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43% of Democrats vs. 70% of Republicans think that people "should be allowed to express unpopular opinions in public, even those that are deeply offensive". Strikingly, a similar proportion of Democrats support speech restrictions (39%). 
By far the most supportive of speech restrictions are--wait for it--white liberals and democrats in the 18-29 age category.
And in what should contribute to the ongoing debate between @JeffreyASachs and @HdxAcademy over the extent that students are turning against free speech, the data here lends support to the latter position...
Specifically, college students (circa 2018) are significantly more supportive of speech restrictions than non-students
cc @PsychRabble
cc @PsychRabble
And Democratic students (58%) are the most restrictionist overall
Look forward to see how you'll spin this @JeffreyASachs 😉
Woops, forgot to include the student/party-id graph above
Here's a link to the data for those who are interested voterstudygroup.org/publications/2…
Quick update: Someone asked whether the same or a similar question was asked in an earlier year. While worded somewhat different, a Pew survey from 2015 did indeed ask substantively *similar* questions. The disparities noted above are present but appear to be more modest
One might think that Republicans would be more likely to support the banning of religiously offensive speech. But that doesn't appear to be the case (at least in 2015)
By age group, we see a similar generational divide
Dems by Age Group
Reps by age group (remember, circa 2015)
My general impression is that Republicans/Conservatives are less concerned with 'offensive speech' (even when it insults their religious beliefs). Instead, they're more likely to be triggered by/favor regulating [symbolic] acts of betrayal (e.g. flag burning)
This is to contrast with *Libertarians*, who are generally opposed to banning/regulating anything.
To return to the original (i.e. 2018) data, I also find that democratic students are significantly more restrictionist than non-students even within the SAME age group (18-29). Not sure how much to read into this (p=0.015), but interesting nonetheless.
No similar pattern among 18-29 Republicans
See here for attitudes on campus speech
(similar data forthcoming)
(similar data forthcoming)
A January 2018 survey of Americans ages 16-24 reveals similar partisan/ideological divides over discursive norms when discussing sensitive issues (unrelated to government regulation of speech, but still relevant IMO)
Yet another data point to add: A 2017 survey of young Americans (18-34) shows Republicans to be the most supportive of the right of unpopular groups to parade/demonstrate.
1/n With the release of the 2018 General Social Survey, I have new data to add to this thread. The general picture, which is consistent with some of the findings shared above, is this: White liberals in the 18-29 group have grown increasingly intolerant of 'racist speech'. They..
2/n ..are significantly more intolerant than older generations of white liberals--let alone moderates and conservatives. Their tolerance is now on par with older non-liberal minorities, and are even somewhat less tolerant liberal minorities.
3/n So let us begin. As you'll see in every one of the graphs below, the trendline for 18-29 White liberals sticks out (and downwardly so). No similar patterns are observed for other white subgroups. Below we see that just 43% of 18-29 white liberals would allow a racist to speak
4/n Zooming in for a closeup, we see a stark and significant divide between 18-29 white liberals but no comparable generational divide within other ideological subgroups (though 18-29 conservatives seem to be somewhat more tolerant)
5/n Among their non-white counterparts, we see a lot of noise and no discernable patterns across time.
6/n On this item, 18-29 white liberals are less tolerant than their non-white 18-29 liberal peers, but are now virtually as intolerant as other non-white age/ideological subgroups.
7/n When it comes to allowing racists to teach, the picture is similar. Whereas 64% of 18-29 white libs would have allowed a racist to teach in 2010, this figure falls to 34% in 2018.
8/n Moving in again for a closeup, we see that 18-29 wh libs are the least tolerant of the bunch, and their conservative peers the most
9/n The data here is again very erratic among non-whites. It's hard to see any consistent pattern among the different subgroups.
10/n
11/n 47% of 18-29 White liberals would allow racist books to be kept in the library, as compared to 87% in 2010.
12/n Closeup
13/n Among non-whites
14/n As shown here, 33.7% of 18-29 white vs. 43.4% of non-white liberals would tolerate racists books in libraries.
15/n Finally, I added up all three items to create a tolerance index. Doing so captures the full extent of how far 18-29 white liberals have fallen--roughly 0.75 of a standard deviation since 2010, in fact.
16/n Another closeup
17/n No similar pattern among 18-29 non-white liberals. If anything, their scores have slightly increased.
18/n Overall, and to sum up, the tolerance for racist speech among 18-29 white liberals now matches that of non-whites (and, among liberals, is slightly lower).
19/n Using the pre-2018 dataset, @JeffreyASachs et al. showed that younger Americans are, in fact, more supportive of free speech than their parents and grandparents. At least when it comes to tol. of racist speech, 18-29 white liberals seem to be moving in the other direction.
20/n Probably also worth noting that nearly 59% of 18-29 white liberals consider themselves 'activists'. So there you have it.
