Since before President Trump was elected — and with greater frequency afterward — historians, political scientists and journalists have wondered how autocratic our democracy might become. Here is some evidence of how the public sees it. Bright Line Watch, a consortium of political scientists formed after the 2016 election, just […] Read more »
It’s Tribalism Not Trump
There has been a lot of hand-wringing in DC these days about the way in which President Trump has undermined the legitimacy of our nation’s top law enforcement agencies. Trump’s steady stream of Twitter tirades against the FBI and the integrity of the entire Russia investigation has eroded the traditionally […] Read more »
Improving poll numbers give Republicans hope that the midterms might not be so bad
If it felt like a tsunami was headed for Republicans at the end of the year, now it’s looking more like a normal wave. Under the radar, a flurry of new public polls points to incremental improvements in GOP fortunes and challenges the narrative that has been gelling in most […] Read more »
American Democracy After Trump’s First Year
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 […] Read more »
White Women in the Rustbelt Are Turning on Trump
A massive new measure of state-by-state attitudes toward Donald Trump offers important clues about the pressure points that could tip the 2018 elections. Last week, Gallup released Trump’s average approval rating in all 50 states in 2017, based on more than 171,000 survey interviews it conducted over the course of […] Read more »
A Viewer’s Guide to ‘Special Election Watch’
Today starts a regular feature of the MIT Election Data and Science Lab called “Special Election Watch.” The idea is to follow special elections in 2018 as a guide to the extent of the Democratic swing in the November 2018 election. First, a couple of words of background, and then […] Read more »