A number of posts have discussed support for authoritarianism and political violence in the United States.
One poll suggested Americans support checks and balances, but for the other party.
A more recent poll confirms that support for authoritarianism is strong among certain segments of the public.
Public Religion Research Institute:
Growing concerns about the appeal of an authoritarian leader in the United States led PRRI to conduct a new survey of more than 5,000 Americans that revisits long-established measures of authoritarianism and their relationships to Christian nationalism, examines Americans’ commitment to democratic values and willingness to accept political violence, and explores how authoritarian attitudes are linked to views about immigrants and immigration, cultural change, gender roles, and patriarchy.
Relying on two classic approaches to measure authoritarianism, PRRI finds that most Americans do not hold highly authoritarian views.
- Revisiting work first developed in The Authoritarian Personality (1950) and later adapted into the Right-Wing Authoritarianism Scale (RWAS), PRRI finds that 43% of Americans score high on the RWAS, compared with 37% who score low; two in ten Americans qualify as having mixed opinions (20%).
- Around four in ten Americans (41%) score high on an alternative measure of authoritarianism (CRAS) that relies on child-rearing preferences and is less closely associated with conservative political ideology. This is a drop from 57% of Americans who scored high on the CRAS in a previous 2016 PRRI national survey.
Right-wing authoritarian views are more prevalent among Republicans, particularly those who hold favorable views of Trump, white evangelical Protestants, and weekly churchgoers.
- Two-thirds of Republicans score high on the RWAS (67%), compared with 35% of independents, and 28% of Democrats.
- Republicans who hold favorable views of Trump are 36 percentage points more likely than those with unfavorable views of Trump to score high on the RWAS (75% vs. 39%).
- White evangelical Protestants (64%) are the religious group most likely to score high on the RWAS, followed by slim majorities of other Protestants of color (55%), Hispanic Protestants (54%), and white Catholics (54%). A majority of weekly churchgoers (55%) score high on the RWAS, compared with 44% of Americans who attend church a few times a year and 38% of those who never attend church services.
Republicans score high on the Child-Rearing Authoritarianism Scale (CRAS), as do a majority of Black Protestants; church attendance and less formal education are also linked to higher scores.
- A majority of Republicans (54%) score high on the CRAS, compared with one-third of independents (34%) and Democrats (32%).
- Republicans who hold favorable views of Trump are more likely than those with unfavorable views to score high on the CRAS (57% vs. 41%).
- The majority of Black Protestants (57%), other Protestants of color (55%), and white evangelical Protestants (54%), as well as Americans who attend religious services at least once a week (51%), score high on the CRAS.
- Less education is correlated with higher CRAS scores: nearly half of Americans who have not graduated from college (47%) score high on the CRAS, compared with 29% of college graduates.
There is strong overlap among Americans who hold Christian nationalist and authoritarian views.
- Similar to earlier PRRI studies, three in ten Americans identify as either Christian nationalism Adherents (10%) or Sympathizers (20%).
- Strong majorities of Christian nationalism supporters (Adherents and Sympathizers) score high on both the RWAS (74%) and CRAS (61%), more than double the rates of Christian nationalism Skeptics and Rejecters (30% and 31%, respectively).
- Among those who score high on the RWAS, the majority qualify as Christian nationalism supporters (51%) or score high on the CRAS (56%). By contrast, among those with low RWAS scores, just 7% are Christian nationalism supporters and 21% score high on the CRAS.
- Among those with high CRAS scores, 44% qualify as Christian nationalism supporters and 59% score high on the RWAS. By contrast, among those who score low on the CRAS, 14% qualify as Christian nationalism supporters and 25% score high on the CRAS.
