At a time of potential danger to American democratic norms and institutions, it is more urgent than ever for scholars to highlight the risks to our system of government. In this spirit, Bright Line Watch brings together a group of political scientists to monitor democratic practices, their resilience, and potential threats.
Featured report
Courts, Campaigns, and Confidence in American Democracy
The 2024 campaign promises to be like nothing the United States has seen before. Normally, spring of a presidential election year is dominated by a competitive campaign for the nomination of at least one major party. This year, neither the Democratic nor Republican primary contest is competitive. Instead, the coming months appear set to be dominated by legal machinations, with Republican front-runner Donald Trump facing four sets of criminal indictments and his legal team deploying appeals and procedural objections to delay trials for as long as possible. In this context, and with attention to the potential implications of these developments for the performance of American democracy, we fielded parallel surveys of 678 political scientists and a representative sample of 2,798 Americans from February 15–23, 2024. Given the importance of precisely measuring Republican perceptions of topics such as the 2020 election and prosecutions of Trump, the public survey included an oversample of Republicans. It is, however, weighted to be representative of the American public as a whole.
March 2024
Bright Line Watch in the media
A Year After Jan. 6, Millions of Americans Support Violence by Blake Hounshell and Leah Askarinam at The New York Times, 1/5/2022
Why Jan. 6th Was Not A Turning Point by FiveThirtyEight Politics, 1/4/2022
by Jonathan Bernstein at The Washington Post, 12/23/2021
by Dana Milbank at The Washington Post, 12/17/2021
by Jonathan Bernstein at The Washington Post, 12/17/21
Republicans’ belief in Trump’s ‘Big Lie’ holds steady as confidence in U.S. elections dips by Eli Stokols at Los Angeles Times, 12/16/2021
by Travis Waldron at HuffPost, 12/16/21
by Christopher Ingraham at The Why Axis (Substack), 12/16/2021