I did not answer the questions that asked for predictions, because of how miserably predictions have fared in recent years. Trump is so volatile and amassed enough power, and the system so damaged, anything can happen.
I found the final probability scenario -- what will be the status of the court order on January 2029, assuming that the admin directed non-enforcement in 2027-28, incredibly difficult to parse. I am still not quite sure what the question was asking or what the resolution criteria meant.
We really need to separate policy outcomes that we do not like from the issue of democracy. Trump is president because enough of our fellow citizens voted for him to win the election. I sure wish they hadn't, and I do not think it was wise or helpful. But it was democracy at work. Once in power he has been, in very important ways, constrained by the courts and occasionally by the Congress (which currently has a majority in both chambers from his party, also a result of democracy).
The survey continues to be-- how horrible is Trump?  Are y'all seeing what the Dems are doing?  There's another party, you know.
The cumulative % questions are not intuitive and confusing.
I didn't like the sliders that had to add up to 100.  Those were a bit confusing and I think they'd be easier as just the probability of each event independently of the other factors.
The questions about losing candidate refusing to concede is not something that I have given much thought to. If I were to answer the same questions tomorrow, my answers might be very different.
Your sliders are malfunctioning! On the pages with multiple sliders, the first one or two worked and subsequent sliders wouldn't budge. Sorry, but those responses need to be trashed!
The probabilities for future events and impact of court decisions was confusing. There were several question items where I wasn’t sure how to disentangle normative evaluation from empirical practice or constitutionality.
I'm always uncofortable answering questions about future scenarios
These questions seem very biased, leading readers merely to think about democracy in context of the executive administration. This has been true of past waves as well. Unfortunately, public and academic attention to government action focuses on the office of the president and not what the federal legislative branch and the states are doing. You need to be much more careful about having respondents think broadly about democratic institutions in the US at all levels (from municipal to federal). I actually think some of the bigger threats to democracy in the US are happening at the municipal and state level, not the federal level. You are not picking up any of that.
1.  It would be nice to have the option to print the whole survey at one time instead of having to print each page separately (so as to see how good one's predictions are). 2. The question about approving or disapproving of a state gerrymandering outside the 10-year cycle doesn't allow for the most appropriate response, which is, "It depends on whether the other party has gone ahead and done it first." The responses offered are really inadequate to the current reality. I don't see how you can treat the results as telling us much of anything. For example, I chose the last response, thinking about Trump's demand and the Texas response, but I could have been thinking about Gavin Newsom and California instead.
Entirely possible that Democrats respond in 2029 or 2033 with their own Trump of the Left as a means to repeal the legacy and policies of the actual Trump.
The refusing to concede question was tricky - not something I have really paid much attention to in the past.
Those questions with the "resolution criteria" part were a bit challenging to figure out how to answer. Otherwise, things were pretty clear. Keep up the great work!
the status of the court order question took some time to unpack - I was trying to think about the role of "noon on Jan. 20" - I went with the interpretation of what is the status of the court order at the time the next president is being sworn in (and thus, theoretically, the new admin would not have had a chance to comply or not with the prior directive).
Thank you for doing this work. Good luck to you and all of us.
The questions seemed entirely focused on the legitimacy of Trump's conduct, but were worded in a clearly negative, disapproving way. I detest Trump, but I think biased questions serve no useful purpose.
The question on whether the Supreme Court or Congress are able to limit Executive power seems to be beside the point - I think they are able. I do not think they are willing.
The practical difficulty of amending the US Constitution (coupled with the ongoing ascendency of executive authority and the unwillingness of the federal judiciary to challenge that erosion of republican institutions) makes fundamental improvements to democratic institutions difficult to anticipate.
The questions that asked about where things would be in December 2027 were difficult to answer...was this supposed to get us to consider what might happen within the year following the 2026 midterms?   More generally, I found this iteration of the survey more complex and difficult to answer...there seemed to be a lot of assumptions behind the questions and answer options.
The questions asking about things happening in 2027-2028 depend greatly on what happens in the November 2026 elections.
The questions on the suspension of habeas corpus are problematic. More generally, I have ongoing issues with many of the questions that conflate preferences for system type. I don't want to see district lines redrawn off-cycle, I don't think redrawing the lines is inherently undemocratic if it is being done by elected representatives.
great survey. I enjoyed answering these questions
Some of the questions were very badly worded.  The one that comes to mind is the one concerning statehood for DC and PR.  These are two very different situations: the people of DC almost certainly want statehood. The people of Puerto Rico are very divided on the topic.  Statehood should be offered, but not forced, on the people.  Another area: birthright citizenship is GOOD for America, but less clearly good for "American democracy".  There's a messy use of the application of "democracy" here, and elsewhere in that part of the survey.
the Senate Majority question was not clear about how to count a 50/50 split, so I put don't know even though this is a real possibility and would retain Rep control
The questions about contested gubernatorial or senatorial elections were not an issue I had seriously considered.
At one point regarding habeas corpus, I wasn't sure whether the question was asking a conditional or unconditional probability about the number of groups involved in such a suspension.  I answered the question as if it were an unconditional probability so that my  response on the preceding question of 30% chance for such a suspension was matched by my response of 70% for zero groups.    All in all, the survey was interesting and thought provoking.
Some of the questions are overly complex and could lead to misleading responses. I know what you are trying to get at, but I think you could come up with some less confusing questions.
The questions asking respondents to place themselves on a 0-10 scale ranging up to 10 (authoritian regime) were a bit confusing, since we were asked to answer the questions without reference to the current president.
Thank you for putting this effort together.  I think that the 0-100 rating is too granular for some questions and a 10 point scale would be more helpful, because estimating a probably to more specifics would require details that would be very time consuming to assemble for hypothetical scenarios.
The question that was something like 'how confident are you that districts in YOUR state are drawn fairly' with answers being about the US was confusing. I live in Minnesota. Districts are drawn by independent commission- thus I greatly trust the parties are closely represented based on voter party id. However, how confident am I in all states not disadvantaging one party over the other- that's a completely different question- you should tighten up this language- I answered idk because idk what your question was asking. Additionally you only asked what state I work in. I work in Wisconsin and commute from Minnesota, so if this question was meant to capture a state based story you will have people like me leading to some amount of error/ poor internal validity.   You later asked 'how appropriate' different activities are. Again, not sure if you're asking for my normative judgement or a legal judgement. For example, is it appropriate (read legal) for states to draw districts to disadvantage the minority party- yes. Do I think it's fair, no. Do I think it's actively makes us less democratic, yes. Be careful making any judgements or claims off either of these sets of questions as they are poorly designed. Oof just saw the email linked- love your work.
I selected that the Trump vs. Cook ruling was harmful for democracy. My rationale is unrelated to the *outcome* of the case. Instead, the lack of sound legal reasoning for why there should be a carve-out for one institution while otherwise consolidating executive power indicates a further degradation of the rule of law.
More complex than any survey I've ever taken before.
The questions at the end were very difficult to understand.
The democracy-autocracy scale is a bit biased, not allowing for other interpretations of the democracy-autocracy spectrum.
The one question was long and convoluted. I gave up. I'm sorry, but it was just a poorly designed question.
I was curious that the questions about the Supreme Court did not include the presidential immunity decision.
My answers are heavily contingent on question wording.  For instance, while geography might favor one party today in elections, history shows that geography does not "systematically" favor one party or the other.
I think the constrained likelihood modules are too cognitively taxing.
Even for the highly-educated sample you're surveying here, the scenarios were probably a bit too sophisticated and complicated. It'd also be useful to provide base-rates (e.g., what is the base-rate of lower courts' orders going un-enforced by the executive branch over the previous 10 years?)
There was a page where i was asked to rank 6 policies from 0 to 10. I left a few at zero and it asked me if i had unanswered questions before proceeding. I found this a bit confusing at first.
My main comment on the question wording is that it is difficult to answer questions about institutional failure if the failures are created by the members themselves, e.g., if the House of Representatives fails to check the President because the majority agrees with him, that is not necessarily a case of the President coercing the MCs (although it could be). The same applies to the Supreme Court.
The questions about blocking nominees were a bit confusing to me.
Great survey, really interesting. Just a few questions where my answer would be more nuanced... but important work. Thanks for doing this.
Several of the questions were difficult to understand (some were new since prior surveys I have taken, so maybe they are being tested out)
Obviously, many of the stated criteria are abstract and vague.  I think I might have added questions about the prevalence of misinformation, and how one-sided it is.
This was overly complicated and hypothetical. For example, percentages adding up to 100% do not look like solid survey methodology.
The court order not being carried out and subsequent court rulings question was a little confusing. I had to read it multiple times to figure out what was actually being asked.
The section about whether Congress (Courts, etc.) "is able" to constrain the executive was too hard to answer, as it was unclear. All of those institutions are able to do this. The question is whether they act on this ability.
Interesting and potentially a useful study
I think the survey is really interesting. But, the speculative stuff about court orders is relatively hard for generalists. SO many court orders are made.
Substantial conceptual problems with the framing of many key questions. In particular, the category of "autocracy" is poorly defined here; it is not at all clear that the putative paradigmatic exams (Iran, Russia, China) can be assimilated to each other as equal representatives of dynamics such as "using political political power for personal gain" (consider the sharp contrast, at least in public political image-construction, between the vast personal fortunes acquired by Russian elites under Putin, on the one side, versus the systematic anti-corruption campaigns that have dominated the Xi premiership, on the other). Many questions also are framed in ways that make the interpretation of any possible answer fundamentally ambiguous. For example, let's say I were to select "0" on one of the dimension-questions, indicating that I do not think there is a dramatic difference between Trump's similarity to autocratic regimes and the similarity of other recent presidents to autocratic regimes; I might select 0 because I regard there as having been a very great difference, one that Trump has not meaningfully affected, or alternately because I think there are only small differences, which Trump has not meaningfully changed. I am not convinced that the inclusion of the follow-up text-box response is sufficient to overcome this basic ambiguity.
The probability-based, predict-the-future questions get more detailed than I think any one person can reasonably answer.
I found the questions about compliance with court orders to be much to specific to my knowledge.
I got confused on the one with 0 being the rank of non-Trump administrations. The double negatives in the questions about the enforcement of court orders were also confusing (but I understood it).
No comments. Appreciate you all continuing to collect this data and always happy to fill it out.
see comment about lack of exhaustive choice set in election cleanliness item.
Did not understand the probabilities of different numbers if violated court orders.  How the heck would I even know that?  I can estimate the likelihood that Trump does it at all.  But 5 times vs 10?  I must be missing something -- that one made no sense.
Decomposing forecasts into constituent probabilities is a tough ask and I am not sure how credible it will be.
This time had an unusual number of questions that were obscurely worded or required implausible degrees of precision.
one comment about the earlier institutional questions: they conflate the ability of Congress and SUpreme Court to rein in the president (which remains v.  high) with their actual willingness to do so (low)
The prediction market questions about failing to concede were a little confusing to work through.  Can you add public administration and public policy as a political science option?  I really appreciate the work that BrightLine is doing, thank you
On all the questions about whether institutions are *able* to constrain the presidency, I worry that your results will pick up lots of assessments of how those institutions are *unwilling* to exercise that power for various reasons. This is particularly relevant to a GOP-controlled Congress.
I'm not sure the slider summing to 100% is a great instrument. I did not find this especially intuitive.
This was fine. The forward-looking dates shifted in weird ways. 2027 (post-midterms), 2028/9 (post-presidential), and even 2030... Not sure what to think about that.
Excellent survey.  Might have had more questions on election interference besides vote counting, i.e intimidation, ICE presence, manipulation of election officials, DOJ interference, etc.
The Lisa Cook question was confusing.  I am relieved that the Court made the decision that it did, but I don't believe that issue is over.  As such, the three choices didn't represent the nuances of the situation.
This is a great survey, thanks for doing this important work. I find some of the questions difficult to answer because it's not always clear what the more or less liberal democracy answer should be. For example, the question about executive orders. We know that it is very difficult to get legislation through Congress. If the president issues an executive order on an ordinary domestic policy issue--say, allowing children of undocumented immigrants a pathway to citizenship--that the public is highly supportive of, is that bad or good for liberal democracy? I don't recall a box to explain my answer for that question, though I may have missed it.
When rating the US democracy at the beginning on a scale from 0-100, my frame of reference was liberal democracy, defined as free and fair elections alongside extensive civil liberties, rule of law, minority protections, and checks and balances.  This contrasts with a more minimalist electoral democracy that would have free and fair elections along with extensive civil liberties, but may be lacking when it comes to rule of law, minority protections, and checks and balances.  Since the question did not specifically say whether we should think in terms of liberal or electoral democracy, I recommend clarifying in future surveys to ensure a common baseline -- perhaps also by providing a definition.
Some of the wording of the probability questions is confusing.
this survey has multiple problems, two of which I noted in the course of answering the questions. What is more, the questions on the probability of executive instructing Marshals to disobey court orders (or whatever that was) were opaque and even pretentious. The quality of this survey is a real comedown from the previous ones I've completed.
Just the doubled barreled question about checks on power and electoral fairness.
In one question I wrote "both the" but it should have been "wealthy"
It was hard to answer the double-barreled questions about having fair elections & meaningful checks on power. I think it is more likely that we will get meaningful checks on power than fair elections but there was no way to express this because the response options assumed the opposite (the possibilities offered were something like fair elections + meaningful checks, unfair elections + meaningful checks, unfair elections + few meaningful checks, really unfair elections + no meaningful checks). I ended up picking unfair elections + few meaningful checks which is not a great fit and mainly describes the presidency, but there is no way I could say that we are going to have fair elections in 2030, that's crazy, you could only think this if you don't count the electoral college & gerrymandering.
The question about future outcomes in case of noncompliance with courts was hard to understand.
The question on what result would occur if candidates did not concede was confusing.   I expect the popular vote winner will take office whether the loser concedes or not.
As is often the case with these surveys, the questions and their wording seem designed to magnify the sense that something is wrong with the USA under the current administration.  That's not to say it's perfect.  But it's pretty egregious.  Many of the same issues identified here could have been asked of the obama admin, but people would have interpreted them quite differently as not threats to democracy. Same thing with supreme court decisions under more left wing courts.
Your surveys are consistently Trump-focused without fully acknowledging that both parties are affecting the quality of American democracy
The question asking to rank scenarios under presidents other than Trump was confusing.
I was much more confident about some of my answers than others, but no way for me to convey that. I understand eliciting subjective uncertainty is a complex issue though.
Setting modern presidents of both parties terms as a zero baseline for the democratic/authoritarian scales is unrealistic.  Relative to other polyarchies, the US had already weakened its federal legislature prior to 2016.
Some questions do not have appropriate options for answering.  Will democratic erosion persist after Trump?  That is a question with implications for your surbey..  Don't mislead by saying it is a short survey.  I'm not a bookie.  Don't ask me to put a percentage of what might happen.
The questions on ballot access were a little confusing
The questions asking us to think of the percentage chance something happened were confusing, especially the one I did not answer.
I think you should specify modern presidents for the comparison. Reagan vs. Trump on deploying the military/national guard/etc. is very different than say Bush vs. Trump.
The probabilities scales for the "how many candidates may not concede" question was a little confusing to parse at first. I'm confident I figured out what y'all are asking but it was the first time I think I've seen it on these surveys and it took me a reread to ensure I understood. I think some rephrasing or reformatting might help.  I also continue to be grateful this survey is being conducted. Thanks so much for doing this work.
I live in Washington, DC, and the questions asking about representation in my "state" don't allow a "Not applicable" option.
Thanks again for your work; I always look forward the latest installment!
As I always write, the partisan imbalance of political science faculty severely undermine our credibility, and survey instruments such as this one have a blind spot.  For example, both parties (especially at the state level) have increasingly abandoned the institutional forbearance that Levitsky and Ziblatt associate with functioning democracy.
Some of the questions were too complex, but otherwise interesting. Would like to see the results.
The questions were hard to answer, especially the percentages of likelihood for future events. The question wording also seemed to be leading and biased in several instances, such as providing an endpoint on presidencies other than Trump vs. autocracies.
The first question seemed pretty slanted
1) I declined to answer the 2032 question that wasn't conditional on who wins in 2028 b/c I think it is impossible to answer in a way that can be correctly interpreted b/c you are measuring two things simultaneously: who you think will win, and what you think will be the outcome if they win. For questions about democracy in US in 2032, really need to condition on who wins in 2028; see for example: Michelitch et al.. (2012). Looking to the future: Prospective economic voting in 2008 Presidential Elections. Electoral Studies, 31(4), 838-851.  2) Survey needs a back button! I answered the question about mail in ballots wrong b/c I read it incorrectly (I don't think not banning mail in ballots being counted after election day is a threat to democracy), but by the time I realized how I had answered it (in the follow up question) I couldn't change it. Please go back and change it for me.  3) The Russia/China anchors felt a little off to me.  Not all autocracies  vilify marginalized groups, so weird scale — Russia under Putin, e.g., goes after LGBT, but tries quite hard not to drive ethnic tension. I would say Trump has done much *more* to vilify marginalized groups than someone like Putin?
Always enjoy, more don’t know options (for example with the court rulings) might make sense
This misses the longer “erosion of democracy”before Trump. It seems driven by opposition to Trump instead of an actual measurement.
I indicated not sure about who will have the most seats in the house and senate after November because I have little faith the real results will be counted properly, especially after the speech last night.  By rights, the Dems should control both chambers, but we will see.
I didn't like the questions asking me to foresee the future that didn't specify conditions about who was in power.
The question about ballots and other-party officials was rather confusing, but largely because I don't do American (or democratic countries in general) politics.    While I know you're trying to compel answers, there were times I really didn't know and so an ability to say that would have been nice (though would affect your findings).
I'd be curious about your drop-off after the first 15 minutes.  The survey is too long, even for those of us who understand the reasons for all of the questions.  It could be that you are also sending out shorter surveys -- mixing it up somewhat.  That is smart, if so.
I found the 0-10 scale of “Like other modern presidents” at 0 to “Autocracy” at 10 sort of annoying — is it not possible that the Trump administration has actually been better / more democratic on some of those dimensions than other modern presidents? Range seems to preclude the possibility that Trump could be seen as less autocratic than other modern presidents.
Political scientists are -- and have always been -- not skilled at predicting the future
I found the last scenario really hard to assess because there is first the probability that Democrats will retake part of Congress, but then the probability that whichever party is in power would bring charges, and then the probability that it would be resolved in various ways.
Many of my predictions depend on whether the Democratic party is able to secure the majority in the House in Senate in November, 2026.  I
In one question I meant to check the second option that said something like we will fair elections... I mistakenly checked option 3 that says something like unfair elections...
I actually think the US Senate will be split 50-50, but that wasn't an option. I put Republicans because Vance would break the tie, but he wouldn't actually hold a seat in the Senate, so this was a bit fudged.
The probability of DOJ making convictions questions were awful. What could possibly be the point of speculation that specific? Recommended reading: Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know? by Philip Tetlock
I think that the probability questions (whose answers needed to sum to 100%) were sometimes a bit silly, and I wouldn't put much credence in my off-the-top-of-my-head answers or those of others.   Also, I am emeritus faculty and so identify myself, and the very next question asks me to say at what sort of institution I work, giving me three choices, as I recall.  But I don't work at any institution any more.  So, (slightly) reword the follow-up question (and thus provide me with greater confidence that you know what you are doing!)
The question about whether I approve of state redrawing districts off the Census cycle is badly worded. On the one hand, I disapprove of this new trend by red states doing it to gerrymander. On the other hand, I approve of the blue states like CA responding to the provocation and doing the same. The two types of states' responses are not the same valence.
Thanks for doing them. Keep going. God help us.
These surveys are always interesting and stimulating to complete. Thank you for including me on your distribution list!
Pretty sophisticated questions. It took a while to complete, though, and I wonder about survey fatigue affecting the answers. It's difficult to estimate the probabilities precisely, so I just did my best. Because you send these to folks who are already interested maybe reliability and missing data are is not as much of an issue as in more broadly targeted surveys. I always appreciate your work!
This survey seems to have question bias.  Sorry, but all this talk about authoritarianism, etc., is wrong-headed and juvenile.  You can easily point to numerous actions taken by former President Biden and see an Administration not following the Constitution.
I was a little confused by the "standard US" to autocracy measure, particularly for the question about weaponizing militarized forces domestically. There are notable instances in US history of national guard being weaponized at both the state and federal level (e.g. Kent State) and also instances like the MOVE bombing.
The question about the probability of an event happening in "2025 or 2026" seems mistakenly worded, given that we are more than halfway through 2026.
The questions about suspending Habeas Corpus were kind of confusing and dense. I would also recommend removing the sliders that ask survey takers to sum probabilities to 100.
Predictions are difficult without actually doing the math.
I didn't like the question about whether SCOTUS is "able" to check the president. I think that SCOTUS does not /want/ to check the president. That's different.
Good survey experience overall! Thank you for doing this work.   I dislike answering speculative questions with percentages. The future is not knowable in advance. Following Hannah Arendt, this is especially true with regard to politics. Scholars of politics should be circumspect about creating the perception that we know something we can only speculate about, regardless of how informed we are by empirical and history data, i.e. what will happen in 2032. For every perspicacious text (e.g. Rorty's Achieving Our Country) there are plenty of academic forecasts that contribute to pessimism, distrust, and even self-fulfilling prophecies. We do best when we assess the present in terms of itself and in terms of the past, which is known to us.
Good survey over all.I would like to see a comparative survey that includes other , backsliding democracies.
Some of the questions wrap multiple answers into a single response; and the “resolution criteria” were particularly confusing.
One does have to guess and my estimates are based on actually having competitive and at least mostly honest midterm elections in Nov 2026
A number of the questions were corrupted. It was impossible to move the ruler to the desired position on the 0-100 scale. This seemed to occur after a couple of sub-questions worked properly with the rest not functioning properly. You should check for strange answers that seem inconsistent with how the respondent answered the first or second item.
The follow up questions about the timing of the disposition of cases against journalists was too in-the-weeds for me, so I skipped them.
Several of the questions were poorly worded.
Really did not like nor appreciate guesswork about future electoral fights. They were more complicated than insightful.
I may support some more extreme measures if the Democrats control the presidency and the Senate, to return the Supreme Court to more legitimate interpretation of the Constitution - but I’d sharply oppose those if the President was a Republican.  That’s just one example - a number of questions asked me to pick a dmeocratic principle, but in a pragmatic way some of those principles may have to be suspended to preserve democracy and the rule of law.
There were points in the survey where I would have liked to have had the option to go back and change an answer.  An option to go back would have been helpful.
You did not mention the danger that the 2026 and/or 2028 elections will be suborned by use of violence or threat of violence, or scenarios whereby this could occur,  You also might invite comparison to other states that have recently drifted toward autocracy/oligarchy: e.g., Russia, Poland, Hungary 2010-26, Turkey, Philippines, and Israel,  And those that have seen auto-coups against elected governments in the past, e.g., Germany 1933, Italy 1922, Brazil 1964, Chile 1973, Guatemala 1954, Iran 1953 etc. etc.
I got a little confused on the outcomes of the executive not enforcing a court order. I had to read that question several times.
While I realize the sliders are meant to make us think deliberatively about the answers we give, it would be nice to have the ability to just type in the % we think.
I would have liked to have gone backward at one point, but I didn't find a way to do tht.
My university is located in Indiana, but I live in Michigan. My answer about honest tabulation of the vote was based on Michigan, not Indiana.
What autocrats attempt is very different from what they are successful at.
The sliders that have to  equal 100 are stupid.