Publications are organized by survey reports and academic publications. The survey reports serve as the core of our work and are based on surveys we administer to the public and political science experts. You can find all data necessary to replicate our work in the tab above “Data.”
Survey Reports
Wave 9 Public and Expert Survey Report
October 2019
The October surveys provide insights into current challenges to American democracy that we have not explored previously. We presented both our public and expert respondents with a series of actions and behaviors and asked respondents to evaluate how democratic, or undemocratic, they regard…
Democratic values and perceived performance: Comparing the public with elite donors and local officials
March 2019
On whose support does democracy depend? One answer is the public, which may be required to defend “bright line” violations of key democratic norms and principles. However, research indicates that political elites often play a key role in preserving — or undermining — democratic stability. In this report, we therefore assess the perceived importance of democratic principles and U.S. performance on those principles among two key sets of elites, political donors and government officials, and contrast their views with those of the public…
Wave 8 Public and Expert Survey Report
March 2019
Prior to the release of the Mueller report and subsequent escalation of conflict between the executive and legislative branches, Bright Line Watch conducted a new wave of surveys on the quality of democracy in the United States. From March 12–21, 2019, we fielded our eighth survey of academic experts and sixth survey of the general…
Party, policy, democracy and candidate choice in U.S. elections
October 2018
How committed is the American public to democracy? Are there any democratic principles that, if violated by politicians, would generate resistance from the public? Are citizens of all political stripes equally willing to punish candidates for such violations? Building on cutting-edge research by Graham and Svolik (2018), Bright Line Watch conducted an experiment that asked people to choose between pairs of hypothetical candidates. We use a conjoint design, which allows us to estimate the relative importance of candidate traits, partisanship, policy positions, and support for democratic principles in voters’ decisions…
Wave 7 Public and Expert Survey Report
October 2018
Our mission at Bright Line Watch is to distinguish what is novel and unprecedented from politics as usual in the United States — a difficult task in the current news environment. To do so, we conducted our seventh expert survey, and fifth public survey, in October 2018. Our goal was to assess the state of American democracy just before the first midterm elections of President Trump’s…
Wave 6 Public and Expert Survey Report
August 2018
Donald Trump is a disruptor. Few would disagree that his actions and style of political combat set him apart from past presidents. There is less consensus about the implications of Trump’s distinctive governing style for the health of American democracy, however. To understand how Americans rate their democracy…
Wave 5 Public and Expert Survey Report
May 2018
In April 2018, Bright Line Watch conducted its fifth expert survey, and its third public survey, on democracy in the United States. Between April 9 and 22, we surveyed an expert sample of 935 political science faculty at American universities and a nationally representative sample of 2,000 adults. Respondents in both surveys assessed…
Wave 4 Public and Expert Survey Report
February 2018
In January 2018, as Donald Trump completed his first year as president, Bright Line Watch conducted its fourth expert survey on the state of U.S. democracy. At the same time, we conducted an identical public survey – our second – with a nationally representative sample of Americans. This approach allows us to assess…
Wave 3 Public and Expert Survey Report
October 2017
Given widespread concern about the possible erosion of democracy in the United States, Bright Line Watch has conducted expert surveys since early 2017 asking thousands of professional political scientists to identify the dimensions of democracy they see as most important and to rate how well the U.S. is performing on them. But does the public agree with those assessments?
Wave 2 Expert Survey Report
May 2017
From May 11–20, 2017, Bright Line Watch conducted its second expert survey of political scientists assessing the state of democracy in the United States. BLW’s first survey (Wave 1) was conducted at the outset of the Trump administration in February 2017. This report presents…
Wave 1 Expert Survey Report
February 2017
BLW conducted its first U.S. Democracy Survey from February 13–19, 2017. We invited 9,820 political science faculty at 511 U.S. institutions to participate and received 1,571 responses (a response rate of 16 percent). The set of invitees was constructed…