🌅 Today’s stat: 55%

SOURCE

Bright Line Watch

WHAT TO KNOW

• A majority of Trump supporters (voters who say they identify primarily as a supporter of Donald Trump rather than the Republican party itself) say “having a strong leader who does not have to bother with Congress” would be a “very” or “fairly” good system of government, while 45% go even further by saying it’d be good to have “a strong leader who does not have to bother with Congress or elections.” Among “institutionalist” Republicans, whose allegiance is primarily owed to the party, 44% endorse a strong leader who doesn’t have to listen to Congress and 30% support a leader who doesn’t have to deal with elections. Importantly, all voters—including Trump supporters—still rate democracy as the most favorable form of government by a wide margin, followed by “expert rule” (i.e., having experts, not the government, make decisions).

WHY IT MATTERS

• The strongman rule described above, with regular elections but weak legislative checks on the executive, is precisely what scholars and experts warn against when describing fears of the U.S. sliding into “competitive authoritarianism,” which has preceded the erosion of democracy throughout history, including contemporary examples in Russia, Serbia, and post-1995 Haiti. In these systems, incumbent parties maintain the facade of democracy by still competing in elections (sometimes losing), but tilt the playing field by undermining democratic institutions in sophisticated ways, including by controlling the media, massively outspending their electoral opponents, and justifying institutional takeover with lies and conspiratorial narratives.

CONNECT THE DOTS

• The Bright Line survey also asks 560 political science and misinformation experts to rate the performance of American democracy on a scale of 0-100, averaging between 61 and 70 each year since its launch in 2017. This year, experts rated American democracy an average of 55 out of 100, by far the lowest on record, while also predicting things to get worse over the next two years, projecting an average rating of 47 in 2027 (comparable to experts’ assessments of democracy in the Philippines and Brazil).