Who Protests, What Do They Protest, And Why?

We examine individuals' decisions to attend Black Lives Matter protests and demonstrations calling for less stringent COVID-19 public health measures (e.g., for swifter reopening of businesses) during the summer of 2020 in the US. We find that attending one type of protest strongly predicts attending the other, which does not align with dominant contemporary narratives suggesting these movements were diametrically opposed. We also provide evidence that individuals were deliberate in their protest decisions and broadly representative of the US population, countering additional narratives that protesters were capricious, confused, or extremists with fringe views. Our findings suggest that a potentially mainstream combination of social preferences is to abhor excessive police violence and to also worry about the economic consequences of stringent public health measures. These views were pitted against one another and did not fit into often dichotomous political options presented by political parties. We therefore conclude that even in well-functioning democracies, protests can draw attention to potentially widely-held social preferences that might be overlooked by prevailing political narratives, party platforms and policy options.