Live Poster Session: https://wesleyan.zoom.us/j/91566760593
Rahm Rodkey
Rahm Rodkey is a third-year majoring in Government and Sociology at Wesleyan University from New York City. He is also co-president of the Wesleyan chapter of J Street U. Outside of school, he enjoys running and hiking.
Abstract: This study examines the association between ideology and sympathy for political violence among voters in the 2024 U.S. election, analyzing voter beliefs across three dimensions of identity: party identification, religiosity, and race.
Logistic regression analyses showed that Republicans were significantly less likely than Democrats to sympathize with political violence (OR 0.72, p=0.018). When controlling for race and religiosity, Party ID becomes insignificant, suggesting that race confounds the partisan difference in support for violence. White voters were 68% less likely than Black voters to sympathize with political violence (OR 0.32, p<0.001). Highly religious Americans were 38% less likely to sympathize with political violence (OR 0.62, p=0.012).
These findings suggest that race may have been more significant than partisan identity in driving differences in sympathy for political violence in the 2024 election. Further research is needed to determine the role of other covariates such as age and income level.