When I lived in China, a decade ago, I often saw propaganda billboards covered in words that supposedly expressed the country’s values: Patriotism. Harmony. Equality. And … Democracy. Indeed, China claims to consider itself a democratic country. So do Russia, Cuba, Iran, and so on down the list of nations ranked by their level of commitment to rights and liberties. Even North Korea fancies itself part of the club. It’s right there in the official name: the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

I thought of those Chinese billboards recently, when a postelection poll showed that many American voters touted the importance of democracy while supporting a candidate who had tried to overturn the results of the previous presidential election. According to a survey by the Associated Press, a full one-third of Trump voters said that democracy was their top issue. (Two-thirds of Harris voters said the same thing.) In a poll conducted before Joe Biden dropped out of the race, seven out of 10 uncommitted swing-state voters said they doubted that Donald Trump would accept the election results if he lost—but more people said they’d trust Trump to handle threats to democracy than said they’d trust Biden.

Almost all Americans say they support democracy. They even agree that it’s in trouble. But when researchers drill down, they find that different people have very different ideas about what democracy means and what threatens its survival, and that democracy is just one competing value among many. In the collective mind of U.S. voters, the concept of democracy appears to be so muddled, and their commitment to it so conditional, that it makes you wonder what, if anything, they’d do anything to stop its erosion—or whether they’d even notice that happening.

[Yoni Appelbaum: Americans aren’t practicing democracy anymore]

Americans perceive democracy through an almost completely partisan lens. In recent polls, Democrats tend to cite Trump—in particular, the likelihood of him seeking to subvert elections—as the biggest threat to democracy. They also point to gerrymandering, voter suppression, and Trump’s rhetoric about using the government to exact retribution as causes for concern. For Republicans, by contrast, threats to democracy take the form of mainstream media, voting by mail, immigration, and what they see as politically motivated prosecutions of Trump. Perhaps the best Rorschach test is voter-ID laws, which get characterized as “election integrity” or “voter suppression” depending on the perspective: Republicans see them as a commonsense way to make elections more accurate and accountable, while Democrats see them as a ploy to disenfranchise voters who don’t have state-issued identification. No surprise, then, that campaigning on a platform of preserving democracy didn’t work for Kamala Harris. Invoking the term to rally support assumes a shared understanding of what it means.

Even more troubling, American voters rarely prioritize democracy over other considerations. For the most part, we’re willing to overlook mischief that undermines democracy as long as our own team is the one doing it. A 2020 study in the American Political Science Review by Matthew H. Graham and Milan W. Svolik of Yale University found that only 3.5 percent of Americans would vote against a candidate whose policies they otherwise support if that candidate took antidemocratic actions, like gerrymandering or reducing the number of polling stations in an unfriendly district. Another survey found that when left-wing voters were presented with hypothetical undemocratic behavior by right-wing politicians—prohibiting protests, say, or giving private groups the ability to veto legislation—62 percent of them considered it undemocratic. But when the same behavior was attributed to left-wing politicians, only 36 percent saw it as undemocratic.

[Graeme Wood: Only about 3.5 percent of Americans care about democracy]

Some scholars have dubbed the phenomenon “democratic hypocrisy.” Others, however, argue that voters aren’t pretending that the antidemocratic behavior they’re supporting is democratic; they really feel that way. “People are pretty good at reasoning their way to believing that whatever they want to happen is the democratic outcome,” Brendan Nyhan, a political-science professor at Dartmouth, told me. That’s especially true if you can tell yourself that this could be your last chance before the other guy abolishes elections altogether. We just have to sacrifice a little democracy for the sake of democracy, the thinking goes. Graham, who is now an assistant professor of political science at Temple University, has studied the reaction to the 2020 presidential election and the “Stop the Steal” movement. “Our conclusion was that pretty much everyone who says in polls that the election was stolen actually believes it,” he told me.

The disturbing implication of the political-science research is that if the typical forms of incipient democratic backsliding did occur, at least half the country likely wouldn’t notice or care. Stacking the bureaucracy with loyalists, wielding law enforcement against political enemies, bullying critics into silence—these measures, all credibly threatened by President-Elect Trump, might not cut through the fog of partisan polarization. Short of tanks in the streets, most people might not perceive the destruction of democratic norms in their day-to-day life. And if Trump and his allies lose elections or fail to enact the most extreme pieces of their agenda, those data points will be held up as proof that anyone crying democratic erosion is a Chicken Little. “This is a debate that’s going to be very dumb,” Nyhan said.

You might think that, in a democracy, support for democracy itself would be nonnegotiable—that voters would reject any candidate or leader who didn’t clear that bar, because they would recognize that weakening democracy threatens their way of life. But that simple story isn’t always true. The job of genuinely pro-democracy politicians is to convince voters that democratic norms and institutions really are connected to more tangible issues that they care about—that an America with less democracy would most likely also be one with more economic inequality, for example, and fewer individual liberties.

The alternative to making and remaking the case for democracy is a descent into apathetic nihilism. Just look at the Chinese media’s coverage of the U.S. election. A video shared by China News Service said that whoever won would merely be “the face of the ruling elite, leaving ordinary people as mere spectators.” The state broadcaster China Central Television claimed that the election was plagued by “unprecedented chaos.” That kind of talk makes sense coming from democracy’s enemies. The danger is when democracies themselves start to believe it.

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How do you transform something so big, so existential, into something people can grasp? Last night, Oprah Winfrey gave it a shot as the penultimate speaker at Kamala Harris’s grand-finale rally in Philadelphia: “If we don’t show up tomorrow, it is entirely possible that we will not have the opportunity to ever cast a ballot again.”

Every presidential election is the biggest ever, but this one lacks an adequate superlative. Throughout 2024, both parties have leaned on the imagery and messaging of our Founding Fathers. The Donald Trump acolyte and former GOP candidate Vivek Ramaswamy frequently says that we’re living in a “1776 moment.” Josh Shapiro, Pennsylvania’s democratic governor, last night invoked Benjamin Franklin’s warning about our still-young country: “a republic, if you can keep it.” It’s an oft-repeated line, but that “if” lingered in a way I’d never felt before.

Shapiro was peering out at the tens of thousands of people standing shoulder to shoulder along Benjamin Franklin Parkway at the chilly election-eve gathering. Many attendees had been there for hours, and more than a few had grown visibly restless. Each emotion, both on the stage and in the crowd, was turned up to 11—fear, hope, promise, peril. At the lectern, Shapiro’s inflection mirrored that of former President Barack Obama. So much of Harris’s campaign send-off had the feel of Obama’s 2008 celebration in Chicago’s Grant Park. Will.i.am came ready with a song (a sequel to his Obama ’08 anthem, “Yes We Can”) titled—what else?—“Yes She Can.”

Around 11:30 p.m., Harris finally appeared at the base of the Rocky Steps to make her final pitch. Beyond the symbolic proximity to the Constitution Center, the Liberty Bell, and Independence Hall, this particular setting was a visual metaphor for, as Harris put it, those who “start as the underdog and climb to victory.” (Sadly, no one in the A/V booth thought to blast the Rocky horns as she walked up.) The truth is, it’s a bit of a stretch to call Harris the underdog. She is, after all, the quasi-incumbent, and polls suggest that the race is tied. Still, you sort of knew what she was getting at with the Rocky thing.

For the past nine years, the whole political world, and much of American life, has revolved around Donald Trump. He is an inescapable force, a fiery orange sun that promises to keep you safe, happy, and warm but, in the end, will burn you. Harris is running on preserving freedom and democracy, but she’s really just running against Trump. In surveys and interviews, many Americans say that they, too, are voting against Trump rather than for Harris. The election is about the future of America, but in a real sense, it’s about fear of one person.

Harris had already been in Scranton, Allentown, and Pittsburgh yesterday. But now her campaign had reached its finish line, in Philadelphia, and though I heard cautious optimism, none of the Harris campaign staffers I spoke with last night dared offer any sort of prediction. The closest I got was that some believe they’ll have enough internal data to know which states are actually in their column by late tonight, and that they expect the race might be called tomorrow morning or afternoon.

Trump’s campaign, meanwhile, wrapped up in an expectedly apocalyptic and campy manner. The truth is, some of his chaos worked—he never lost our attention. Consider the weeklong national conversation about the word garbage. A comedian’s stupid joke deeming Puerto Rico “a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean” might end up being a determining factor in a Trump defeat, but President Joe Biden’s comment likening Trump supporters to garbage also proved a pivotal moment for the MAGA movement. In response to Biden, Trump appeared in a bright-orange safety vest as a way of owning the insult—a billionaire showing solidarity with the working class. In a similar late-campaign moment, Trump donned an apron and served fries at a (closed) McDonald’s. It wasn’t the work wear so much as the contrast that told the story: In both instances, Trump kept his shirt and tie on. These theatrical juxtapositions, however inane, have a way of sticking in your brain.

But not everyone gets the reality-TV component of his act. Many of his supporters take his every utterance as gospel. At Trump’s final rallies, some showed up in their own safety vests or plastic trash bags. Trump’s movement had quite literally entered its garbage phase. In his closing argument last night, Trump’s running mate, J. D. Vance, called Harris “trash.” And Trump, days after miming oral sex onstage, kept the grossness going, mouthing that House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi is a “bitch.”

Trump’s campaign was much longer than Harris’s, and for that reason, I spoke with far more Republicans than Democrats at campaign events this year. Across different cities and states, it was clear that people stood for hours at Trump rallies because they still obsess over Trump the man, and because Trumpism has become something like a religion. Trump makes a significant portion of the country feel good, either by stoking their resentments or simply making them believe he hears their concerns. In the end, though, he’s also the one feeding their fears.

It can be easy to write off American politics as a stadium-size spectacle that’s grown only cringier and uglier over the past decade. But last night, in my conversations with Philadelphians who’d braved the chill to see Harris, it became clear that the show was just the show, and that they had other priorities. Sure, they’d get to see Ricky Martin perform “Livin’ La Vida Loca” and hear Lady Gaga sing “God Bless America,” but all of that was extra. A trio of 20-year-old Temple University students—two of whom wore Brat-green Kamala beanies, one of whom wore a camo Harris Walz trucker hat—told me about their hometowns. One had come from nearby Bucks County, which he’d watched grow Trumpy over his teen years. Another was from the Jersey Shore and said she believed that people would egg her house if she put a Harris sign in the front yard. Another, who was from Texas, summed up the risks posed by Trump more succinctly than almost anyone I’ve spoken with over the past two years of covering the campaign: “He’ll let people get away with promoting hate and violence in our country, and I think that is my biggest fear.”

This election has been an elaborate traveling circus, with performers playing into all manner of dreams and nightmares. Trump has long relied on the allure of the show, and the preponderance of celebrity cameos at Harris’s recent rallies proves that she, too, understands the importance of star power. But now that all of the swing states have been barnstormed, and the billions of dollars have been spent, what’s left? The pageantry has entered its final hours. Tomorrow (or the next day … or the next day), a new iteration of American life begins. We won’t be watching it; we’ll be living it.

Related:

Trump’s followers are living in a dark fantasy. Podcast: Does America want chaos?

Here are four new stories from The Atlantic:

This election is a test. Three tips for following election results without losing your mind X is a white-supremacist site, Charlie Warzel writes. The micro-campaign to target privately liberal wives

Today’s News

A federal judge ruled against state and national Republicans who tried to invalidate roughly 2,000 absentee ballots returned by hand over the weekend and yesterday in some of Georgia’s Democratic-leaning counties. The FBI said that many of the bomb threats made to polling locations in several states “appear to originate from Russian email domains.” Officials in Georgia and Michigan reported that their states received bomb threats linked to Russia. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fired his defense minister, Yoav Gallant, over their differences on how the war in Gaza should be conducted. Gallant, who was seen as a more moderate voice in Netanyahu’s war cabinet, will be replaced by Foreign Affairs Minister Israel Katz.

Evening Read

Justin Sullivan / Getty

The Right’s New Kingmaker

By Ali Breland

Charlie Kirk took his seat underneath a tent that said Prove Me Wrong. I wedged myself into the crowd at the University of Montana, next to a cadre of middle-aged men wearing mesh hats. A student standing near me had on a hoodie that read Jesus Christ. It was late September, and several hundred of us were here to see the conservative movement’s youth whisperer. Kirk, the 31-year-old founder of Turning Point USA, was in Missoula for a stop on his “You’re Being Brainwashed Tour,” in which he goes from college to college doing his signature shtick of debating undergraduates …

I had not traveled to Montana simply to see Kirk epically own college kids. (That’s not a hard thing to do, and in any case, I could just watch his deep catalog of debate videos.) I’d made the trip because I had the feeling that Kirk is moving toward the core of the conservative movement.

Read the full article.

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Illustration by Anthony Gerace. Sources: Hulton Archive; Joe Vella / Alamy.

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