DOES DEPOLARIZATION START AT HOME? HOW FOREIGN THREATS AND ELITE CUES AFFECT COMPROMISE AND DEMOCRACY IN THE UNITED STATES

What causes political depolarization? Rather than examining affective polarization, this paper shifts the focus to outcomes that may matter more: willingness to compromise with political opponents and support for democracy. Running six pre-registered survey experiments (three before the 2024 U.S. presidential election, three after, N = 14,321) as a least likely test, we test how elite cues from in-groups and out-groups plus shifts in the degree and kind of external threats influence voters’ willingness to compromise with each other and support democracy. We find that respondents perceive threat in systematically similar ways, but threat perceptions contingently affect willingness to compromise and never increase support for democracy. Respondents are selective in how they react to threats and follow elite cues, often exploiting ambiguity and moderate threat levels to chart their own course.