UC Berkeley

Our analysis of data from a nationally representative survey of adults shows that beliefs in whether the January 6th insurrection was justifiable and whether it required investigation through the creation of the U.S. House Select Committee are inexorably steeped in affective partisanship and racial resentment. It is easy to attribute the insurrection to partisan machinations, but evidence shows that racial resentment is the dominant explanation: this includes the fact that allegations of election fraud were centered on districts with large African American and Latino populations; that many of the insurrectionists were white nationalists, racists, and members of radical right-wing groups; and that a large proportion of the electorate had voted to retain a president who fueled whites’ sense of victimization by African Americans and other minorities. We argue that reactions to the legitimacy of the January 6th insurrection have become an example of how racial resentment fuels affective partisanship.