The overwhelming majority of Americans embrace democracy. Consistently over the past three years, 87 percent of Americans say that a democratic political system is a good way of governing the country. At least 80 percent of Americans rate the importance of living in a democracy as an 8 or higher […] Read more »
Young people exposed to an epidemic have less trust in political institutions for the rest of their lives
… In a new paper, we provide the first evidence on the effects of epidemics on political trust. We use individual-level data on confidence in political institutions and leaders from the 2006-2018 Gallup World Polls (GWP), fielded in nearly 140 countries annually. Our data cover some 750,000 respondents from 142 […] Read more »
Biden and Trump Are Fighting Each Other in a Changed World
America has swung wildly from electing, and re-electing, its first African-American president, to installing the most belligerently white chief executive in the nation’s history. Now, as a multiracial cohort of demonstrators has massed in more than 2000 cities and towns, as Covid-19 has shifted to red states and as the […] Read more »
Attitudes toward Voting Technology, 2012–2019
The use of computers to record and tabulate votes has been increasingly controversial since the passage of the Help America Vote Act in 2002. This paper traces that controversy, exploring whether the elite debate about technology has affected popular attitudes. The empirical focus here is public opinion about voting technologies […] Read more »
How Public Opinion Has Moved on Black Lives Matter
American public opinion can sometimes seem stubborn. Voters haven’t really changed their views on abortion in 50 years. Donald J. Trump’s approval rating among registered voters has fallen within a five-point range for just about every day of his presidency. But the Black Lives Matter movement has been an exception […] Read more »
Presidential job approval: Trump’s re-election prospects look bleak
In modern political history, an incumbent’s job approval has been the single best measure of his reelection prospects. If this holds true in 2020, the current outlook for President Trump is bleak, and his ability to turn around his situation will steadily decline as election day nears. … The stability […] Read more »