Replication Data for: Geosocietal Support for Democracy: Survey Evidence from Ukraine

We examine why public support for democracy in Ukraine increased after Russia’s 2014 intervention and surged after Russia’s 2022 invasion – despite concerns that wartime quest for security diminishes support for political freedoms. We statistically analyze original data generated as part of annual opinion surveys of Ukraine’s National Academy of Sciences Institute of Sociology in 2017 (N=2,199), 2018 (N=1,800) and a 2021-2022 panel survey with the same respondents (N=475) interviewed before and after Russia’s invasion. Our findings indicate that wartime democracy support is in significant respects geosocietal—arising from mobilization of civic national identity conditioned by salient geopolitical threats. Civic pride, attribution of threat to an external authoritarian aggressor, and war onset were the strongest and most robust predictors of multiple democracy support indicators overriding personal loss and stress. The findings call for more attention to the interaction of geopolitical and social contexts shaping political attitudes with implications for democratic futures globally.