Hundreds of experts: US sliding toward authoritarianism (2025)

A poll of hundreds of political scientists found clear concern that the United States is sliding away from a democracy and toward authoritarianism.

And a twin survey of the public agreed, though Republicans were far less likely than Democrats to believe the U.S. was on a path to becoming an authoritarian state.

The group behind the poll — Bright Line Watch, a partnership of political scientists at multiple universities monitoring democracy and threats to its existence — said confidence in America’s democratic performance has fallen to its lowest point since it began surveying the public and experts in 2017.

The polling assessed American democracy on a scale of zero (representing a complete dictatorship) to 100 (representing a perfect democracy). The rating is based on 30 indicators of democratic performance, including lack of political violence, effective checks on the president by Congress, and freedom of the press.

The survey of 520 political science experts revealed a sharp downturn in their assessment of democracy in recent months.

On Bright Line Watch’s democracy scale, experts rated America’s democratic health at 69 out of 100 in October and 67 in November.

But from November to February, that number fell to 55, bringing the experts’ ratings to their lowest level since the survey began.

“That’s a precipitous drop,” John Carey, a government professor at Dartmouth College and co-director of Bright Line Watch, told NPR. “There’s certainly consensus: We’re moving in the wrong direction.”

The poll of 2,750 members of the public placed America’s democratic performance at 53 out of 100.

In past surveys, experts consistently assessed American democracy to be in far better shape than members of the public did. From 2017 to 2024, the group of experts rated the democracy’s health between 61 and 70 out of 100.

Previous polls of the public had also been “remarkably stable,” Bright Line Watch noted, “with gains among one party typically offset by losses among the other.”

That pattern appeared between October and November, as Democrats lost confidence in American democracy while Republicans gained it.

But from November through February, Republican assessments of democracy held stable, while Democrats’ plummeted, falling from 60 to 49 on Bright Line Watch’s democracy scale.

“To put these ratings in context, the ratings that experts provide now for American democracy are comparable to their assessment of Mexican democracy in October 2022,” the pollsters said. “Their forecast for 2027″ — a 47 out of 100 — “would put U.S. democracy between experts’ 2022 assessments of the Philippines and Brazil.”