Withholding Racialized Feelings towards the January 6th Insurrection and BLM

• In Event: Identity and Measurement in Racial Politics

Abstract

When do survey respondents choose to withhold feelings on questions related to polarizing protests such as Black Lives Matter and the January 6th? While extant research has shown that “don't know” responses or skipped questions in survey research function as a way to avoid expressing a socially undesirable opinion or feeling, no work has shown how this process operates across and between racial and ethnic groups in response to modern racialized issues. Using a unique dataset derived from a nationally representative survey to assess the health of democracy in the United States, this paper will explore why, relative to the nonresponses all other questions in the online survey, there was a noticeable increase in non-response rates for questions surrounding respondents’ feelings towards January 6th protesters and Black Lives Matter (BLM) protesters among all respondents, irrespective of respondent’s race/ethnicity. In doing so, this paper seeks to understand whether there are particular characteristics that can explain why, in 2022, some white respondents withheld opinions about the insurrection and how this compares to minority respondents. Determining the meaning of these non-responses will further our understanding of social desirability, build upon a growing field of research on the importance of non-response rates in survey data, and extend our understanding of the full scope of support and tolerance for the January 6th insurrection compared to BLM activism.

Authors

• Ricardo Ramirez, University of Notre Dame

• Robert Martinez, University of Notre Dame