US democracy has settled into diminished state, experts find | US politics
The health of American democracy, as measured by those who study it most closely, has settled into a diminished state, according to a new survey released Tuesday; It has stabilized after last year’s sharp decline, but is still well below levels recorded before the start of Donald Trump’s second term.
Findings from the nonpartisan democracy monitoring project Bright Line WatchThe research, which surveyed hundreds of US academics at American colleges and universities since 2017, suggests that the erosion of norms identified after Trump’s return to the White House last year has hardened towards a new foundation. The public also has a pessimistic view of American democracy, but is sharply divided along partisan lines on how well the system works, the latest poll finds.
The report draws on two waves of research. The first was held in late December and early January, a volatile period when the Trump administration stepped up immigration crackdowns in Minnesota and U.S. military forces bombed Venezuela and captured its leader Nicolás Maduro. Given the seriousness of both events, researchers opted to conduct a second survey in February and early March to account for any changes in perceptions rather than publishing potentially outdated findings.
In preliminary findings, experts’ views of US democracy rose to 60 out of 100, up from a record low of 53 in the first months of Trump’s second term. Researchers suggest that this increase can be attributed to Democrats’ success in a series of off-year elections; This, the report says, is a sign that “the playing field has not been tilted against the opposition and free and fair elections are still possible.” After Maduro’s ouster, experts’ scores dropped to previous levels (56) and remained consistent at 57 in the second survey.
Still, those ratings were considerably higher than expected for the end of 2025, when forecasters predicted U.S. democratic performance would dip to 50. (AI forecasters predicted 52.)
Throughout Trump’s first term and Joe Biden’s presidency, ratings of US democracy were relatively stable; it never fell below 60 or exceeded 70. Since then, scientists’ views on U.S. democratic health have largely stabilized at lower levels, with modest fluctuations tied to major events, the researchers concluded.
If this trend provides reassurance that democratic performance is no longer rapidly deteriorating, it also underscores a more sobering reality: Experts see little evidence of near-term improvement. On average, they predict that American democracy will remain at roughly its current level through 2027, with only gradual improvement expected over the next decade.
Some recent studies have suggested that political scientists to show “pessimism bias” in their assessment of democratic health. Democrats argued that winning control of one or both houses of Congress in the November midterm elections would serve to check the president’s authoritarian ambitions.
Bright Line Watch’s findings place the United States in a similar position to other recent assessments. Freedom House and by Types of Democracy The (V-Dem) Institute reported a steep decline in democracies, both under the Trump administration. “The pace at which American democracy is currently disintegrating is unprecedented in modern history,” the V-Dem institute said in a statement. annual report It was released earlier this month.
The White House and Trump himself have strongly opposed any suggestion that the president governs like an autocrat.
“I don’t like the dictator. I’m not a dictator,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office last year, responding to critics who condemned his deployment of the national guard in Washington. “I am a man of great common sense and a wise man.”
The assessments of academics asked in the Bright Line Watch survey to evaluate U.S. performance on 35 democratic principles changed little, except for an improvement in their views of judicial checks on the executive branch; Researchers believe this may reflect a recent Supreme Court decision restricting Trump’s authority to impose tariffs and ending the deployment of the National Guard in major US cities.
Experts have been “almost unanimously” alarmed by a series of recent actions taken by the Trump administration. Ninety-six percent said Trump’s demand that his attorney general, Pam Bondi, take legal action against his political rivals was a threat to democracy. Similarly, 95% of scholars called the call to “nationalize” voting a threat to democracy, and 93% suggested that Democratic lawmakers’ comments about illegal military orders amounted to “seditious behavior punishable by death.”
But in public, the same actions drew partisan ire and significant approval from Republicans, especially those who identify with Trump’s Maga movement more closely than the Republican party. Remarkably, even as Trump and his allies continue to cast doubt on the integrity of the election, overall public trust in the voting system remains roughly in line with levels before the 2020 election and is less polarized than it was ahead of the 2022 and 2024 midterms and the presidential race.
