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Unconditional Support for Trump’s Resistance Prior to Election Day

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2022

Brendan Hartnett Open the ORCID record for Brendan Hartnett [Opens in a new window]  and
Alexandra Haver
Brendan Hartnett
Affiliation:
Tufts University, USA
Alexandra Haver
Affiliation:
New York University School of Law, USA
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Abstract

Using survey data collected less than two weeks before the 2020 presidential election, we investigated why likely Trump voters would support Trump resisting the election results if he lost. We first used an experiment with randomized hypothetical popular-vote margins to test whether support for resistance was contingent on the results of the election. We also directly asked respondents who stated that they would support resistance to explain their reasoning in an open-ended response. In doing so, we gained insight into one of the most turbulent elections in American history and examined how support for resistance existed before the election due to both misinformation about voter fraud and hyperpartisanship that made Trump voters view the electoral process itself as illegitimate.

Type
Article
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 55 , Issue 4 , October 2022 , pp. 661 - 667
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Political Science Association

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Supplementary material: Link

Hartnett and Haver Dataset

Dataset

https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/YNUE8B
Link