public comments on his unwillingness to commit to a peaceful transfer of power (which occurred during a September 23, 2020 press conference), the majority of voters (60%) said that they had already read or heard a lot or some ab...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Dedication
• Introduction: Democratic Norms, Group Perceptions, and the 2020 Election
• 1 Democratic Norms, Social Projection, and False Consensus in the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election
• 2 Out-Party Cues and Factual Beliefs in an Era of Negative Partisanship
• 3 Getting out the Black Vote in Washington DC: A Field Experiment
• 4 Sleepy Joe? Recalling and Considering Donald Trump’s Strategic Use of Nicknames
• 5 Disclosures of Character: Formal Aspects of Presidential Campaign Announcement Speeches
• Conclusion: Reflections on Democratic and Social Norms after the 2020 Election
• Index