Running against the Law: Framings of Trump’s Prosecution and Democratic Beliefs

• In Event: New Approaches to Attitudes toward Democracy and Its Institutions

Abstract

Prosecutions of political leaders may have double-edged effects in democracies. On
the one hand, they may hold anti-democratic politicians accountable and turn public
opinion against them. On the other, if prosecutions are perceived as illegitimate, they
may provoke backlash and public support for retaliatory violations of democratic
norms. Crucially, citizens receive conflicting information about how to interpret

such prosecutions: Whereas accused political leaders denounce prosecutions as anti-
democratic election interference, non-partisan legal officials defend legal investigations

as democratic accountability. To understand how elite messaging affects public opinion
regarding Donald Trump’s prosecution, we conducted an online survey experiment
with 3,000 Republicans and independents between October and December 2023.
Respondents were randomly assigned to either a pure control, a video of Trump
denouncing the prosecution, or a video from a non-partisan legal official defending
the prosecution. We find that independents are a crucial constituency receptive to
rule-of-law appeals: Whereas messaging from legal officials decreases support for legal
officials and institutions among Republicans, we observe the opposite effect among
independents.

Authors

• Daniel Markovits, Columbia University

• Andrew O'Donohue, Harvard University