From Convictions to Elections: U.S. Democracy Amid Legal Turmoil
Bright Line Watch June 2024 surveys

In most pres­i­den­tial election years, late spring and early summer provide a rel­a­tive­ly quiet interlude between primary season and the party con­ven­tions. This year, however, the con­vic­tion of former President Donald Trump on 34 felony counts and a series of landmark Supreme Court decisions could reshape both the upcoming election and American democracy itself. 

In this context, we fielded parallel surveys of 557 political sci­en­tists from June 20–30, 2024 and a rep­re­sen­ta­tive sample of 2,775 Americans from June 20–27. Given the impor­tance of precisely measuring GOP 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.

Our key findings are the following:

Perceptions of legal cases related to the presidency

• The public is now evenly split on whether Donald Trump committed a crime in the New York hush money case with 49% believing he did (versus 43% in our last survey, in February). Democrats increasingly think he did commit a crime and favor prison time as punishment; Republicans say he did not and oppose any penalty. Experts now overwhelmingly believe Trump committed a crime, but a majority of them recommend a fine or probation.

• A majority of the public, and nearly 40% of experts, are suspicious of the district attorney’s motive in pursuing the New York case against Trump, believing that other people would not have faced charges for the same actions.

• Majorities of experts similarly view a range of cases against both Trump and prominent Democrats as politically motivated. Among the public overall, higher shares regard these cases as fair and impartial (though Republicans view the cases against Trump as politically motivated).

• Even before it announced its controversial decision on presidential immunity, confidence in the Supreme Court’s impartiality on cases related to Trump was low — just 48% among the public overall, 33% among Democrats, and only 23% among our expert sample. 

• Public beliefs on judicial recusal in cases involving Trump are sharply polarized by party. Democrats support recusal by Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, two Republican-appointed Supreme Court justices, and Republicans support recusal for the judge in the New York case against Trump. Overall, support for recusal is high, indicating general suspicion toward courts.

• 65% of Republicans (and 16% of Democrats) support the proposition that the next Republican president should bring criminal charges against Joe Biden and other Democrats in response to the indictments of Donald Trump. However, exposure to a statement by a Republican member of Congress explicitly calling for retaliatory prosecutions has no effect on support for such prosecutions among Republicans and decreases support for them among Democrats.

Perceptions of threats to democracy

• Prior to the Court’s decision in Trump v. United States, only one in four Americans supported presidential immunity from prosecution (though a narrow majority of Republicans supported it). Experts viewed the prospect of the Supreme Court upholding presidential immunity and Trump prosecuting his political opponents as grave threats to American democracy. 

• If Trump is reelected in November, experts say it is very likely he will suspend prosecutions against himself, dismiss special counsel Jack Smith, pardon one or more January 6 protestors, issue a self-pardon, and open an investigation of Joe Biden. Overwhelming majorities of Republicans would support these actions while overwhelming majorities of Democrats would oppose them. Majorities in both parties, however, say they would not approve of Trump attempting to stay in office past 2029 (a prospect experts rate as 53% likely).

Perceptions of pres­i­den­tial elections

• The partisan divide over whether Joe Biden was the rightful winner of the 2020 presidential election remains largely unchanged from previous surveys. In particular, a Republican supermajority continues to reject the legitimacy of Biden’s election.

• Looking back to 2012, large majorities of both Republicans and Democrats recognize Barack Obama as the rightful winner of the presidential election that year. For the 2016 election, Republicans overwhelmingly recognize Trump’s win but 38% of Democrats do not. For 2020, Democrats overwhelmingly recognize Biden’s win but 65% of Republicans do not. For the public overall, recognition of the outcomes in these presidential elections has declined from 90% to 77% to 66%.

• Prospective confidence in the integrity of the 2024 vote count is above 90% among Democrats for local and statewide counts, and 88% at the national level. Among Republicans, only 55% are confident of the integrity of the vote count nationwide. Republicans’ confidence in local (79%) and state (78%) vote counts is higher, but still lower than among Democrats. 

Perceptions of democracy overall

• Perceptions of the overall performance of American democracy are stable. Democrats express more favorable views than do Republicans, but political science experts rate American democracy higher than do either group. These ratings have stabilized near their post-2017 high. 

• However, expert projections are less optimistic when asked to forecast the state of U.S. democracy rating in 2027 if Trump wins re-election, anticipating a decline to levels similar to Bolsonaro’s Brazil.

Legal pro­ceed­ings and the pres­i­den­tial election

Of the four criminal cases facing Trump, the case brought by New York County District Attorney Alvin Bragg was widely viewed as the least con­se­quen­tial. Various com­men­ta­tors argued that the case relied on a new and con­vo­lut­ed legal theory and that the actions Trump was accused of – fal­si­fy­ing business records – were rel­a­tive­ly benign, espe­cial­ly compared to the charges made by special counsel Jack Smith. Nonetheless, Bragg secured a con­vic­tion in late May, a few weeks before our survey. 

To estimate the effects of the guilty verdicts in that case, we asked both our expert par­tic­i­pants  and the rep­re­sen­ta­tive public sample whether they think Trump had committed a crime in his “handling of hush money payments to an adult film actress.” The figure below shows the per­cent­age of respon­dents who regard Trump to have committed a crime in that case in our June 2024 data compared to prior surveys conducted in June/July 2023 and February 2024.

The intense media attention that the trial and con­vic­tion attracted and the pre­sen­ta­tion of evidence by the pros­e­cu­tion appears to have moved attitudes. Among the experts, 82% now believe Trump committed a crime — up from 69% in our last pre-trial survey in February of this year. 9% of experts say that Trump did not commit a crime in this case and an addi­tion­al 9% say that they do not know. Expert beliefs that Trump committed crimes in the New York case are still lower than the beliefs they expressed in our February survey about his handling of clas­si­fied documents after leaving the pres­i­den­cy (93%) and his efforts to overturn the 2020 election (91%).

Among the public overall, 49% now believe Trump committed a crime — also up from February, although by a smaller margin of six points. Among Democrats, belief Trump committed a crime increased from 75% in February to 83% in June. By contrast, Republican beliefs about crim­i­nal­i­ty, at 14%, were rel­a­tive­ly unmoved by the trial and con­vic­tions (down just 2 points from February). 

We also asked respon­dents who said Trump committed a crime in the hush money case about the appro­pri­ate pun­ish­ment: none, a fine or probation, or a prison sentence. The figure below plots these quan­ti­ties as a pro­por­tion of each group as a whole. (We pooled those who said Trump did not commit a crime and those who said he did but that he should face no pun­ish­ment for doing so; the latter quantity is always neg­li­gi­ble.) The figure thus rep­re­sents the per­cent­age of experts, Democrats, inde­pen­dents, and Republicans who think Trump should face a given level of punishment.

Among experts, the majority view is that Trump should face a fine or probation, but not prison, for the New York con­vic­tions. This position is out of step with the public sample, which is polarized between strong support for prison time, at 62% among Democrats, and oppo­si­tion to any penalty, at a near consensus 87% among Republicans but also at 55% among inde­pen­dents. There is no public consensus view on how harsh Judge Juan Merchan’s penalties against Trump should be. Moreover, the recent Supreme Court decision on pres­i­den­tial immunity raises uncer­tain­ty about whether the con­vic­tions will survive appeal. Judge Merchan has postponed sen­tenc­ing until September – just two months before the pres­i­den­tial election. 

We also asked respon­dents who said that Trump had not committed a crime whether they believed Trump did not do what he was accused of (i.e., the factual claims in the cases are false) or that Trump took the alleged actions but they did not amount to a crime (i.e., he is being wrongly pros­e­cut­ed for actions that are not illegal). Respondents who said that they did not know if Trump had committed a crime were not asked this follow-up question. 

The next figure shows that, among each group, more people denied the crim­i­nal­i­ty of Trump’s alleged actions than the actions them­selves. Despite the case made by pros­e­cu­tors in New York, nearly half of Republicans, and 21% of inde­pen­dents, believe Trump committed the actions in question but remain unper­suad­ed that they con­sti­tut­ed a crime. 

Trump, meanwhile, maintains that the criminal charges against him are polit­i­cal­ly motivated. To determine how widely that belief is held, we asked both experts and the public whether they agreed that, in the hush money case, “Trump would not have been pros­e­cut­ed if he were someone else.” We pre­vi­ous­ly asked this question in July 2023 and in February 2024.

The figure below shows the per­cent­ages of experts, the public overall, and of Democrats and Republicans among the public who say that Trump was treated dif­fer­ent­ly by prosecutors.

Although Bragg’s team persuaded most Americans, and most experts, that Trump took the actions in question, many remain sus­pi­cious of the prosecution’s motive in pursuing the case. Among the public overall, a solid majority of 56% says Trump was targeted because of who he is — a number that has barely changed since last year despite the trial and con­vic­tions. Republicans (87%) and Democrats (28%) are now even more polarized on this question, moving slightly further apart in the wake of the trial. Among experts, 37% agree that Trump would not have been pros­e­cut­ed if he were someone else — slightly down from February (40%) but still higher than July 2023 (32%). These numbers, however, are notably lower than the 62% of experts who view the case as motivated by politics (discussed further below), sug­gest­ing that there is sub­stan­tial nuance in experts’ assess­ment of the case.

Political influence in high-profile prosecutions

Trump and many of his sup­port­ers claim that the Biden admin­is­tra­tion has weaponized the government’s pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al power. We sought to assess whether the public and experts see recent pros­e­cu­tions of prominent political figures as polit­i­cal­ly motivated. Each respon­dent was presented infor­ma­tion about four pros­e­cu­tions randomly drawn from the following list of eight:

• Hunter Biden for allegedly lying on his appli­ca­tion to purchase a handgun
• Hunter Biden for allegedly com­mit­ting tax evasion
• Democratic Congressman Henry Cuellar (TX) for allegedly accepting bribes
• Democratic Senator Robert Menendez (NJ) for allegedly accepting bribes
• Donald Trump for allegedly retaining clas­si­fied documents after leaving the pres­i­den­cy in 2021
• Donald Trump for allegedly par­tic­i­pat­ing in criminal con­spir­a­cies in his efforts to overturn the 2020 pres­i­den­tial election
• Donald Trump for allegedly fal­si­fy­ing business records in order to influence the 2016 pres­i­den­tial election (by New York state pros­e­cu­tor Alvin Bragg)
• Donald Trump for allegedly con­spir­ing to overturn the result of the 2020 pres­i­den­tial election in Georgia (by Georgia state pros­e­cu­tor Fani Willis)

The first six pros­e­cu­tions listed are cases brought by the Biden Justice Department while the last two were brought by state pros­e­cu­tors. The first four target prominent Democrats whereas the last four concern Trump. Respondents were each shown two cases with a Democratic defendant and two with a Republican defendant.

After being shown each item, par­tic­i­pants were asked, “Do you believe this pros­e­cu­tion has been conducted in a fair and impartial manner or do you believe it is motivated by politics?” The figure below shows, for our expert and public samples (left panel), and for the public broken out by par­ti­san­ship (right panel), the per­cent­ages who indicated whether a pros­e­cu­tion they were shown was probably or def­i­nite­ly motivated by politics. 

Overall, experts were more likely than the public to see political moti­va­tions in pros­e­cu­tions of public figures. In each case, a majority of experts view the pros­e­cu­tion as polit­i­cal­ly motivated. Experts, moreover, regard both the Trump pros­e­cu­tions and those of Democratic figures as motivated by politics. 

The public, by contrast, is more inclined to regard the pros­e­cu­tions of Democrats as fair and impartial (64–70%) than those of Trump (48–51%). Breaking out the public responses out by par­ti­san­ship, we see the familiar pattern of polar­iza­tion on the Trump pros­e­cu­tions but not those of Democratic figures. Overwhelming majori­ties of Republicans (82–84%) see every Trump pros­e­cu­tion as polit­i­cal­ly motivated whereas equally large majori­ties of Democrats (79–85%) regard each as fair and impartial. For pros­e­cu­tions of Democrats, however, the polar­iza­tion dis­ap­pears. Solid majori­ties among both parties (63–78% among Democrats, 64–68% among Republicans) view each as fair and impartial. 

After com­plet­ing this survey battery assessing the politi­ciza­tion of pros­e­cu­tions, each par­tic­i­pant was asked to assess the accuracy of the following statement, which sum­ma­rizes a claim made repeat­ed­ly by Trump: “Joe Biden is directing the Justice Department to prosecute his political enemies.” The figure below shows the per­cent­age of respon­dents — among experts and the public overall and then sep­a­rate­ly for Democrats, Republicans, and partisan inde­pen­dents in the public — that regard the statement as very or somewhat accurate.

Retaliatory justice

Calls for retal­ia­to­ry pros­e­cu­tions – from Trump and from other prominent Republicans – have increased in recent months. We therefore first asked respon­dents in our public sample whether they agreed that “the next Republican president should bring criminal charges against Joe Biden and other Democrats in response to the indict­ments of former president Donald Trump.” Among Republicans, support for retal­ia­to­ry pros­e­cu­tions is wide­spread – 65% agreed with the statement (36% strongly and 29% somewhat). Only 36% agree among inde­pen­dents, however, and even fewer among Democrats.

To estimate the effect of public state­ments by Republican elites endorsing retal­ia­to­ry pros­e­cu­tions, we randomly presented half of our public survey par­tic­i­pants with the following (factually accurate) statement:

In response to Donald Trump’s con­vic­tion in a New York state court in May for fal­si­fy­ing business records, Congressman Ronny Jackson (R‑TX) called for pros­e­cu­tions of President Biden and his family, saying, “I am going to encourage all of my col­leagues and everybody that I have any influence over as a member of Congress to aggres­sive­ly go after the president and his entire family, his entire crime family, for all of the misdeeds that are out there right now related to this family.” 

All public par­tic­i­pants were then asked whether they support or oppose efforts to prosecute President Biden and his family. The following figure shows the per­cent­age that strongly or somewhat support Biden pros­e­cu­tions by exposure to the Ronny Jackson statement:

The exper­i­ment suggests that Congressman Jackson’s inflam­ma­to­ry rhetoric does not increase support for retal­ia­to­ry pros­e­cu­tion. Among Republicans, the statement has a neg­li­gi­ble impact that does not approach sta­tis­ti­cal sig­nif­i­cance. By contrast, it sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduced support among Democrats. We observe a similar negative effect for the public overall and for inde­pen­dents, but neither result is con­sis­tent­ly sig­nif­i­cant (the effect is only sig­nif­i­cant at con­ven­tion­al levels with survey weights for the public and is never sig­nif­i­cant for independents).

Presidential immunity

On July 1, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Trump v. United States, which con­sid­ered  his claim that he could not be held crim­i­nal­ly liable for his official acts as president even after leaving office. The decision did not uphold Trump’s blanket claim of immunity from pros­e­cu­tion, but estab­lish­es absolute immunity for acts within the president’s exclusive con­sti­tu­tion­al author­i­ties (granting pardons and com­mu­ni­ca­tions with cabinet sec­re­taries and in the role of commander-in-chief); pre­sump­tive immunity for acts in accor­dance with the president’s con­sti­tu­tion­al and statutory authority; and no immunity for unof­fi­cial acts. The Court also placed strict limits on pros­e­cu­tors’ ability to use pres­i­den­tial acts as evidence in criminal cases against them, and precluded them from con­sid­er­ing pres­i­dents’ motives for their actions. The decision leaves to lower courts the task of dis­tin­guish­ing which actions merit immunity and effec­tive­ly elim­i­nates the prospect that the case involving the former president’s role in attempt­ing to overturn the previous election can be tried before the 2024 election is held.

Our surveys were conducted imme­di­ate­ly prior to the Court’s decision on the immunity case. We reminded our public par­tic­i­pants that, “As you may have heard, Donald Trump’s lawyers have argued in court that former pres­i­dents should be immune from criminal pros­e­cu­tion for actions taken while in office.” We then asked whether they thought Trump should have immunity or not. The figure below shows per­cent­ages of Americans who believed Trump should have immunity, should not have immunity, and who said they didn’t know broken out by partisanship. 

Prior to the decision, the public overall was deeply skeptical of immunity. Just 26% supported it as compared to 57% who did not (18% did not know). Opposition was over­whelm­ing among Democrats, at 85% to 6% (8% didn’t know). Among Republicans, a bare majority of 51% supported immunity versus 27% who opposed it (and another 23% didn’t know).

Perceptions of the Supreme Court

We also asked experts and the public whether they believe the Supreme Court can be trusted to make impartial decisions in Trump-related cases before the Court issued its decision in the immunity case. The figure below shows the per­cent­ages of experts and of the public who were very or somewhat confident in the Supreme Court’s impar­tial­i­ty on Trump-related cases as well as levels of con­fi­dence among Democrats and Republicans in the public. 

Confidence among experts in the Court’s impar­tial­i­ty on Trump-related cases was just 23%, far lower than the public, which split nearly evenly at 48%, though Republicans were far more likely to be confident than Democrats, at 67% versus 33%, respectively. 

We pre­vi­ous­ly asked the same question about con­fi­dence in the Court’s impar­tial­i­ty to public par­tic­i­pants in our February 2024 survey. The following figure shows changes in con­fi­dence in the Court’s impar­tial­i­ty over time. We find that con­fi­dence in the Court declined sig­nif­i­cant­ly from February to June among the public overall (54% to 48%, p<0.001), with the shift con­cen­trat­ed among Democrats (44% to 33%, p<0.001). 

We note again that our survey was conducted prior to the Court’s decision in Trump v. United States, which has largely been regarded as a victory for Trump and has been crit­i­cized widely among legal scholars. It is therefore rea­son­able to expect that con­fi­dence in the Court could decline further and that the partisan split in con­fi­dence could widen.

Judicial recusals

Perceptions of conflicts of interest may affect con­fi­dence in the courts. We asked our expert and public par­tic­i­pants about prominent cases in which judges have been encour­aged to recuse them­selves from cases to ensure there is no appear­ance of bias in court proceedings. 

We first explained the concept of recusal to par­tic­i­pants by providing the following instruc­tions: “Judges sometimes vol­un­tar­i­ly withdraw from cases in which their impar­tial­i­ty could rea­son­ably be ques­tioned, which is called recusal. We will ask you about three specific judges who have been in the news lately and who have faced calls to recuse them­selves.” Participants were then asked about three con­tro­ver­sies, two involving U.S. Supreme Court justices and one involving Juan Merchan, the judge in Trump’s New York case. (Participants were ran­dom­ized either to see the Merchan item first or last; they always saw the Supreme Court items in sequence.) These items were worded as follows: 

• Judge Juan Merchan oversaw the trial in New York of Donald Trump for fal­si­fy­ing business records in making a hush money payment to an adult film actress. Merchan donated $35 to the Democratic group ActBlue and his daughter is the president of a political marketing firm that fre­quent­ly works with Democratic con­gres­sion­al candidates.

• The U.S. Supreme Court will soon make decisions con­cern­ing Donald Trump’s claim to pres­i­den­tial immunity and the January 6 rioters’ claim that their actions did not con­sti­tute obstruc­tion of an official pro­ceed­ing. Two of the justices have faced calls to withdraw from those cases. We will ask you sep­a­rate­ly about each of them.

• News outlets have reported that flags asso­ci­at­ed with the “Stop the steal” movement to overturn the 2020 election were flown at two of Justice Samuel Alito’s properties. 

• The wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, Ginni Thomas, was in contact with White House officials following the 2020 election and supported efforts to overturn the results. She also attended the January 6, 2021 rally near the White House, though she did not march to the Capitol. 

After seeing each item, the par­tic­i­pant was asked whether, in their view, the judge should recuse – from the Trump hush money case on the Merchan item or from pending cases involving Trump and January 6 on the Alito and Thomas items. The figure below shows the per­cent­ages of experts, the public, and of Democrats and Republicans among the public, who supported recusal (def­i­nite­ly or probably) for each judge/justice in question.

Among experts, there is little support (12%) for the argument that Merchan should have recused from the Trump hush money case due to his political con­tri­bu­tion or his daughter’s job. Experts were far more likely to support recusal for Alito (77%) and Thomas (85%), who did not recuse on the Trump immunity case or on a case related to January 6 (discussed below).

Overall, Americans are more likely to think Merchan should recuse (57%) than experts but less likely to think than Alito and Thomas should do so (62% and 63%, respec­tive­ly). When we dis­ag­gre­gate by party, we see a familiar pattern of polar­iza­tion. Large majori­ties of Democrats favor recusal for Alito (80%) and Thomas (84%) but only 33% support recusal for Merchan. Republicans have the opposite view – 82% support Merchan’s recusal while 43% support Alito and Thomas stepping aside. 

Current and future threats to democracy

We asked experts to assess the actual or prospec­tive impact on U.S. democracy of the following recent events as well as possible future events.

Recent events

• Former president Donald Trump is convicted of fal­si­fy­ing business records in his New York state trial. 
• Trump and Biden agree to hold two debates, bypassing the Commission on Presidential Debates.
• Trump repeat­ed­ly attacks the legal cases against him as inter­fer­ence by the Biden admin­is­tra­tion in the 2024 election.

Possible future events

• The U.S. Supreme Court upholds Donald Trump’s claim of immunity from pros­e­cu­tion for former presidents
• The U.S. Supreme Court decides that people who entered the Capitol on January 6, 2021 can’t be charged with obstruc­tion of an official proceeding.
• Donald Trump follows through on his threats to initiate pros­e­cu­tions of his political enemies if elected in November.
• None of the ongoing trials involving Donald Trump (the Florida documents case and the Georgia and Washington, DC election inter­fer­ence cases) are decided before the 2024 election. 

After we put our survey in the field, the Supreme Court delivered two decisions with important impli­ca­tions for our list of possible future events. First, on June 28, in Fischer v. United States, the Court ruled in favor of a January 6 protestor who chal­lenged the charge of obstruct­ing an official pro­ceed­ing, arguing that the gov­ern­ment would need to show involve­ment of direct inter­fer­ence with official documents. The ruling narrows the Justice Department’s ability to charge dozens of those who breached the Capitol on January 6 in the manner described in the survey item.

Second, as noted above, the Court issued its decision in the immunity case on July 1. The decision was more nuanced than our short survey item in that it did not uphold Trump’s blanket claim of immunity. However, the item describes a core element of the decision, which upheld immunity for official acts and likely blocks pending federal pros­e­cu­tions until after the election.

Finally, we note that the assess­ments we collected were over­whelm­ing­ly prospec­tive. In total, 96% of the expert survey responses we received were collected before the Fischer decision was handed down and all were received before the Trump immunity decision.

With those sub­tleties in mind, the figure below shows experts’ assess­ments of threats and benefits to democracy posed by the events in question.

The experts over­whelm­ing­ly regarded both Supreme Court decisions as threats to American democracy. In the case regarding charges against January 6 pro­tes­tors, 84% of experts said that a potential decision in favor of January 6 defen­dants was a threat to democracy (31% an extra­or­di­nary threat and 38% a serious threat). Similarly, in the immunity case, 93% regarded a ruling upholding Trump’s claims to immunity as a threat (60% extra­or­di­nary and 27% serious). Only 3% of experts rated either potential decision as ben­e­fi­cial for democracy. 

We reiterate that our survey item on immunity was less nuanced than the Court’s decision. Our results should therefore not be read as reflect­ing the verdict of experts on the Court’s full jurispru­dence in the matter. Nevertheless, the scope of immunity the Court spelled out was under­stood as a grave threat to democracy even within the Court itself. Justices Kagan, Sotomayor, and Brown-Jackson wrote in dissent, “The rela­tion­ship between the president and the people he serves has shifted irrev­o­ca­bly. In every use of official power, the president is now a king above the law.” Sotomayor added, “With fear for our democracy, I dissent.”

The potential future event that most worried our expert sample — even more than the Supreme Court decisions — was that Trump, if reelected, will use the pres­i­den­cy to prosecute political opponents, as he has repeat­ed­ly promised to do. Nearly all our experts (96%) regard this prospect as a threat to democracy, with 77% deeming the threat extra­or­di­nary. (The Court’s decision in Trump v. United States pre­sum­ably cir­cum­scribes Trump’s ability to go after Biden directly, but does not provide immunity to other indi­vid­u­als with whom he has come into conflict.) 

Experts also broadly (85%) regarded Trump’s public attacks on his pros­e­cu­tions as a threat to democracy, though they saw it as a less grave threat. Just 21% regard the threat these attacks pose to democracy as extra­or­di­nary, though 41% rate it as serious (the remaining 22% rate it as a moderate threat or posing little threat). Finally, 71% of the experts see the prospect that none of the remaining Trump pros­e­cu­tions is likely to be completed before the November election as a threat to democracy (11% extra­or­di­nary, 29% serious, 27% moderate, 4% little). 

Very few experts perceived the events described above as potential benefits to democracy. By contrast, 52% regard Trump’s con­vic­tion in the New York case as a benefit (compared to 16% who see it as a threat). Finally, a larger  majority (68%) of experts saw the agreement by the campaigns to hold two debates as neither a benefit nor a threat (the vast majority of expert responses were collected before the first Trump-Biden debate, providing no leverage for a com­par­i­son of attitudes before and after).

Hypothetical scenarios: Likelihood and approval

We also presented both the experts and the public with a set of hypo­thet­i­cal scenarios that could affect the status of U.S. democracy in a potential second Trump admin­is­tra­tion (as well as filler items). We asked experts to rate the prob­a­bil­i­ty of each scenario taking place assuming Trump wins the election. For the public, we instead asked whether they would approve or dis­ap­prove of Trump taking the action in question. The scenarios in question, which we drew from media accounts, are listed below.

• The Trump admin­is­tra­tion directs the Department of Justice to suspend the pros­e­cu­tion of at least one person accused of crimes related to the 2020 election or the events of January 6, 2021.
• The Trump admin­is­tra­tion fires special counsel Jack Smith.
• Trump pardons one or more indi­vid­u­als accused of crimes related to the 2020 election or the events of January 6, 2021.
• Trump issues a pardon to himself for any federal crimes he’s been convicted of or federal charges he faces.
• Trump attempts to stay in power beyond the end of his term in office in January 2029.
• The Trump admin­is­tra­tion directs the Department of Justice to inves­ti­gate Joe Biden or another leading Democrat.
• The Trump admin­is­tra­tion seeks to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare).
• The Trump admin­is­tra­tion withdraws the U.S. from NATO.

The figure below plots each of the democracy-related items, showing the mean prob­a­bil­i­ty estimate (from experts) on the hor­i­zon­tal axis and the per­cent­age of Republicans (red markers) and Democrats (blue markers) who approve of the action in question on the vertical axis. The dotted line con­nect­ing each red-blue pair reflects the partisan approval gap on that item.

Experts identify a number of our scenarios as near certain (above 90% like­li­hood, on average), including that Trump would fire special counsel Jack Smith, pardon at least some January 6 pro­tes­tors, and that a Trump Department of Justice would suspend pros­e­cu­tions against a President Trump. The Trump DOJ inves­ti­gat­ing former President Biden and Trump pardoning himself were judged to be slightly less probable but still more than 75% likely. In each of these scenarios, we observe sharp polar­iza­tion in approval by par­ti­san­ship, with strong majori­ties of Republicans (63–81%) approving and over­whelm­ing majori­ties of Democrats (82–90%) dis­ap­prov­ing. (As in our February 2024 survey, we found stronger support for demo­c­ra­t­ic norm vio­la­tions among Republicans whose primary loyalty is to Trump rather than to the party — see appendix.) On one critical item, however – President Trump attempt­ing to remain in office beyond the 2025–2029 term – our public respon­dents were less polarized by party, with strong majori­ties of both Republicans (73%) and Democrats (88%) disapproving. 

Public con­fi­dence in elections

Voter con­fi­dence in the 2024 election

We asked respon­dents to report their con­fi­dence that everyone who is legally entitled to vote and seeks to do so will be able to suc­cess­ful­ly cast a ballot in the November 2024 elections and that their own vote, votes in their state, and votes nation­wide in that election will be counted as voters intended. The figure below reports the per­cent­age of people indi­cat­ing they are very or somewhat confident in each of these aspects of the 2024 election by party.

As in previous surveys, we observe a sub­stan­tial decrease in public con­fi­dence in the vote count as we move from the state level (81%) to the national level (69%). Among Democrats, con­fi­dence declines only slightly from the local (92%) to the state (91%) to the national (88%) level. The shift is instead driven by Republicans. Confidence at the state level is nearly as high at the local level (78% and 79%, respec­tive­ly), but drops off sharply to 55% at the national level. 

Public accep­tance of Biden’s victory in 2020

As in previous surveys, we asked Americans about whether they view the 2020 pres­i­den­tial election as legit­i­mate. The figure below shows the share of respon­dents across different partisan groups who state that Biden was “def­i­nite­ly” or “probably” the rightful winner. Attitudes on this question remain deeply polarized across parties. As Americans prepare to cast ballots in the 2024 pres­i­den­tial election, a super­ma­jor­i­ty of Republicans still do not recognize the outcome of the previous election. Attitudes on this question are mostly stable over time, although we note the con­tin­u­a­tion of a gradual drift upward among inde­pen­dents in accep­tance of Biden’s victory.

The breadth and per­sis­tence among Republicans of rejecting Biden’s 2020 win is striking. We sought to determine whether this phe­nom­e­non is singular to Republicans’ views of that election or reflects broader skep­ti­cism about election legit­i­ma­cy. In this survey, we therefore also asked par­tic­i­pants in our public sample whether Barack Obama was the rightful winner over Mitt Romney in 2012 and whether Donald Trump was the rightful winner over Hillary Clinton in 2016. The results, overall and dis­ag­gre­gat­ed by par­ti­san­ship, are presented in the next figure for each of the last three pres­i­den­tial elections.

Starting with the 2016 election, partisan rejection of oppo­si­tion victories has decreased accep­tance of election results. Democrats over­whelm­ing­ly accept their party’s victories in 2012 (97%) and 2020 (94%), but almost one in three reject Trump’s win in 2016. Republicans mostly acknowl­edge Obama’s win in 2012 (84%) and fully embrace Trump’s (94%) but utterly reject Biden’s (35%). Confidence among inde­pen­dents, by contrast, has dropped with each election, declining from 88% for 2012 to 75% for 2016 to 67% for 2020. The net result is a steady decline in accep­tance of elections by the public overall, which decreases from 90% for 2012 to 77% for 2016 and 66% for 2020.

With that said, Republican rejection of the 2020 election has no precedent across parties in recent elections. The lower levels of accep­tance of recent elections that we see among Democrats (a low of 62% for 2016) and inde­pen­dents (67% for 2020) are not nearly as low as we see for Republicans for 2020 (35%). 

Ratings of the state of U.S. democracy

As in each Bright Line Watch survey, we asked both expert and public respon­dents to rate the overall per­for­mance of U.S. democracy on a 0–100 scale. Expert ratings, which ticked up in November 2022 after the midterm elections, have sta­bi­lized in our two most recent surveys near their highest point since we began our surveys in 2017. In June 2024, the average expert rating was 70.0. The public overall is con­sis­tent­ly less sanguine than our experts, with an average rating of 56.9. Democrats rate American democracy somewhat higher (62.7) whereas Republicans put it a bit lower (54.4).

Finally, the June survey also asked expert par­tic­i­pants to sep­a­rate­ly project the state of American democracy in 2027 on the same 0–100 scale assuming that either Biden or Trump wins the 2024 pres­i­den­tial election. (The survey was fielded before the current con­tro­ver­sy over Biden’s fitness and thus did not ask about Kamala Harris or other possible Democratic can­di­dates.) The experts antic­i­pate improve­ment from 70.0 now to 74.1 in 2027 if Biden is re-elected, whereas they project a major decline to 50.6 by 2027 if Trump wins in November. (Expert ratings never sank below 60 during Trump’s first term, but many observers believe he would face fewer con­straints in a second term. The projected rating of 50.6 is similar to how experts rated democracy in Brazil prior to Jair Bolsonaro’s defeat in 2022.) 

Events

As in previous surveys, we asked experts to rate a selection of events as normal or abnormal and as important or unim­por­tant. In a departure from past practice, we asked questions about recent events (from 2024) as well as a selection of events from 2017–2023 that we had pre­vi­ous­ly asked our experts to rate. To ensure com­pa­ra­bil­i­ty, we reused the original wording from past surveys but added some indi­ca­tion of when each event took place. The lists of events with the exact text shown to respon­dents are provided in the appendix. 

We first consider how experts evaluate recent events. Average ratings provided by our experts for these events are plotted on the figure below. 

Experts rated some of these events as rel­a­tive­ly normal, though they perceived some dif­fer­ences in impor­tance between, for instance, Nikki Haley dropping out of the GOP pres­i­den­tial race (rated between semi-important and mostly unim­por­tant on average) and Biden seeking a Middle East ceasefire (mostly important on average). A series of events related to Biden and Trump were rated near the bor­der­line normal level — concerns about Biden’s acuity (measured before the first debate), Pence’s refusal to endorse Trump, and Hunter Biden being found guilty in a federal gun case. Finally, a cluster of events were rated as both highly abnormal and important, the quadrant of the graph shaded in gray above. We zoom in on the shaded area in the graph below, which provides past expert ratings of the most important and abnormal events of recent years for context.

As the figure shows, five recent events fall in or near the quadrant in question — Trump’s indict­ments in Georgia and Florida, his con­vic­tion in New York, Senator Marco Rubio’s refusal to commit to accept the results of the 2024 election, and Trump’s descrip­tion of his political opponents as “vermin.” However, none of these are rated as being as important and abnormal as the most extreme events of recent years (e.g., insur­rec­tion­ists storming the Capitol on January 6 and Trump calling the Georgia Secretary of State asking to “find” votes).

Appendix

Bright Line Watch conducted its twenty-first survey of academic experts and its eigh­teenth survey of the general public from June 20–30, 2024. Our public sample consisted of 2,778 par­tic­i­pants from the YouGov panel who were selected and weighted to be rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the U.S. adult pop­u­la­tion. We also surveyed 557 political science experts across a diverse range of subfields. Our email list was con­struct­ed from the faculty list of U.S. insti­tu­tions rep­re­sent­ed in the online program of the 2016 American Political Science Association con­fer­ence and updated by reviewing depart­ment websites and job placement records from Ph.D. programs in the period since.

All estimates shown in the report used weights provided by YouGov. Our expert sample is unweight­ed because we do not collect demo­graph­ic data to protect anonymity. Error bars in our graphs represent 95% con­fi­dence intervals. Data are available here.

Both the expert and public samples in Wave 18 responded to a battery of questions about demo­c­ra­t­ic per­for­mance in the United States. Afterward, they were asked to evaluate the quality of American democracy overall on a 100-point scale.

How well do the following state­ments describe the United States as of today?

• The U.S. does not meet this standard
• The U.S. partly meets this standard
• The U.S. mostly meets this standard
• The U.S fully meets this standard

1. Government officials are legally sanc­tioned for misconduct
2. Government officials do not use public office for private gain
3. Government agencies are not used to monitor, attack, or punish political opponents
4. All adult citizens enjoy the same legal and political rights
5. Government does not interfere with jour­nal­ists or news organizations
6. Government effec­tive­ly prevents private actors from engaging in polit­i­cal­ly-motivated violence or intimidation
7. Government protects indi­vid­u­als’ right to engage in unpopular speech or expression
8. Political com­pe­ti­tion occurs without criticism of opponents’ loyalty or patriotism
9. Elections are free from foreign influence
10. Parties and can­di­dates are not barred due to their political beliefs and ideologies
11. All adult citizens have equal oppor­tu­ni­ty to vote
12. All votes have equal impact on election outcomes
13. Elections are conducted, ballots counted, and winners deter­mined without pervasive fraud or manipulation
14. Executive authority cannot be expanded beyond con­sti­tu­tion­al limits
15. The leg­is­la­ture is able to effec­tive­ly limit executive power
16. The judiciary is able to effec­tive­ly limit executive power
17. The elected branches respect judicial independence
18. Voter par­tic­i­pa­tion in elections is generally high
19. Information about the sources of campaign funding is available to the public
20. Public policy is not deter­mined by large campaign contributions
21. Citizens can make their opinions heard in open debate about policies that are under consideration
22. The geo­graph­ic bound­aries of electoral districts do not sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly advantage any par­tic­u­lar political party
23. Even when there are dis­agree­ments about ideology or policy, political leaders generally share a common under­stand­ing of relevant facts
24. Elected officials seek com­pro­mise with political opponents
25. Citizens have access to infor­ma­tion about can­di­dates that is relevant to how they would govern
26. Government protects indi­vid­u­als’ right to engage in peaceful protest
27. Law enforce­ment inves­ti­ga­tions of public officials or their asso­ciates are free from political influence or interference
28. Government sta­tis­tics and data are produced by experts who are not influ­enced by political considerations
29. The law is enforced equally for all persons
30. Politicians who lose free and fair elections publicly concede defeat

The figure below breaks out per­for­mance ratings on each of 30 demo­c­ra­t­ic prin­ci­ples. The markers for each principle indicate the per­cent­age of expert (green) and public (purple) respon­dents who regard the United States as fully or mostly meeting the standard (as opposed to meeting it partly or not at all). Consistent with the overall ratings, the experts rate U.S. demo­c­ra­t­ic per­for­mance more pos­i­tive­ly than the public overall. Few excep­tions exist, however, such as voting rights being equally protected for all citizens, politi­cians operating with a common under­stand­ing on factual matters, and electoral districts not sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly favoring one party over the other.

The figure below shows expert like­li­hood assess­ments and Republican approval of Trump 2nd term scenarios, sep­a­rate­ly for respon­dents who say they are primarily sup­port­ers of Trump and those who say they are primarily sup­port­ers of the Republican Party. 

The figure below shows the relative sizes of these two factions within the Republican Party over multiple Bright Line Watch surveys waves (October 2022 — June 2024).