Civic Education Nudges Partisans to Choose Democracy Over Party

Why This Matters: Partisan polarization can lead voters to back co-partisan candidates even when those candidates threaten democratic norms. Melek Hilal Eroglu asks whether civic education can blunt that danger by encouraging people to ‘choose democracy over party’—that is, to support an opposing-party candidate who upholds democratic norms when their own party’s candidate does not.

What Melek Hilal Eroglu Tests: The study evaluates whether brief online civic education messages that emphasize the benefits of democratic versus autocratic regimes change how polarized individuals weigh party loyalty against commitments to democratic rules and norms.

Online Civic Education Intervention: The intervention was delivered to more than 41,000 respondents across 33 countries. Participants received civic education messages highlighting democratic institutions and the costs of autocratic rule, and the study measured their willingness to support an out-party candidate who defends democracy versus a co-partisan candidate who undermines it, as well as changes in party evaluations and polarization.

Key Findings:

• Exposure to civic education messages significantly reduces the negative effect of partisan polarization on voters’ willingness to choose a pro-democracy candidate from the opposing party; in other words, civic education makes polarized voters more likely to prioritize democratic norms over party loyalty.
• The intervention also produces a modest increase in measured polarization. Follow-up analysis shows this effect stems from improved evaluations of parties that uphold democratic norms, widening the gap between democratic and anti-democratic parties rather than increasing animus per se.

Implications for Policy and Research: The results suggest civic education can be a practical tool to protect democratic practice by changing candidate-choice calculations among polarized voters. At the same time, these programs may accentuate differences between parties based on their commitment to democratic norms, producing a nuanced trade-off for designers of democracy-promotion efforts and scholars studying polarization and public opinion.