Jack Andolina, Bright Line Watch presentation on the health of U.S. democracy

Jack Andolina, a post-baccalaureate fellow in the Program in Quantitative Social Science and a Bright Line Watch researcher, gave a presentation on February 18 titled, "Accelerated transgressions in the second Trump presidency: Bright Line Watch February 2025 survey." Jack's talk summarized recent survey results on the state of American democracy.   

Bright Line Watch, a collaborative research project involving scholars at Dartmouth, Yale, the University of Chicago, and the University of Rochester commissions parallel surveys of the public and political scientists on the state of democracy in the United States. Twenty-four waves and counting, Bright Line Watch has conducted surveys since 2017. Since arriving at Dartmouth in August 2024, Jack has conducted data analysis and survey design for five Bright Line Watch reports, and he assists with research projects relating to the nature of exposure and engagement with misinformation on online platforms.  

Summary of Jack's talk: 

In the weeks since Donald Trump regained the presidency in 2025, his administration has issued a wave of executive actions that expand presidential authority, challenging key democratic principles such as congressional oversight, the neutrality of law enforcement, and the non-political use of government agencies. To assess the state of American democracy, we conducted parallel surveys of 520 political scientists, 40 misinformation experts, and a representative sample of 2,750 Americans from January 31 to February 10, 2025. Our findings reveal that overall assessments of U.S. democracy have fallen to their lowest levels since 2017, with experts and the public rating it at 55 and 53, respectively. While Republican perceptions of democracy improved slightly (59), even Trump's co-partisans recognize declines in specific democratic principles such as fairness of legal investigations, the influence of campaign donations, and respect for political adversaries. Experts view Trump's pardons of January 6 offenders and firings of executive officials as the most serious threats to democracy, alongside the growing influence of Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency. Additionally, forecasts by political science experts and our new sample of Metaculus forecasters closely align, predicting that future negative scenarios for democracy are likely. Partisan divisions are stark: large majorities of Republicans support actions that experts deem harmful, while Democrats overwhelmingly oppose them. Notably, 55% of Trump-aligned Republicans favor a strong leader unconstrained by Congress. While Democrats express greater support for aggressive action against corporate CEOs in the name of economic justice than Republicans, both parties exhibit similar levels of support for aggressive measures against political opponents, with property crimes and online harassment receiving more approval than physical violence. 

The Report was published on Febuary 24th, and is available to view here.