Bright Line Watch fielded two recent surveys of political science faculty at American colleges and uni­ver­si­ties (whom we refer to as “experts”) and rep­re­sen­ta­tive samples of Americans (whom we refer to as “the public”). The first survey, which was fielded in late December 2025 and early January 2026, over­lapped with the January 3 military strike in Venezuela and the January 6 deploy­ment of up to 2,000 addi­tion­al Department of Homeland Security personnel to Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota. Both seemed poten­tial­ly con­se­quen­tial for per­cep­tions of U.S. demo­c­ra­t­ic per­for­mance. We therefore chose to conduct a second survey in February–March 2026 and report the results of both surveys here rather than release poten­tial­ly outdated results from the previous survey.

The first survey was fielded from December 22, 2025–January 7, 2026 among experts (564 responses) and from December 22, 2025–January 6, 2026 among the public (2750 responses). The second was fielded from February 19–March 10, 2026 among experts (621 responses) and from February 24–March 6, 2026 among the public (2750 responses).