Public Opinion and Foreign Electoral Intervention

Foreign electoral intervention is an increasingly important tool for influencing politics in other countries, yet we know little about when citizens would tolerate or condemn foreign efforts to sway elections. In this article, we use experiments to study American public reactions to revelations of f...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inThe American political science review Vol. 114; no. 3; pp. 856 - 873
Main Authors TOMZ, MICHAEL, WEEKS, JESSICA L. P.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published New York, USA Cambridge University Press 01.08.2020
Subjects
Democracy
Elections
Electoral reform
Endorsements
Experiments
Foreign opinion
Intervention
Partisanship
Political Candidates
Political parties
Political science
Politics
Power
Presidential elections
Public opinion
Public opinion surveys
Retaliation
Terrorism
Vignettes
War
Lebanon
United States > US
Russia
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Summary:Foreign electoral intervention is an increasingly important tool for influencing politics in other countries, yet we know little about when citizens would tolerate or condemn foreign efforts to sway elections. In this article, we use experiments to study American public reactions to revelations of foreign electoral intervention. We find that even modest forms of intervention polarize the public along partisan lines. Americans are more likely to condemn foreign involvement, lose faith in democracy, and seek retaliation when a foreign power sides with the opposition, than when a foreign power aids their own party. At the same time, Americans reject military responses to electoral attacks on the United States, even when their own political party is targeted. Our findings suggest that electoral interference can divide and weaken an adversary without provoking the level of public demand for retaliation typically triggered by conventional military attacks.
ISSN:0003-0554
1537-5943
DOI:10.1017/S0003055420000064