Silent Voices or More than a Feeling? January 6th Insurrection and Racialized (Non)Attitudes

When do survey respondents choose to withhold feelings on questions related to polarizing and democratically important events such as the January 6th insurrection? While extant research has shown that “don’t know” responses or skipped questions in survey research function as a way to avoid expressing a socially undesirable opinion or feeling, no work has explored how nonresponses may be impacting our understanding of the American public’s support for the January 6th insurrection. Through analysis of the nonresponse answers within the 2022 Health of Democracy Survey, we show that a persistent pattern of item nonresponse was present among all racial groups asked to provide their feelings toward insurrectionists, and that women were significantly more likely to refuse sharing their feelings—warm or cold. Additionally, we find that although racialized feelings previously linked with support of the insurrection (racial resentment, racial affect, and white replacement theory) were not significantly related to January 6th item nonresponse, racial attitudes did hold an important relationship with January 6th item nonresponse among Non-Whites. Our results therefore highlight the importance of the intersection of race and gender in conversations about democratic norms, racial attitudes, and withholding views about highly politicized and polarizing events.