Support for Democracy in El Salvador

Tim linked to a report from El Faro that showed that 45.6% of Salvadorans would support a military coup if the economic and security situations in the country are not resolved. The poll was conducted between November 8 and 13 with 1,200 people and has a margin of error of +/- 2.8%.

That's not great news, of course. The good people at LAPOP carried out surveys in 2008 and 2010 that ask basically the same question. You can find the details in Political Culture of Democracy in El Salvador, 2010. 

According to their research, Salvadoran support for a military coup declined from 43.1% in 2008 to 40.9% in 2010. In that case, while it's a pretty high number of Salvadorans who would support a coup, it's down from recent years.

In another series of questions, Salvadorans were asked “Democracy may have problems, but it is better than any other form of government. To what extent do you agree or disagree with these statements?”Support has bounced around a bit over the last six years from 68.8% in 2004 to 61.3% in 2006, back up to 68.4% in 2008, and finally settling at 64.1% in 2010.

On the one hand, citizen support for democracy is pretty low, especially compared to other countries in the region, and support for a military coup is still alarmingly high. On the other hand, the survey results do show that support for democracy is higher today than it has been in the recent past.

LAPOP's 2010 data was collected in February 2010, eight months before the new survey reported in El Faro. You can't directly compare the two surveys so I don't want to draw any strong conclusions about trends in support for democracy  between February (LAPOP) and November (EL Faro). We're just going to have to wait a bit until we get additional survey data.