Assistant to the Professor: Ok, that's a bit outside my ballpark, but I know specifically on the question of democracy you cannot ask someone like this. They don't know what democracy is and we don't know what they think democracy is.

When was the last time someone published an article on the measurement validity of this commonly used public polling question format?

I think this might actually show how pointless vague questions like "who is better on X" are.

In mainstream press or academic press? BC there is plenty in comparative politics of the difficulty of measuring support for democracy.

Academic. Let me formulate the question more specifically: to what extent do we have confidence that "candidate preference on issue x" says anything about the issues causing respondent to prefer the candidate, as opposed to just a reflection of candidate preference?

Ok, that's a bit outside my ballpark, but I know specifically on the question of democracy you cannot ask someone like this. They don't know what democracy is and we don't know what they think democracy is.

Fair enough, I was more generally interested in the "which candidate is better on x" question format. The article does highlight some other questions asking about descriptions of forms of government though. The responses are not as strongly pro democratic as I'd personally like to see

That having been said, it's revealing in terms of the limited usefulness of campaigning on the basis or protecting democracy. Biden saying he'll protect democracy would be in the "latitude of rejection"* for some people. (*: cf Hovland & Sharif communication studies)

"basis OF protecting"

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