Archives: Ideas

This report intends to take a critical step in providing a stronger, more comprehensive understanding of the evolving field of democracy-focused philanthropy in the United States — about where it has been, where it may be headed, and how funder perceptions and realities on the ground compare. There are still lingering questions about the current state and future trends, and there is certainly a need for more coordinated research and data collection. All such insights can help field stakeholders best achieve our shared goals: protecting and strengthening American democracy.

How can philanthropy better support the movement for a more inclusive, multiracial democracy?

Over the coming months and years, Democracy Fund will work with grantees and funders to better understand where philanthropy has been most impactful and where we are falling short — with the goal of creating resources that support funders in doing better. One of the first steps in this process is understanding more about how philanthropy is supporting the field today.

By our estimate, institutional philanthropy is currently investing an average of $2.7 to $3.4 billion a year to support democracy. This is a remarkable commitment and represents a dramatic increase from where we were at just five years ago. But that figure doesn’t tell the whole story.

For democracy to thrive, we need significant long-term commitments to the pillars that support it. While it’s encouraging that democracy funding has increased significantly in recent years — by our estimates, somewhere between 42 and 61 percent growth from 2017–2018 to 2021–2022 — we must do more. And we can: Less than one percent of philanthropy was devoted to democracy in 2022, while other issue areas still receive far more attention and support.

We know firsthand that the increasing number of intermediaries, programs, and activities supporting democracy has made it harder to clearly understand where resources are most needed and where philanthropy has become part of the problem. The infrastructure the field has constructed is remarkable, but its complexity requires deeper study to help funders maintain confidence that resources are being allocated effectively.

Until now, we’ve lacked hard data and corresponding analysis about the current state and direction of pro- democracy philanthropy. We commissioned this report as a first step toward filling that gap — to establish a baseline from which we can measure trends in the field. We look forward to working with partners to develop and release more data and reports that can refine our collective understanding.

We intend for Democracy Fund to play an increasing role in helping provide an unbiased look at the state and direction of the field, as well as to help us all better understand what it means to be an effective democracy funder. We believe that better data and improved information sharing can strengthen the collective sense of identity and community across the wide range of institutions engaged in this work.

For that data and information to be useful, it must reflect the diversity of the pro-democracy community and America itself. This report is limited by the set of institutions we were able to engage in this process — and we know that it tells an incomplete story. In the future, we will broaden our inputs by engaging more partners in these discussions and future surveys.

We look forward to continuing our work with a broad range of funders — from the long-standing to the newly interested — in support of an inclusive, multiracial democracy that is open, just, resilient, and trustworthy. The growth we’ve seen has helped produce some remarkable impact, and now is the time to double down on support for the field.

Joe Goldman
President, Democracy Fund

Lauren Hill
Senior Director of Partnerships, Democracy Fund

KEY TERMS

Some field-related terms mentioned frequently within this report are:

• Institutional funders — registered foundations with sizeable endowments and annual payouts. These foundations’ grantmaking operations are typically managed by foundation staff, rather than by the founder(s) themselves or by outsourced consultants.
• Individual donors — people who may have a registered foundation with little to no staff, or who give directly or through an intermediary such as a donor-advised fund. While there are some exceptions, individual donor payouts tend to be smaller than those of institutional funders.
• Legacy funders — those who report having funded democracy work for more than five years.
• New(er) funders — those who report having funded democracy work for less than five years.
• Intermediaries — organizations and vehicles that support funders who prefer not to fund in this space directly or alone. Examples include donor-advised funds, fiscal sponsors, community foundations, and pooled funds/donor collaboratives.
• Funding cycles — research periods of two years that account for peaks and downturns that might occur alongside the U.S. election cycle, recognizing that election-related funding makes up a significant portion of spending in the democracy space. For example, we review data for the 2017–2018, 2019–2020, and 2021–2022 cycles.

KEY FINDINGS IN THIS SECTION

• Among survey respondents, funding for democracy-related work is estimated to have grown between 42 percent and 61 percent in four years.
• If other funders who were not surveyed grew at a similar rate, we estimate institutional philanthropy for democracy to have grown from between $3.8 billion and $4.3 billion in 2017–2018 ($1.9 billion and $2.1 billion on average per year) to between $5.4 billion and $6.9 billion in 2021–2022 ($2.7 billion and $3.4 billion on average per year).
• Despite this growth, democracy funding remains small compared to that for other issues. The high estimate of $3.4 billion per year would account for only 0.7 percent of all philanthropic funding in the U.S. in 2022.
• Institutional philanthropic funding for democracy is expected to grow further in 2023– 2024, with 45 percent of survey respondents planning to increase funding and just 8 percent planning to decrease it compared to 2021–2022.
• Surprisingly, the majority (57 percent) of survey respondents reported having increased funding in 2021–2022 relative to 2019–2020 — during the last U.S. presidential election cycle — showing less cyclicality in funding from institutional philanthropy than expected.
• Long-term and unrestricted funding is becoming more common across institutional philanthropy, despite concerns that funding growth has focused on short-term goals.
• Importantly, these data provide insight into plans and trends among institutional funders, but field stakeholders remain concerned about trends in funding from other sources — including individual donors — especially as many grantees report fundraising challenges.

In the course of conducting research, it is always worthwhile to take a step back and consider the ways in which a given source of data may be flawed or otherwise limited. In this case, our analysis is based in large part on self-reported survey data and therefore subject to a wide variety of potential issues. While we stand behind the analysis presented above, it is worth considering potential sources of bias:

• Aggregate trends and funder perspectives inherently miss grantee experiences — These estimates describe field funding and growth in the aggregate, based on surveying funders. However, the experience for individual grantees and field organizations will certainly vary. In particular, BIPOC-led organizations and those serving underrepresented communities historically have been disadvantaged in receiving philanthropic funding. It is entirely possible, and even probable, that the distribution of this funding growth was unequal and that the overall growth reported here does not reflect the experiences of every organization. For instance, BIPOC-led organizations may have had significantly more difficult experiences entering the field than funders overall. This is an important area for future research.
• Definitions of democracy work differ across data sources, impacting comparability — The categories of work included in Candid’s taxonomy of the field (used to assess 2017–2018 funding) differ slightly from those used for the survey (used to assess 2021–2022 funding). The taxonomy used for the survey was designed as an update to Candid’s taxonomy, with a goal of rearranging categories and understood sub-areas to better match current field foci. For instance, our taxonomy includes a dedicated category for social and racial justice work — an area of significant focus for field funders particularly of late — yet much of this work likely fell within prior existing categories, such as the civil liberties and rule of law category and the issue-based participation category. Therefore, some amount of the estimated growth over time could be attributed to changes in definitions, potentially biasing estimates upward given the more expansive taxonomy. A fuller discussion of the new taxonomy and the changes included are described in this report’s section on Field Focal Areas, as well as in the Appendix.
• Estimates rely on data about funders in 2017–2018, yet the population of funders in this field has likely shifted — These totals are also limited to estimated growth among funders included in Candid’s database as of 2017– 2018, which primarily consists of institutional philanthropy. This sample inherently excludes newer field entrants since that period, while also including some institutions that may have stopped funding in the space. It also does not appropriately account for funding and growth from individual donors, as not one funder in this sample was categorized by Candid as an “Individual” donor. If this research were to capture these other sources of funding, the overall magnitude of estimated field funding would be larger, and the estimated growth over the period also might be higher.
• Survey sample is possibly biased toward funders with larger funding growth — The survey was distributed to a set of funders known to Democracy Fund as supporting democracy work, due to existing awareness and relationships as well as publicly available information. Of those that received the survey, only 47 percent responded to the survey or otherwise provided topline information on their democracy funding. It is possible that funders who are decreasing funding or exiting the field entirely may have been less likely to be included in the initial sample and less likely to respond to the survey even if they were included. If true, this would lead us to overestimate both the size of the field today and its growth over the period analyzed.
• Datasets may contain different amounts of 501(c)(4) funding data — Survey data included in these calculations account for only 501(c)(3) funding, while Candid data are intended to be inclusive of both 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) funding. However, it is unclear to what extent Candid data for 2017–2018 accounts for 501(c)(4) funding, and how large this amount would be relative to the total funding for the period. If the data in Candid for 2017–2018 includes large amounts of 501(c)(4) funding, this would lead us to underestimate the rate at which Candid undercounts 501(c)(3) funding and would likely lead us to underestimate growth in 501(c)(3) funding over the period.¹⁰

Institutional Philanthropy for Democracy Work is Expected to Grow Further in 2023–2024

Even with the understanding that the field of democracy funders has grown since 2016, the future remains unclear. Many note anxiety that recent field growth may decline — both in the number of funders engaged and the amount of funding available — based on the sense that the worst crises of recent years have passed. In particular, these concerns often center on newer field funders and individual donors viewed as less committed to the space long- term. Several survey respondents shared these sentiments:

• “I’m worried that some of the new energy and funding that came out of the 2016–2020 era is starting to drop.”
• “I think there is a growing complacency and lack of urgency around these issues as a result of Trump no longer being in office, when in fact the authoritarian threat is growing, not decreasing.”
• “I hear that overall giving is down and there is some donor fatigue in play, which is concerning given the challenges and opportunities in the space at the moment.”

These concerns align with reports from grantees and grassroots organizations that fundraising for nonpartisan democracy work related to the 2023–2024 election cycle has been slower than in recent cycles, particularly from individual donors — a trend described anecdotally by interviewees.

While funding trends from newer funders and individual donors are difficult to predict, it should be encouraging to note that most of the institutional funders that responded to our survey plan to increase or maintain funding levels going forward. Of respondents, 45 percent (24 of 53) reported that they plan to increase democracy-focused funding in 2023–2024 from that issued in 2021–2022, and 47 percent (25 of 53) reported that their funding will stay the same. Only 8 percent (four of 53) reported that they plan to decrease funding.

Some survey respondents noted that 2023–2024 funding decisions, while expected to increase or remain constant, had yet to be finalized. In part, this was due to internal planning dynamics, as funders indicated they were still in the process of developing programmatic goals and strategies. Others note this was a deliberate delay to see what issues or funding gaps emerge — reflecting both a response to concerns about potential funding shortfalls as well as a potential factor contributing to slow field fundraising to date.

With the combination of delays in funding decisions by institutional philanthropy and reported fundraising challenges from individual or newer donors, it is understandable that grantees are feeling cross-pressured, finding resources scarce at a time when many expected to be expanding operations.

Respondents were also asked what led to changes in their funding priorities between the 2021–2022 and 2023– 2024 funding cycles. The most common reason funders identified for both changing their funding strategy and increasing funding was a desire to grow support for specific subtopics. For instance, one respondent shared that “the foundation has shifted its focus to center racial justice and equity, [addressing root causes,] structural racism, and systems change.” Another shared that “[the foundation] intend[s] to deepen [its] work on election infrastructure and misinformation and disinformation.”

CAVEATS TO PLANNED FUNDING FINDINGS

There are three caveats to consider when looking at findings about planned funding growth:

• Some growth may be cyclical — although survey data suggest less cyclicality than expected — Given that 2024 is a U.S. presidential election year, some of this expected increase in funding may be cyclical. However, there are reasons to believe that this represents real non-cyclical growth. A similar number of survey respondents also reported having increased (57 percent, 30 of 53) or maintained (28 percent, 15 of 53) funding in 2021–2022 relative to 2019–2020 — despite the latter being the past presidential election cycle. Taken at face value, this may suggest more funding stability between electoral cycles overall within institutional philanthropy. In the reasons survey respondents gave for increased funding over the period, some did point to time-bound crises that won’t persist — such as funding responses to the events of January 6, 2021 — still many noted a broader range of factors that we might expect to sustain over time, e.g., a number reported increased support for media and journalism issues.
• Survey sample is possibly biased toward funders planning to increase funding — These findings may be subject to sample bias, as those expecting to decrease funding in the space may have been less likely to respond to the survey. Further, high-net-worth donors who may have been more recent entrants in the field were not included substantially in the survey. If true, our findings may represent an overly rosy picture of future funding plans among not only institutional funders, but also the field writ large.
• Aggregate trends may differ from grantee experiences — It is worth noting that the trends among funders identified here would not necessarily align with the experiences of individual grantees. It may be the case that increased funding disproportionately serves new grantees or flows through new intermediaries, and therefore may not result in higher funding levels for pre-existing organizations. Further, we know from prior research that BIPOC-led nonprofits and those serving communities of color tend to receive less support than their white-led and white-serving counterparts.¹¹ Thus, while indicators of increased funding levels overall is a positive sign, we should be cautious in how we interpret the impact this has for organizations on the ground.

Multiyear and Unrestricted Funding are Becoming More Common Across Institutional Philanthropy

Several interviewees and survey respondents cited concerns that the field lacks sufficient long-term and unrestricted funding for grantees. In particular, newer funders and individual donors were perceived as being overly focused on short-term goals. As two respondents noted:

• “It’s great that there’s a heavy focus on elections, but so little long-term thinking [is] happening in the democracy”
• “Some donors do not provide predictable, reliable, consistent funding to organizations to be able to sustain their work year-round and create multiyear plans for the future.”

However, while it may be difficult to assess the focus of newer funders and individual donors on these approaches, survey respondents report high levels of long-term and unrestricted funding, as part of a trend across philanthropy overall to move toward trust-based practices. The majority of survey respondents (62 percent) reported that at least half of their 2021–2022 democracy-related grants are multiyear versus one year or less. Similarly, the vast majority (72 percent) report that at least half their grants are for general operating support.

Increasingly, it appears that multiyear grants and general operating support are becoming normalized among institutional funders of democracy work. For example, among foundations that made confidential 2017–2018 internal data available, the majority reported higher rates of both general support and multiyear grants in 2021–2022 than appears in their grantmaking data for the prior period.

As one respondent noted:

“[The foundation] started supporting grantees in the longer term after the 2016 election because [its staff] were concerned that the issue of voting rights was not going away. [The staff] listened to [its] grantees about the need for consistent, multiyear funding and now [the foundation is] approaching more of [its] democracy funding from a long-term perspective.”

Despite these trends, grantees continue to voice the need for more long-term support, and more improvements in this regard may well be warranted. For instance, in internal grant data for select foundations, we found that while 50 percent of democracy-related grants made in 2021–2022 were for at least 24 months, just 23 percent of grants exceeded two years, and less than 10 percent of grants exceeded three years.

Additionally, the length of grants likely differs across issue areas. For instance, in reviewing confidential 2021–2022 grantmaking data for select foundations, grants for voting rights and voter engagement work were 15 percent shorter on average (18 months) than all other grants (21 months), while those for civil liberties and rule of law were 22 percent longer on average (26 months).

Stakeholders Continue to be Concerned about Timing of Funding and 501(c)(4) Funding Levels

Interviewees and survey respondents also shared concerns about the timing of field funding. Many noted that funding often reaches grantees too late to be most useful, especially in the context of election-related funding. Some also reported feeling that 501(c)(4) funding levels are too low overall. Unlike 501(c)(3) funding, 501(c)(4) funding enables social welfare organizations to engage in unlimited lobbying activities related to the organization’s exempt purpose and engage in limited partisan activity, such as endorsing candidates or conducting get-out-the-vote campaigns based on party affiliation, though such partisan activities cannot be its primary purpose.¹²)

Survey respondents note a trend toward grants coming later within election cycles, as funders increasingly take a “wait and see” approach before setting funding strategies, in hopes of better targeting funds to areas of greatest need and opportunity. While this can enable responsiveness to emerging challenges, it can also make it difficult for grantees and funders alike to plan ahead and leverage funding fully. In the words of one respondent: “I worry about funding moving too late, when groups need early resources to be most effective and impactful.”

Some evidence bears this out. For instance, one interviewee from a funding intermediary, in reviewing funding flows, noted that “there is a drop-off in democracy funding across the board and it’s coming in later…” However, the same interviewee also noted that “things always drop off and then pick back up later,” suggesting increased funding levels could be expected to eventually materialize, albeit with shifts in timing.

There is a perception that this trend is especially true for funding from individual donors. However, it is apparent even in institutional philanthropy. Many survey respondents described their own approach in similar ways, noting that with current information they aren’t yet ready to lock in strategies for the 2023–2024 cycle. For instance, one respondent shared: “Depending on emerging threats we may increase funding in certain areas to meet the moment. It is still too early to know.”

Funders also note concern that work to promote a healthy democracy has too little 501(c)(4) funding and share a perception that “anti-democracy” efforts are better resourced in this regard. Of those surveyed, most respondents (74 percent, 26 of 35) indicated they do not have an affiliated 501(c)(4) that funds democracy-related work. Respondents that do (23 percent, eight of 35) reported just over $105 million in annual 501(c)(4) funding for related activities in 2021– 2022.¹³ Just 12 of the 141 funders (9 percent) included in the survey distribution have easily identifiable 501(c)(4) affiliates.

This point was reinforced by a representative from a pooled fund who noted “a lot of funders are not experienced with the (c)(4) side.” One interviewee shared that their “biggest criticism of the democracy field is that there isn’t more (c)(4) funding. (c)(3) funders aren’t sufficient.”

Some stakeholders note that some newer funders to the field — particularly individual donors who have traditionally engaged in campaign and political funding — have brought more 501(c)(4) funding to the table. However, stakeholders also convey some wariness that these trends could amplify perceptions that the field is becoming increasingly political or partisan.

Field Focal Areas

Democracy Field Shifting and Maturing to Respond to Emerging Threats

The democracy funding field includes a broad and growing array of focal areas, actors, and funders. The set of issues seen by funders as core to the health of democracy includes many that have long been the focus of field efforts, while also incorporating newer foci that have emerged in response to evolving threats to democratic institutions and processes. Some recent foci relate to threats that predate our institutions themselves, such as white supremacy and racial inequity, which philanthropy has historically played a role in exacerbating. Others target newer trends resulting from rapid technological change.

Given this shifting landscape and the increasing understanding of the fundamental role a healthy democracy plays in ensuring effective outcomes in other issue areas, it can be difficult to neatly define what constitutes “democracy-related work.” Unsurprisingly, many stakeholders report confusion — and even frustration — in trying to navigate the space and their role in it.

This section of the report details the areas of democracy-related work included in this study and how this set of focal areas has evolved over time. It also provides insights on the relative attention that different sub-issues have received and notes where increased attention from funders may be warranted.

Survey respondents supported a wide breadth of issues in 2021–2022, with each area of work receiving support from many funders.

Among our survey respondents, voter education and engagement (86 percent, 32 of 37), voting rights (76 percent, 28 of 37), and election administration (73 percent, 27 of 37) were the most commonly funded areas in the democracy space in 2021–2022. These issues have seen larger investment in recent years. For instance, campaigns, elections, and voting issues accounted for just 9 percent of all democracy funding recorded by Candid in 2016, while funding for these issues increased to 26 percent in 2020.

The survey also shows significant interest and support for issues that were not historically core areas of field focus. Nearly 70 percent of respondents (26 of 37) report having funded social and racial justice work in the 2021–2022 cycle; this area has not always been considered by philanthropy, with its historically white and elite biases, as a dedicated category of work. Additionally, 59 percent (22 of 37) report funding for media policy and combating misinformation and disinformation, while 54 percent (20 of 37) report funding for journalism. These are areas that have matured alongside the fast-evolving media, technology, and information landscape.

However, when reviewing internal grant data from a sample of 12 foundations, including 2,403 grants totaling $1.1 billion, we found that the volume and funding across these categories varied significantly.

For instance, in this sample, areas with far more grants and funding include social and racial justice work and public and issue-based participation. By contrast, voting rights, voter education and engagement, and election administration have fewer grants and less funding, despite the largest number of funders having reporting funding in these areas in our survey.

Areas with the smallest number of grants and far less funding in this sample included those that are off cycle, such as redistricting and census, as well as areas that are more targeted in nature, such as social cohesion and anti-hate. These analyses are highly dependent on the accuracy of issue-coding performed by our team, based on reading grant purpose statements provided directly by funders.

Of funders that reported increased funding in the 2021–2022 cycle relative to the 2019–2020 cycle, many explicitly noted increased focus on racial justice issues, COVID-19 related issues, and misinformation and disinformation.

Some areas of work that had attracted a greater share of efforts to promote a healthy democracy in prior eras — such as campaign finance and government oversight and reform work — were supported by a minority of survey respondents in the 2021–2022 cycle and appear lower in the sample of internal grant data. Interestingly, of the 12 survey respondents who report they have funded causes in the democracy space for less than five years, none reported having funded these areas in 2021–2022.

These newer funders were slightly more likely to report having funded voting rights, voter engagement, and election administration efforts than did legacy funders. They also reported especially heavy engagement in newer field focal areas like social and racial justice, as well as misinformation and disinformation.

KEY FINDINGS IN THIS SECTION

• The rise of authoritarianism is not the only driving factor in bringing newer funders to the field. Concerns about attacks on democratic institutions and the interests and experience of new internal staff are also driving entrants to the space.
• New entrants to the democracy funding field find relationships and networking to be most helpful to success in their early years, followed by access to relevant research and fresh perspectives from new staff and board members.
• The number and role of funding intermediaries is growing, offering benefits, such as grantmaking convenience, and challenges, such as greater complexity of options.

Different stakeholders are exploring how to optimize the benefits of increased field infrastructure, while avoiding the unintended complexity. One of these is increased anonymity for individual funders and therefore less transparency about who is funding whom, at what level, and what subtopics they are supporting.

This section of the report examines the perceptions and experiences of newer funders. It seeks to identify what is known and less apparent about their motivations and interests, and it explores the growing role of intermediaries in this developing ecosystem.

Rise of Authoritarianism Not the Only Driving Factor in Bringing Newer Funders to the Field

To understand the experiences and motivations of newer funders, and to compare these with perceptions held by legacy funders about newer funders, the survey asked parallel questions of each group. In many important areas, these perceptions differ from reality, leaving important opportunities for improving communication and understanding between groups.

Legacy funders’ perspectives on why new funders have entered the space and the barriers to entry they have faced differ from the experiences shared by newer funders. Nearly half of legacy funders (18 of 37) noted changes in the national political landscape — particularly factors related to the rise of authoritarianism in the U.S. — as the main driver for newer funders entering the space, while more than half (53 percent) cited political perceptions about the work as likely the main barrier to entry. By contrast, just 17 percent of newer funders (two of 12) cited authoritarianism as a motivation, and only 25 percent (three of 12) cited political perceptions as a barrier.

Though these gaps may be due to reluctance among respondents in sharing motivations that could be construed as political in nature, the motivations newer funders did share ultimately showed wider variety than the perceptions shared by legacy funders. In their survey responses, new funders cite varied reasons for entering the field, including concerns about attacks on democratic institutions more broadly, the interests and experience of new internal staff or leadership, along with Trump-related issues.

For Newer Funders, Relationships and Networking are Key

Legacy funders and new funders alike understand the importance of networking and connections for new entrants. When asked which factors helped most when they decided to start funding democracy work, 67 percent (eight of 12) of newer funders cited networks and connections as the most important. One newer funder noted in an interview that, after the chaotic “panic” of 2020 had subsided, they found that it became much easier to engage more meaningfully in the space as other field stakeholders have had more capacity to engage and welcome them.

Newer Field Funders Display Wide Range of Backgrounds and Interests

Newer field funders differ in their interests, engagements to date, and plans for the future. They approach their philanthropic giving from a range of lenses: an issue area lens, a geographic lens, a project approach lens, and a racial equity lens, among others. Several interviewees noted that some new funders make grant decisions based on the secondary impact that a stronger, more inclusive democracy could create. For instance, some democracy grants could help ensure clean energy investments are effectively implemented, and others could help foster thriving local economies. As one survey respondent described it, “There has been increasing awareness and alarm about the threats to our democracy and this has attracted new funders to the field — funders who are able to see how the health of our democracy underpins and connects to other issue areas.”

Given the breadth of approaches funders take, it is important not to view them as a single homogenous group. Instead, we looked at different new funder profiles to better understand their experiences, described below. These newer funders include both institutional funders and individual donors, generally with slightly different but overlapping motivations:

• Institutional funders — registered foundations with larger endowments and annual payouts and that are typically fully staffed. Many institutional funders have increased their annual grantmaking budget for democracy issues since 2016 and plan to maintain or increase funding in 2023–2024. A few others have shifted democracy grantmaking that was previously part of a temporary initiative or housed in a different portfolio area into a full, permanent program. Still others had never previously funded democracy-related activities but have recently turned toward this work as an entirely new focal area.
• Individual donors — who may have a registered foundation with little to no staff, or they may choose to give directly or through an intermediary such as a donor-advised fund. A number of high-net-worth individual donors recently entered the field, and stakeholders often note three key categories as being particularly prevalent: those with inherited wealth,¹⁵ wealthy executives from the finance world,¹⁶ and newly wealthy technology executives from Silicon Valley. Individual donors support work across the full spectrum of democracy sub-areas, although many have focused on funding democracy work with a technology, social entrepreneurship, and data-forward lens. While some individual donors may have established funding strategies, their giving also has been described as more nimble and responsive to their interest and needs of the moment. Some see individual donors as being more short-term focused.

Whether institutional funders or individual donors, many come to democracy issues from different backgrounds and motivations. Below are additional categories that can describe some of these newer field funders. These are based on survey responses from those who report having funded democracy-related causes for five years or fewer, qualitative discussions with stakeholders who regularly engage with and support newer field funders, and independent research. These categories are intended to be neither exhaustive nor mutually exclusive.

• Place-based funders — a number of typically local, state, or regionally focused funders have begun to support democracy efforts in their priority geographies, including work such as civic participation, voting rights, and local journalism. For instance, some groups funded census outreach and community organizing around redistricting during the 2020–2022 census and redistricting cycle. Some have even shifted to funding such work beyond their regional focus.
• Issue-based funders — those focused on one or more specific non-democracy issue areas, who have more recently come to democracy work as a lever for seeking impact on those issues. In some cases, this may be in response to decades of inaction and frustration, and a perception that new strategies must be considered (this is the case among many climate funders). In other cases, it may be in support of more acute needs in response to external policy changes or threats (such as among recent field entrants focused on protecting reproductive rights). For example, one newer funder who had previously focused primarily on social entrepreneurship and innovation explained that “everything we want to do requires the government to either enable it or to amplify it through scaling effective solutions, so we realized that democracy is critical to any progress.”
• Social justice funders — as the definition of democracy funding has broadened to include social and racial justice as prime focal areas, this has enabled longtime social justice funders to be brought more fully into democracy funding networks. Additionally, some funders deepened their social and racial justice work following the murder of George Floyd and in response to inequities that became more stark during the COVID-19 pandemic. In many cases, this deepening justice work included greater investment in initiatives on voting, elections, civil rights, and related issues alongside movement-building efforts.
• Political funders — those individual funders or organizations that have been major partisan donors or fundraisers to individual campaigns, PACs, and super PACs have more recently begun to engage in nonpartisan democracy work. For instance, Way to Win, a progressive political fundraising hub, recently established a 501(c)(3) grantmaking operation, Way to Rise, which has distributed over $5 million to state and local nonprofits working on co-governance, voter protection and education, and narrative change.¹⁷

One funder shared their interpretation of growth and evolution of the field over this time period: “My mental model on funders in the last five years in the democracy space is that there were legacy funders (anyone in space before 2017); then there was a rush of funders who came in around 2017/2018; then there was another wave of funders who have come in in the last two to four years who had been dipping their toes in the water a little bit, but have now evolved to more stable funders in the space.”

Newer funders, especially individual donors, have much to offer the democracy field. These contributions bring new perspectives on sub-issues like misinformation and disinformation and media policy, the ability to experiment with entrepreneurial policy reform and interventions, and the ability to provide 501(c)(4) support. Funders moving into the democracy field from other areas also have a different set of expectations than do legacy funders, drawn from their experiences funding other fields. Moving forward, it is critical to determine the best strategies to leverage the strengths of an array of types of new funders in the field.

Number and Role of Funding Intermediaries Growing

As the democracy funding field has grown, the number of pooled funds, regranting organizations, and other intermediaries has also grown, bringing new benefits and challenges. Intermediaries play an increasingly significant role in managing and directing funding to democracy organizations. These vehicles have increased grantmaking convenience, effectiveness, and reporting for funders, and reduced administrative burdens for grantees. They also have served as critical low-barrier entry points for newer field funders. However, some stakeholders have noted that the increased number of intermediaries has caused some unnecessary complexity. At times, this has created difficulties for both newer and more legacy funders in navigating available options.

Growth in the number and scale of intermediaries is seen as a direct result of the growth of funding from individual donors, given the role of intermediaries as aggregators of funding across multiple donors as well as providers of confidentiality to the sources of funding. Evidence of the growth of funding intermediaries is largely drawn from publicly available information and reporting. It includes:

• Donor collaboratives and pooled funds are growing in size and number — In our research, Democracy Fund identified 74 funds and collaboratives for democracy-related work at the national level, half of which (41) launched in the years since 2016. Many of these include both 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) affiliates, making the full list of funds and organizations even larger, without even taking into account the numerous state and regional funds. Pre-existing funds continue to grow as well. For instance, 40 percent of all giving since 2010 from the State Infrastructure Fund ($56 million of $141 million) was raised during the 2020 election run-up. The Fund’s number of donors has also increased dramatically — from five institutional funders and individual donors in 2010 to 13 in 2017 to 41 as of July 2021. While difficult to estimate, it is likely many hundreds of millions of dollars flow through or are organized by these entities.
• Donor-advised funds have been a major source of funding growth — Of the $917 million that Silicon Valley Community Foundation’s donor-advised funds have distributed to democracy issues since 2011, over $541 million was donated during the 2019–2020 cycle. This aligns with exponential growth in giving to donor-advised funds more broadly — which has more than quintupled over the past decade — including in 2020, when major donor- advised fund sponsor Fidelity Charitable became the top recipient of charitable giving.¹⁸
• Fiscal sponsors are growing in size — The Sixteen Thirty Fund, a major fiscal sponsor, experienced a tenfold increase in expenditures for consulting firm Arabella Advisors’ services from 2014 to 2019, signaling a large increase in the amount of funds flowing through the hub.¹⁹
• Community foundations are increasing their democracy portfolios — Many regional community foundations have more recently focused on funding democracy work — both within their geographies and nationally — as donors have shown increasing interest in these areas. One interviewee described that their community foundation used to have a small grantmaking portfolio on democratic values, but expanded this focus in the wake of the 2016 election to support census work regionally, as well as national democracy organizations. Since then, it has found this work has helped attract new donors.

Intermediary Funder Benefits

Intermediaries function in different ways that may be attractive to potential funders. They serve as important entry points for newer field funders — narrowing and clarifying grantmaking options, making the complex field easier to navigate, and generally acting as a fund manager. Some of the value that intermediaries offer new funders includes, but is not limited to:

• Economies of scale — intermediaries provide a structure for giving in ways that individual foundations might not be able to pursue on their own. They have the ability to give a large number of small grants to organizations at the state and local level, which might otherwise pose administrative or relationship management difficulties for national foundations or those with small staffs. They also have both the scale and flexibility needed to be effective in rapid response situations. For instance, the Trusted Elections Fund was able to respond to security threats during the 2020 election, and the Fair Representation in Redistricting pooled fund swiftly provided needed support in response to legal and political developments across states during the 2020–2022 redistricting cycle.²⁰
• Amplified impact — pooling funds can mean that any individual funder can leverage their giving against that of others, amplifying impact while mitigating risk. Individual grantmakers can report to internal stakeholders about the accomplishments of the full fund, showing the role of their funding in helping achieve larger-scale impact. This can be helpful in unlocking even larger grantmaking budgets in the future. It can also enable program officers and directors to take on more risk than they would if they were operating alone, especially in newer democracy topics like electoral reform.
• Peer learning networks — intermediaries open doors to other funders, grantee organizations, field experts, and scholars, helping create peer networks and learning communities. These can be formal and informal processes of information exchange that newer funders or smaller foundations may not have capacity to manage on their own. This can be a particularly important benefit for newer funders seeking to build connections. These networks also provide infrastructure for identifying trends across funders, enabling intermediaries to create funding vehicles that are responsive to evolving interests.
• Tailored approaches — intermediaries are able to leverage the terminology, strategy, and approaches that the particular donors they serve feel most comfortable and aligned with. For instance, one interviewee at a funding intermediary explained how, because the vast majority of their fund’s donors are private equity investors, they approach their national coordination efforts like running a private equity or venture capital fund as an “activist investor.” Their team members sit on nonprofit boards, hold weekly check-in and briefing calls, and advise state campaigns and try to coordinate across states — all as strategies that their donors recognize and appreciate.
• Anonymity — funders who wish to remain unnamed for their philanthropic giving can achieve confidentiality by working with donor-advised funds, fiscal sponsors, community foundations, and other types of intermediaries. This is particularly relevant in the democracy space, where funders and grantees are often subject to threats of political violence and other risks.

Rapid Growth of Intermediaries Raises Perceived Tensions

Even with the long list of benefits that intermediaries offer, stakeholders also have noted concerns that rapid growth in the number and role of pooled funds and other intermediaries can create challenges. These can include:

• Complexity among intermediaries — while intermediaries are intended to help simplify options for donors, navigating the universe of intermediaries can prove challenging in itself. Some note the proliferation of funding vehicles with overlapping missions and foci can make it difficult especially for newer funders to parse differences and make strategic investment decisions.
• Perceived tensions with legacy approaches — where intermediaries serve a wave of newer field funders, often with approaches and interests different from those of legacy funders, intermediaries change their approaches to match. And pooled fund staff may have different backgrounds or expertise than other field funders, which may result in conflicting strategy. With the collective amount of funds these intermediaries administer growing significantly, these changes can alter overall field funding approaches, which has made some legacy funders wary.
• Competition drives misaligned incentives — intermediaries compete for funding from donors, and therefore may be incentivized to develop strategies and approaches that are inherently distinct from and, at times, in tension with those of other funds. This competitive landscape also requires funds to focus on proving impact. Some stakeholders have noted concerns over a growing emphasis on having grantees produce administratively burdensome quantitative impact data.

Broadly, intermediaries play the role of working across and with the heterogeneity of a field with a wide variety of funders. This is a major undertaking, and one that should not be taken lightly. In all, intermediaries present more benefits than concerns; however, they do introduce complexity to the field.

Looking Ahead

Impact, Opportunity, and the Value of Community Building

The constellation of foundations, donors, nonprofits, and grantees focused on the support and promotion of democracy in the U.S. has shifted significantly since 2016. The result is a field that has grown, matured, and become more impactful. The reasons for this dynamic growth are numerous and multifaceted. These include concerns over election interference, the rise of authoritarianism, growing polarization and division, the growing threat of misinformation, disinformation, and the troubling media landscape. Newer support spans that for engagement in the 2020 Census and ensuing redistricting, to election administration and protection efforts in the context of a global pandemic, to deepening efforts aimed at advancing social and racial justice in the wake of COVID-19 and the murder of George Floyd, and more.

For many, this period of transformation has raised significant questions about the future of the pro-democracy philanthropic field. Rapid growth in response to critical events and crises can just as easily be matched by rapid contraction particularly when it is perceived — correctly or incorrectly — that the crisis moment has passed. And early fundraising challenges experienced by grantees for nonpartisan work related to the 2023–2024 election cycle contributes to these concerns, despite our survey showing strong funding trends among institutional philanthropy. Growing pains can also take the form of inefficiencies, redundancies, and unnecessary complexity that can make a field less effective and blunt impact. Consequently, field stakeholders are wary.

Fortunately, stakeholders overwhelmingly share reasons for optimism: more funding and partners overall, a more mature and varied field, a more comprehensive understanding of how to bolster democracy for impact on a range of issues, and several critical recent examples of impact in spite of perceived challenges. Growth has created significant opportunities to expand and deepen important work in a host of areas — universally cited by survey respondents as cause for excitement about the field’s potential.

Only now, several years into this period of transition, can field stakeholders begin to understand the scope and impact of these changes, and to identify how best to capitalize on growth in ways that promote long-term field health, funding sustainability, and increased collective impact. And overwhelmingly, stakeholders agree: We must start with better information about what the field looks like today, and what we can expect for tomorrow. Stakeholders want to understand the diversity of the field, create collaborative environments, consider the sequencing of funding activities, and adopt strategies that reinforce one another. All are eager for more information that can help make sense of this new landscape, including the wealth of new opportunities it holds.

Potential Opportunities for Field Strengthening and Community Building

As the democracy field continues to grow and mature, additional needs have emerged to ensure that efforts to protect and strengthen American democracy are maximally effective. Opportunities include:

• Community building — several formal initiatives foster community in the democracy space — networks like Democracy Funders Network and the Funders Committee for Civic Participation as well as pooled funds and associated programming. However, funder experiences may vary, and some stakeholders have noted that well-known funders may have a more welcoming experience entering the field than smaller, lesser-known funders. Regardless, there is space to help funders better connect, to strengthen entry points for newer funders, and to build a strong identity for and community of “democracy funders.”
• Understanding grantee experiences — it will also be critical to engage with grantee organizations to understand their needs and experiences and enable them to better communicate their goals and crystallize their strategies (e.g., short versus long term, offensive versus defensive) to funders. With so much rapid change in the funding landscape, the experience of grantee organizations and their engagement with the funding ecosystem has changed too, and it will be important to understand especially where new pain points exist. After all, funding in this space is in service of the work grantees do.
• Defining democracy work — though the available field research and array of publicly available funding strategies have grown significantly, further research is still needed to provide more clarity. This could include:
  • Developing a detailed definition of U.S. democracy work that is shared by a broad set of field stakeholders, and that builds on and updates existing typologies
  • Concise mapping of field actors and their foci, with a particular focus on mapping pooled funds and intermediaries, and their distinct purposes to help especially newer funders navigate the landscape
  • Landscape research on individual high-net-worth donors to pro-democracy causes across the ideological spectrum, including their funding and foci as of 2023
  • Landscaping research and communications on the “anti-democracy” space, including foci, major funders, and emerging trends
• Strengthening coordination — the field’s rapid growth and the need for both short-term, responsive funding strategies (such as ensuring the security of election administrators in 2020) and for long-term planning (such as supporting advocacy to enact ranked-choice voting in a certain number of states over the next decade) requires regular, precise coordination. Democracy organizations and funders could benefit from consistent, well-maintained coordination mechanisms, including coordination tables, convenings, and shared initiatives. More data is needed, but this could include some level of consolidation across pooled funds and grantees — such as ensuring that there is not an excess of pooled funds supporting a particular subfield.
• Identifying and filling gaps — funders largely agree that there are key subfields of democracy work that are significantly underfunded, namely election administration, combating misinformation and disinformation, and local journalism. Reasons for inadequate funding may vary but include lack of resources for funders or conception of the issue as being part of “democracy funding.” Creating consistent platforms to share information about new efforts and initiatives in these areas, alongside building theories of change (such as Press Forward), can ensure that these sub-issues continue to grow at an appropriate pace.²¹

Conclusion

This report represents a critical step in providing a more comprehensive understanding of the shifting field of democracy philanthropy in the United States: where it has been, where it may be headed, and how funder perceptions and realities on the ground compare. Yet questions persist, and further research and data collection are no doubt needed. To continue to grow in a way that meets the needs of the field, this moment and beyond, will require that we first develop a better shared understanding of who we are as a community, and how best to grow together — newer funders and legacy funders alike.

Appendix

Methodology

The objectives of this research project were to map and better understand the field of pro-democracy funding. Specifically, this project sought to understand the following aspects of the democracy funding space:

• The magnitude of the field in terms of total funding per year
• Historical changes in the size of the field, particularly from 2017–2018 to 2021–2022 and into 2023–2024
• Expectations around whether current funding trends will continue and emerging trends in the field
• Trends in the subtopics being funded and areas that are underfunded
• Funder experiences, particularly those of new funders, in order to better grasp how anchor and legacy funders and existing intermediaries can pave the way for more funders to enter and/or maintain their philanthropic support for a healthy democracy

To achieve these objectives, we relied on a number of sources, including:

1. Existing literature, including industry publications, field-level reports, journal articles, foundation websites, and media coverage
2. Responses from surveys the team conducted among foundation leaders, foundations staff, and donor advisors
3. Self-reported grant data from institutional funders
4. Interviews with experts, intermediaries, and new funders in the field
5. Grant data publicly available on Candid
6. Confidential grant data from survey respondents who opted to share their data

Below, we list the process that the team followed and how these sources played a role in each phase.

Three Caveats to the Findings

1. Sourcing of grant data: Because there are limited amounts of publicly available grant data for comparison, we placed a strong emphasis on sourcing that information directly from foundations. However, limited data from foundations meant that direct comparisons were more challenging.
2. Response rates for self-reported data: Response rates to requests for self-reported data were moderate. As only 37 foundations provided an overall topline number for funding and 13 provided grant-level data, our findings may not fully represent trends in the field.
3. Institutional funders and individual donors: Survey responses are from only institutional funders, not from individual donors. Given that institutional funders are more visible through their online presence, their reputation, and their time in the field, they were more accessible for purposes of this survey research. Individual donors tend to use funding methods that help maintain their anonymity, and they were therefore challenging to fully include in this research, aside from anecdotal data that we sourced through interviews with intermediaries. For this reason, it is possible that the magnitude and growth rate defined in the report are, to some extent, underestimated.

Because of the gaps in the information the team was able to access, the team relied on informed estimates to reach our conclusions about the size of the field and its growth since 2016.

Existing Literature

We identified and reviewed more than 40 articles, reports, and website pages about the pro-democracy field and funding landscape. This process was designed to provide an initial, high-level understanding about perceptions in this space, identify major funders and intermediaries to include in interviews and surveys, and develop hypotheses that guided the rest of this research process. These sources are cited in a later part of the Appendix.

Interviews with the Experts

While conducting the literature review, we sat down with 17 individuals to hear firsthand about their experience in the field. These include foundation leaders and staff, donor advisors, community foundation leaders and staff, and heads of pooled funds. The insights from these conversations helped inform the design of the surveys that were subsequently conducted.

Survey Data

We conducted two different surveys: one to foundation leaders and a separate one to foundation staff. The leaders and the staff surveys were sent to 144 institutional funders. The distribution list included those previously known to Democracy Fund as supporting democracy-related work along with several that are included in the Candid’s database of democracy-related grants.

• The leaders survey received 53 responses (38 percent response rate)
• The staff survey received 34 responses (24 percent response rate)
• Five additional foundations shared topline information via email, rather than completing the full survey; these were treated as survey responses

Many questions did not make answering mandatory, so the number of funders who responded to any individual question varies. For instance, while 70 funders completed some amount of one or more surveys, only 37 of these funders provided data on topline funding amounts for 2021–2022.

Based on anecdotal data and interview responses, nonresponses to the survey were often due to concerns about confidentiality and anonymity, and due to limited staff capacity.

Self-Reported Grant Data from Survey Respondents

The staff survey included a question asking respondents if they would be willing to share raw grant data that we could review more closely and to support more granular analyses. Twelve funders provided internal grant data in this way. This amounted to data on 2,403 grants across 12 funders, totaling $1.1 billion. To describe the breakdown of issues supported, we interpreted the purpose statements provided by the funders who submitted the data and hand-coded grants accordingly. This process is similar to that conducted by Candid staff for data included in Candid’s database; however, we believe the data gathered and coded by our team may be more up-to-date and exhaustive of democracy-related funding from these institutions, given that the funders themselves identified the relevant grants.

Given the small number of funders included in this sample, these grant data were used as a sample to validate findings and provide greater detail where appropriate, rather than as the basis for most findings.

Interviews with Newer Funders, Intermediaries, and Other Stakeholders

We met with 17 field stakeholders, including with newer funders and representatives of key intermediaries. During 45-minute interviews, we asked experts for their answers to the research questions of this report, describing the magnitude of the field, the directionality of the field, where most funding is flowing, where there are funding needs, what the experience of new funders looks like, and the role that intermediaries play in this space. Through this process, we compared the survey research findings to anecdotal evidence shared verbally during interviews, some of which validated the survey findings, and some of which added new information.

Candid Data

Data from Candid filled important gaps in our research where survey data were insufficient to answer the research questions. We accessed data on Candid on various occasions for various uses, for example:

• To identify a broad list of funders in the democracy space that helped shape the list of institutional funders to receive the survey
• To identify the potential size of funding in the field that was then adjusted with the error rate
• To assess how the Candid data compared to self-reported foundation data in 2017–2018 and 2021–2022 for the purposes of understanding potential differences in how these datasets measure funding and develop a potentially more accurate picture of field funding

Defining the Field

Democracy Fund worked with internal experts to develop a taxonomy of democracy-related funding for use in our survey. To do this, we first assessed current taxonomies, including that developed by Candid in 2015, which remains the most widely used and cited. We then developed potential updates to these definitions to better match our understanding of current field foci — with the goal of developing categories and groupings that would make intuitive sense to survey respondents, while maintaining comparability with Candid data and categories where possible. We then discussed these categories with several leading funders to further hone the definitions and groupings. The resulting taxonomy, which was provided to survey respondents, is below.

These definitions are intended to encompass different types of work within each area — including action-focused initiatives on the ground, organizing and advocacy efforts, and academic and research-focused work.

Voting and Elections

• Voting Rights: Supporting efforts to influence access, ability, and requirements to vote, including work on voting rights and voter ID requirements, and combating voter suppression efforts.
• Voter Education and Engagement: Supporting efforts to inform and engage voters or mobilize voters to register to vote or participate in elections.
• Election Administration: Supporting administration, policy, and/or reform efforts addressing voting systems and technologies; encouraging recruitment and training of a new generation of poll workers; and efforts to prevent election subversion.
• Campaign Finance: Supporting research and/or reform efforts related to the financing of campaigns.
• Redistricting: Supporting efforts to study and/or reform the redistricting process, including litigation.

Inclusion, Equity, and Justice

• Social and Racial Justice: Supporting efforts to create a multiracial, inclusive democracy; combat structural racism; enable movement, power-building, and leadership development in historically marginalized communities, particularly communities of color; and support social justice efforts more broadly.
• Social Cohesion and Polarization: Supporting efforts to create a shared sense of identity and purpose, promoting conversations around important issues within and/or across communities, and combating polarization.
• Political Violence and Anti-Hate: Supporting efforts to prevent or mitigate political violence by addressing extremism and hate, promoting community resilience, and responding to trauma (individual and collective).

Civic Education and Participation

• Civic Education and Leadership: Supporting non-election-related efforts to educate youth and the public about civic issues including the political process and governing institutions, as well as promoting diverse leadership development in public and civic life and capacity building for community leaders.
• Public and Issue-Based Participation: Supporting non-election-related organizing, engagement, volunteerism, action around the policymaking process, naturalization efforts among legal permanent residents, or community life broadly or around specific issue areas or with specific constituencies.
• Census: Supporting efforts to ensure a full and accurate census count, including policy and Get-Out-the-Count activities, and a timely and comprehensive release of the data.

Government Effectiveness and Democracy Protection

• Civil Rights/Liberties and Rule of Law: Supporting work around the protection of civil rights and liberties and individual rights embodied in the Constitution, as well as efforts to uphold the rule of law.
• Government Oversight and Reform: Supporting efforts to research and/or reform the government, and to improve performance and transparency overall and within each branch of government, including around budgeting and fiscal systems at all levels of government, and the courts.

Media and Information Ecosystem

• Journalism: Supporting a broad range of efforts to promote a healthy journalism ecosystem and support local journalism, including efforts to educate and train journalists, support for news programs, investigative journalism, and documentary media, and efforts to expand tools and resources available to and used by journalists.
• Media Policy and Mis/Disinformation: Supporting efforts related to media access, including work around media literacy and media justice, efforts to implement and/or reform media information policies such as related to freedom of expression and intellectual property, and efforts to track and combat mis- and disinformation.

General/Non-Issue Specific:

Supporting multi-issue or multidisciplinary efforts or organizations through general operating funds not tied to specific sub-issues.

Other Issues:

Supporting democracy-related activities in specific issue areas not included in other categories.

Estimating the Magnitude of the Field

To arrive at this report’s estimates for the size of the full field (based on the sample of funders included in Candid’s database for 2017–2018), we took the following steps:

1. Understand Candid’s rate of undercounting — we compared the 2017–2018 self-reported funding levels from the confidential sample of 12 foundations for which data were available on background. This analysis showed that Candid data undercounted funding levels for these foundations by 34 percent on average.
2. Adjust Candid data based on undercounting rate — we then collected all Candid data for 2017–2018 and adjusted these data using the 34 percent error rate to estimate a revised total funding level for 2017–2018.
3. Estimate the size of the field in 2017–2018 — we combined these two datasets, using confidential internal data for foundations where available (assumed to be accurate) and adjusted Candid data for those where self-reported data were not available, to develop a full field magnitude in 2017–2018 of $5.2 billion.
4. Estimate the growth rate from 2017–2018 to 2021–2022 — we compared real and estimated totals for 2017–2018 with self-reported funding totals for 2021–2022 provided by survey respondents (n = 37), to develop an estimated in-sample growth rate of 56 percent.
5. Estimate the size of the field in 2021–2022 — assuming the growth rate was consistent across all funders included in Candid’s data for 2017–2018 (n = 9,144), we then applied that growth rate to the adjusted 2017–2018 data to develop an estimated total for 2021–2022 of $8.1 billion. We divided this number by two to approximate the annual size of the field at $4.1 billion (note: these numbers may not add due to rounding).

The methodology described above relies heavily on projections and estimates based on data from several years prior, given the limitations of comparable data from 2021–2022. As an alternative to this methodology, our team attempted to use data from Candid’s broader database as a proxy for data that appears missing from the dedicated democracy-related database. This included the following steps and findings:

1. Understand the rate of undercounting from Candid’s broader database — we first compared self-reported funding totals drawn from our survey with “Democracy” and “Voter Rights” data for the same foundations from Candid’s broader database for 2021–2022. We found the Candid data in these categories undercounted funding among these institutions by about 39 percent — or rather than these categories are expected to only account for about 61 percent of all funding (for instance due to not including all relevant categories).
2. Adjust Candid data based on undercounting rate — if we assume that rate to be consistent across all institutions with 2021–2022 funding for “Democracy” and “Voter Rights” in Candid’s database, that would yield an estimate of $5.7 billion in total field funding for 2021–2022. If instead we assume the Candid data captures 81 percent of true funding — half the difference as what was identified — that would yield an estimate of $4.7 billion in total field funding for 2021–2022.

Due to significant and opaque differences in categorization between the “Democracy” and “Voter Rights” categories and the broader and more tailored set of issues measured in our survey and in Candid’s dedicated democracy-related database, we chose not to include these estimates in our main report.

Article Title	Publication/Source	Date
Article Title We the People: A Philanthropic Guide for Strengthening Democracy	Publication/Source Democracy Fund and the Center for High-Impact Philanthropy at the University of Pennsylvania	Date 2019
Article Title Democracy-Focused Philanthropy: Choosing Operating Models for Deeper Impact	Publication/Source Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors	Date December 2022
Article Title Our Divided Nation: Is There a Role for Philanthropy in Renewing Democracy?	Publication/Source Kettering Foundation/Council on Foundations	Date 2019
Article Title Democracy & Philanthropy: The Rockefeller Foundation and the American Experiment	Publication/Source The Rockefeller Foundation	Date 2013
Article Title The Roadmap for Local News: An Emergent Approach to Meeting Civic Information Needs	Publication/Source MacArthur Foundation	Date February 2023
Article Title Slow and Steady Wins the Race: Ten Years of the State Infrastructure Fund	Publication/Source State Infrastructure Fund	Date July 2021
Article Title Philanthropy to Protect US Democracy	Publication/Source Stanford Social Innovation Review	Date October 2022
Article Title Voter Engagement Toolkit for Private Foundations	Publication/Source Council on Foundations	Date April 2018
Article Title Foundations, It’s Time to Give 1% of Your Assets to Fix Democracy	Publication/Source The Chronicle of Philanthropy	Date December 2019
Article Title Achieving Justice for All Should Command Philanthropy’s Attention in 2020 Elections	Publication/Source The Chronicle of Philanthropy	Date December 2019
Article Title Democracy and Civic Life: What Is the Long Game for Philanthropy?	Publication/Source Knight Foundation	Date November 2020
Article Title General Operating Proposal	Publication/Source Protect Democracy	Date June 2022
Article Title On Democracy and Authoritarianism	Publication/Source Protect Democracy	Date No Date
Article Title Donors Worry About a Cash Crunch for Voter Registration Groups	Publication/Source The New York Times	Date September 2022
Article Title This Group Has $100 Million and a Big Goal: To Fix America	Publication/Source The New York Times	Date November 2022
Article Title U-Va. is investing $100 million in saving democracy. Can it make a difference?	Publication/Source The Washington Post	Date June 2021
Article Title Philanthropy Needs New Strategies to Save American Democracy	Publication/Source Inside Philanthropy	Date October 2022
Article Title Democracy Frontlines Fund Realizes Transformative Philanthropy for Racial Justice	Publication/Source Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR)	Date Fall 2021
Article Title Foundations Focus Their Attentions on Saving Democracy	Publication/Source The Chronicle of Philanthropy	Date January 2021
Article Title Philanthropy Can Help Build a Thriving Democracy by Building Up Programs and Places That Fuel Civic Involvement	Publication/Source The Chronicle of Philanthropy	Date January 2022
Article Title Can Philanthropy Save Democracy?	Publication/Source The Chronicle of Philanthropy	Date October 2019
Article Title Foundations, the Solution to Our Democracy Deficit Lies in Plain Sight	Publication/Source The Chronicle of Philanthropy	Date May 2021
Article Title To Protect Democracy, Funders Must Look to the States	Publication/Source Inside Philanthropy	Date March 2021
Article Title Democracy Funders Are Forgetting About One of the Biggest Threats to Democracy	Publication/Source Inside Philanthropy	Date February 2022
Article Title The Emerging Field of Political Innovation	Publication/Source Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR)	Date Spring 2023
Article Title How Can Philanthropy Help Rehabilitate US Democracy?	Publication/Source Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR)	Date January 2021
Article Title Democrats ‘Charity’ Voter-Registration Scheme	Publication/Source The Wall Street Journal	Date September 2022
Article Title Mark Zuckerberg has donated $300 million to protect democracy despite Facebook’s record	Publication/Source Vox	Date September 2020
Article Title Inside Mind the Gap, the secretive Silicon Valley group that has funneled over $20 million to Democrats	Publication/Source Vox	Date January 2020
Article Title A new generation of philanthropists are ticked off at Trump — and their parents	Publication/Source Vox	Date January 2020
Article Title Publishing C.E.O. Donates $500,000 to Fight Book Bans	Publication/Source The New York Times	Date February 2022
Article Title The most powerful network of Democratic donors has a new president	Publication/Source Politico	Date September 2021
Article Title Dems fear for democracy. Their big donors aren’t funding one of its main election groups	Publication/Source Politico	Date February 2022
Article Title Philanthropy’s Agenda for Rebuilding Our Democracy	Publication/Source The Chronicle of Philanthropy	Date November 2020
Article Title Philanthropy’s Stimulus Plan Must Bolster Democracy	Publication/Source The Chronicle of Philanthropy	Date April 2020
Article Title Everything Philanthropy Cares About Depends on a Strong Democracy. Here’s What We Can Do to Stop the Deterioration	Publication/Source The Chronicle of Philanthropy	Date October 2019
Article Title 116 Organizations Driving Change	Publication/Source Medium	Date July 2020
Article Title Civic Engagement Grants	Publication/Source Inside Philanthropy	Date No Date

Funders by 2021–2022 501(C)(3) Grantmaking Total
2021–2022 501(c)(3) Grantmaking Total	Number of Funders in the Survey Sample Within Range	Total Dollar Amount Given by Funders in this Category
2021–2022 501(c)(3) Grantmaking Total $50 million	Number of Funders in the Survey Sample Within Range 8	Total Dollar Amount Given by Funders in this Category $1,269,966,482
2021–2022 501(c)(3) Grantmaking Total $20 million to $50 million	Number of Funders in the Survey Sample Within Range 8	Total Dollar Amount Given by Funders in this Category $229,516,645
2021–2022 501(c)(3) Grantmaking Total $10 million to $20 million	Number of Funders in the Survey Sample Within Range 8	Total Dollar Amount Given by Funders in this Category $125,834,500
2021–2022 501(c)(3) Grantmaking Total $5 million to $10 million	Number of Funders in the Survey Sample Within Range 5	Total Dollar Amount Given by Funders in this Category $40,767,500
2021–2022 501(c)(3) Grantmaking Total $5 million	Number of Funders in the Survey Sample Within Range 8	Total Dollar Amount Given by Funders in this Category $16,837,000

ABOUT DEMOCRACY FUND

Created by eBay founder and philanthropist Pierre Omidyar, Democracy Fund is an independent and nonpartisan foundation that confronts deep-rooted challenges in American democracy while defending against new threats. Democracy Fund has invested more than $275 million in support of those working to strengthen our democracy through the pursuit of a vibrant and diverse public square, free and fair elections, effective and accountable government, and a just and inclusive society.

ABOUT THE VOTER SURVEY

The Views of the Electorate Research (VOTER) Survey is a longitudinal survey that Democracy Fund has conducted in partnership with YouGov since December 2016. This report is based on data that include the latest wave of the VOTER Survey, which surveyed 6,000 adults (age 18 and up) online from November 15 to December 6, 2022. The VOTER Survey is distinct among public polls because it draws from a longstanding panel of voters who have been interviewed periodically since it was launched by YouGov in December 2011, including after the 2012, 2016, 2018, 2020, and 2022 elections, with 2,654 respondents repeatedly participating in all survey waves. Our 2022 survey revisited a series of questions we have asked in previous surveys, while also introducing several new questions in the context of the 2020 election and the January 6th insurrection.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Joe Goldman is the president of Democracy Fund and Democracy Fund Voice. He is the co-author of several reports on democracy and authoritarianism, including Follow the Leader: Exploring American Support for Democracy and Authoritarianism, Testing the Limits: Examining American Support for Democracy and Authoritarianism, and Democracy Maybe: Attitudes on Authoritarianism in America.

Lee Drutman is a senior fellow in the program on political reform at New America. He is the author of Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America and winner of the 2016 American Political Science Association’s Robert A. Dahl Award. He also joins Joe Goldman as co-author of the previous three reports in this series.

Oscar Pocasangre is a Senior Data Analyst for the Political Reform program at New America. He holds a Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University. His research has been published in World Politics, Nature (Vaccines), PLOS One, and Public Administration.

THANK YOU

Special thanks to Larry Diamond and Robert Griffin for their partnership in developing and refining this multi-year research study. Our gratitude also to John Sides, Rachel Kleinfeld, Brendan Nyhan, and Tiwaa Bruks for their feedback and editing on early drafts of this report.

• While the vast majority of Americans claim to support democracy (more than 80 percent say democracy is a fairly or very good political system in surveys from 2017 to 2022), fewer than half consistently and uniformly support democratic norms across multiple surveys over the past seven years.
• Support for democratic norms softens considerably when they conflict with partisanship. For example, a solid majority of Trump and Biden supporters who reject the idea of a “strong leader who doesn’t have to bother with Congress and elections” nonetheless believe their preferred U.S. president would be justified to take unilateral action without explicit constitutional authority under several different scenarios.
• Only about 27 percent of Americans consistently and uniformly support democratic norms in a battery of questions across multiple survey waves, including 45% of Democrats, 13% of Republicans, and 18% of Independents. When adding responses to hypothetical scenarios about unilateral action by the president, the share of Americans who consistently supports democratic norms over this time period drops to just 8 percent, including 10% of Democrats, 5% of Republicans, and 11% of Independents.
• On the other hand, the portion of the public who are consistently authoritarian — Americans who consistently justify political violence or support alternatives to democracy over multiple survey waves — is also relatively small (8 percent). This leaves most Americans somewhere between consistent democratic and authoritarian leanings, a position often heavily shaped by partisanship.
• When looking at the exact same respondents over time, Republicans have the highest levels of inconsistency. While 92 percent of Republicans supported congressional oversight during the Biden administration in 2022, only 65 percent supported oversight during the Trump administration in 2019 (a 27-point swing). While 85 percent are supportive of media scrutiny during the Biden administration, only 63 percent were supportive during the Trump administration (a 22-point swing). This contrasts with a 6 percentage point difference for Democrats in their views between the Biden and Trump administrations on these questions.
• Among the 81 percent of Republicans who believed in September 2020 that it is important for the loser to acknowledge the winner of the election, 62 percent rejected Biden as the legitimate president after the election, 53 percent said it was appropriate for Trump to never concede the election, 87 percent thought it is appropriate for Trump to challenge the results of the election with lawsuits, and 43 percent approved of Republican legislators reassigning votes to Trump. Republicans who exhibit higher levels of affective polarization were the most resistant to accepting an electoral loss.
• In contrast to an overwhelming and consistent rejection of political violence across four survey waves, the violent events of January 6, 2021, were viewed favorably by Republicans. Almost half of Republicans (46%) described these events as acts of patriotism and 72 percent disapproved of the House Select Committee that was formed to investigate them.

Many go to extraordinary lengths to rationalize what their side does as appropriately democratic. As Suthan Krishnarajan concludes, “When violations of democracy are indisputably clear, many citizens find ways to not perceive undemocratic behavior as undemocratic if they agree with it politically. This might provide one explanation for why democratically elected leaders in today’s democracies are so often able to get away with violations of democracy without facing electoral backlash.”^xiii

In many cases, partisans can justify their side’s behavior because they believe their political opponents are the true threats to the republic. This “subversion dilemma” can “result in a death spiral for democracy.”^xiv However, partisans are most likely to believe these accusations under certain conditions. “Aspiring autocrats may instigate democratic backsliding by accusing their opponents of subverting democracy…” explains Alia Braley and colleagues. “Would-be authoritarians’ ability to weaponize the subversion dilemma may depend on a larger set of mutually reinforcing polarizations. These include increasing partisan identity strength, polarized views on policy, dislike of opposing partisans, dehumanization of opposing partisans, stereotypes of opposing partisans, and ethnic antagonism.”^xiv

Our study is consistent with these findings and it adds to the growing discussion in two main ways. First, our study is unique in its use of panel data: we can observe the same individuals under two presidents from different parties (previous studies have manipulated the circumstances in experimental surveys). Second, we ask a battery of questions that allow us to go from the most abstract to the most specific, giving us a fuller picture of public attitudes toward democracy.

“The real risk to American democracy, then, is the significant share of people who support or accept anti-democratic behavior and political violence when their side does it and who are willing to give up on democracy to advance their partisan interests.”

Support for democracy in general — whether by agreeing that having a democracy is good or that democracy is preferable to other systems of government — has remained high over time, dropping slightly in November 2022. Using the entire sample in each survey wave, we find that more than eight in 10 Americans (87 percent) thought having a democracy was either good or very good from 2017 through 2019. This figure was 82 percent in November 2022. Similarly, we see that most Americans agreed that democracy is preferable to other systems, but this share declined between 2017 and 2022 (from 79 percent to 70 percent).

Overwhelming majorities oppose alternatives to democracy. More than eight in 10 Americans reject army rule every year that the question is asked, and about three-quarters reject having a strong leader who doesn’t have to bother with Congress and elections.

To ensure that people understood what army rule could entail, we elaborated on the question and asked if they favor or oppose the following scenario: “In some countries, military leaders have suspended elections, closed down the legislature, and temporarily taken charge of the government in order to address extreme corruption. What would be your view if the military took these steps in the United States?” The majority of Americans reject such a military takeover in both 2019 and 2022 (69 percent and 61 percent). This share is lower than the share of Americans who reject army rule or a strong leader, but this reflects the inclusion of a “Don’t Know” option in the question about a military takeover. Indeed, the share of people who are uncertain about their views toward a military takeover increased from 19 percent to 23 percent. Actual support for a military takeover is lower in 2019 and 2022 (13 percent and 15 percent) while the share of Americans who think army rule would be fairly or very good remained stable from 2019 to 2022 (18 percent in both years).

Support for democracy in the abstract may be high because there is a strong social desirability bias to say democracy is a good system. Moreover, people may have different definitions of democracy in their mind when answering questions about whether democracy is good or preferable to other systems. We further probed support for democracy by asking about support for concrete examples of checks and balances, which are a key dimension of liberal democracy. For each example, our questions asked respondents to express which of the two statements is closest to their views, even if neither statement is exactly right:

• Rule of law
  • Since the president was elected to lead the country, he should not be bound by laws or court decisions that he thinks are wrong, or
  • The president must always obey the laws and the courts, even if he thinks they are wrong
• Media scrutiny
  • The news media should scrutinize the president and other politicians to ensure they are accountable to the American people, or
  • The news media should allow the president and politicians to make decisions without being constantly monitored.
• Congressional oversight
  • Members of Congress should provide oversight of the president and executive branch, even if the President is in the same party, or
  • Members of Congress should give the president freedom to make the decisions he feels are right for the country.

The trends over time from 2017 to 2022, illustrated in Figure 3, show that majorities of Americans supported the pro-democracy statements related to checks and balances. These trends also reveal that for partisans — and particularly for Republicans — support for checks and balances varies depending on which party is in the White House.

Throughout the years when Trump was in office, Republicans were the least supportive of congressional oversight and media scrutiny of politicians. By 2022, when Biden was in office, support for congressional oversight increased significantly from 2019 (from 62 percent to 87 percent). Support for media scrutiny also experienced a large shift from the Trump administration in 2019 to the Biden administration in 2022 (60 percent to 80 percent). Among Democrats, support for congressional oversight dropped from 2019 to 2022 (91 percent to 83 percent) as did support for media scrutiny (91 percent to 85 percent), but these changes among Democrats are considerably smaller compared to Republicans.

“These trends also reveal that for partisans — and particularly for Republicans — support for checks and balances varies depending on which party is in the White House.”

Across party lines, majorities of Americans agree that the president should obey the laws even if he thinks they are wrong. From 2017 through 2022, support for this democratic norm remained high and stable, though there were still traces of a partisan double standard. Republican support for the president obeying laws and courts increased from the Trump to the Biden administration (81 percent in 2019 to 91 percent in 2022), whereas among Democrats it decreased by half as much (94 percent in 2019 to 89 percent in 2022).

Independents were generally stable in their support for these forms of checks and balances. Their level of support for media scrutiny remained almost unchanged from 2019 to 2022 (73 percent to 74 percent). Meanwhile, support for congressional oversight among independents remained flat at 73 percent from 2019 to 2022, but the share of independents who expressed support for having the president obey the law dropped slightly between these two years (84 percent to 81 percent).

In the previous section, we explored topline trends over time in support for democracy, rejection of authoritarianism, and support of checks and balances. But these averages across the years may hide important changes in the opinion of the same individuals, particularly if they exhibit a partisan double standard, changing their views toward democracy depending on whether their party is in or out of power. In the exploration that follows, we focus only on those respondents who participated in all the survey waves to see whether their view towards democracy remain consistent over time or not.

When looking at these respondents, we find evidence that many people do waver in their support of democracy, only championing it when their party is out of the presidency. We also identify a segment of the population — a minority, to be sure, but too large to be dismissed as a tiny fringe — that consistently embraces anti-democratic attitudes.

As in the previous section, we focus on seven questions that capture different dimensions of democracy. These questions were asked in the 2017, 2019, and 2022 waves of the survey and fit into the three broad categories of support for democratic systems, support for alternatives to democracy, and support for checks and balances.

From 2017 through 2022, a majority of Americans were consistently supportive of various aspects of democracy, although there is a wide range of difference in support depending on the question examined. At one end, about eight in 10 Americans (83 percent) consistently supported having the president obey courts and laws — these are those who, even with a change from a Republican to a Democratic administration, maintained their belief that the president should be beholden to the law. At the lower end, only about 63 percent of Americans were consistent in their support of having the media scrutinize the president and politicians.

Encouragingly, Americans consistently providing authoritarian responses to these questions were a tiny fraction of the population. For example, very few Americans consistently said a strong leader who doesn’t have to deal with Congress and elections is a good thing (8 percent) or that they preferred a non-democratic system of government (6 percent).

While genuine authoritarian views are relatively rare, what’s more common — and potentially more perilous in an extremely polarized two-party system — is fluctuating support for key aspects of liberal democracy. Depending on the question, between 16 percent and 32 percent of Americans changed their views toward one of these democratic norms across the three survey waves. Americans wavered the most on their responses to the question of whether the media should scrutinize the president and politicians (32 percent wavered) and whether Congress should provide oversight (28 percent wavered). As we show later, most of this fluctuation is consistent with a partisan double standard — supporting democratic accountability only when the opposing party is in office.

Among Republicans, only about half (49 percent) believed consistently across administrations that the media should scrutinize the president and other politicians to ensure they are accountable to the American people. Significant portions of Republicans changed their minds about whether members of Congress should conduct oversight of the president and executive branch when the president is in their preferred party (41 percent) and about having a strong leader who doesn’t have to bother with Congress or elections (23 percent).

Democrats were more consistent in their support of democratic norms during this period but were not immune from wavering views on democracy. About a quarter of Democrats changed their views about whether having a strong leader would be good (24 percent) and about their preferences toward democracy over other systems (27 percent). Relatively few Democrats changed their views about whether democracy is a good political system (6 percent) or wavered in their support of having the president obey laws and courts (14 percent).

“While genuine authoritarian views are relatively rare, what’s more common — and potentially more perilous in an extremely polarized two-party system — is fluctuating support for key aspects of liberal democracy.”

Independents also wavered considerably in their support for democratic norms. Only for the norm of the president obeying laws and courts and rejecting army rule did fewer than a quarter of independents waver in their responses. But over a third of independents wavered on other democratic norms: 38 percent changed their minds regarding media scrutiny, 27 percent changed their views about preferring democracy to other systems, and 25 percent wavered in their views of having a strong leader who doesn’t have to deal with Congress or elections. These changes differ considerably from the stable trends we document in Section 2, underscoring the importance of looking beyond averages over time and focusing on how the same respondents change their views from survey to survey.

Wavering support for democracy among independents is likely due to reasons other than partisan interests, like anti-establishment sentiment, disaffection with the status quo, a contrarian stance, or views that are not well-defined. Other work has suggested that independents are more likely to punish anti-democratic behavior at the ballot box as they are less attached to parties.((In survey experiments, people are more likely to support democratic norm erosion when informed that their party wins control of most government branches, an effect that is more pronounced among those who perceive greater threat from the opposition party and who exhibit high levels of expressive partisanship.ⁱⁱⁱ Other work using candidate choice experiments finds that most Americans care mostly about their party winning or obtaining their preferred policies than about democratic principles, with only about 13 percent of respondents in the study willing to vote against a candidate of their party who violates a democratic principle if it means voting against their own party.ⁱⁱ Comparisons of different surveys fielded in 2012, during the Obama administration, and in 2019, during the Trump administration, show that Democrats who exhibit high degrees of affective polarization were more likely to oppose constitutional protections under Obama while Republicans with high degrees of affective polarization were more likely to oppose these protections under Trump.^vi Similar patterns are observed throughout several Latin American countries where survey respondents who voted for the incumbent president are more likely to support power grabs than those who voted for a candidate that lost.^xv))

However, inconsistent views toward democracy among a significant share of independents indicates that this group may be vulnerable to certain types of anti-democratic sentiment. This is discouraging news for those who view independent voters as bulwarks of democracy.

Independents change their minds, but these changes don’t follow a detectable pattern or logic. Partisans, on the other hand, change their views much more predictably. They are willing to accept democratic norm violations only from their side. One explanation for their changing views toward democracy is simple partisan loyalty, a phenomenon that has been observed by several studies of the American public and abroad.((In survey experiments, people are more likely to support democratic norm erosion when informed that their party wins control of most government branches, an effect that is more pronounced among those who perceive greater threat from the opposition party and who exhibit high levels of expressive partisanship.ⁱⁱⁱ Other work using candidate choice experiments finds that most Americans care mostly about their party winning or obtaining their preferred policies than about democratic principles, with only about 13 percent of respondents in the study willing to vote against a candidate of their party who violates a democratic principle if it means voting against their own party.ⁱⁱ Comparisons of different surveys fielded in 2012, during the Obama administration, and in 2019, during the Trump administration, show that Democrats who exhibit high degrees of affective polarization were more likely to oppose constitutional protections under Obama while Republicans with high degrees of affective polarization were more likely to oppose these protections under Trump.^vi Similar patterns are observed throughout several Latin American countries where survey respondents who voted for the incumbent president are more likely to support power grabs than those who voted for a candidate that lost.^xv)) We contribute to this body of work by analyzing panel data from a period when American democracy has been threatened and when questions about the health of American democracy have been salient in national conversations. With our panel data, we can observe the views of the same individual at different points in time and see if they change from one administration to the other in a way consistent with democratic hypocrisy.

Table 1 shows how the same respondents change their views on checks and balances on the executive from 2019 to 2022. For all these questions, Republicans are the most flexible in their views, wavering in their support and opposition to democratic norms by far greater margins than Democrats and independents. Republican support for congressional oversight of the executive branch shifted most from the Trump to the Biden administration (65 percent to 91 percent). In contrast, support for congressional oversight among Democrats dropped by much less from 2019 to 2022 (from 94 percent to 88 percent). Whether these shifts in opinion are due to changes in the partisan composition of Congress or to the party of the president, they reveal a fragile commitment to a basic democratic norm of checks on the executive that should ideally remain constant regardless of partisan control of these institutions.

We see similar patterns regarding views on having the media scrutinize the president and other politicians and having the president obey laws and courts. Support for media scrutiny changed the most among Republicans from 2019 to 2022 (63 percent to 85 percent) compared to the change among Democrats (93 percent to 87 percent). Among Republicans, support for having the president obey laws and courts increased from 2019 to 2022 (85 percent to 96 percent), while among Democrats it decreased by about half as much between these two survey waves (97 percent to 91 percent). Among independent voters, support for all these democratic norms increased from 2019 to 2022, with their views toward congressional oversight being the largest shift (86 percent to 95 percent), followed by their views of having the president obey the laws and courts (91 percent to 99 percent), and finally by their views on media scrutiny (79 percent to 86 percent).

For most of the democratic norms we analyze, these shifts in views from 2019 to 2022 fit with a pattern of democratic hypocrisy. Focusing only on the Democrats and Republicans in the data, we find that for four of the seven norms, the majority of Americans changed their views in a way consistent with a partisan double standard, as shown in Table 2. Specifically, we find a partisan double standard on the four democratic norms that involve some check on executive authority — as opposed to those norms that were more related to general support for democracy or opposition to army rule.

“About 24 percent of Americans changed their views about congressional oversight from 2019 to 2022. Of these, 83 percent are Republicans who opposed the norm in 2019 but supported it in 2022 or Democrats who supported the norm in 2019 but opposed it in 2022.”

For example, about 24 percent of Americans changed their views about congressional oversight from 2019 to 2022. Of these, 83 percent are Republicans who opposed the norm in 2019 but supported it in 2022 or Democrats who supported the norm in 2019 but opposed it in 2022. In other words, only 17 percent of those who changed their point of view did so in a way that did not favor their partisan interests.

Similarly, about 13 percent of Americans changed their views about having the president obey laws and courts. Of these, 84 percent are Republicans who opposed this norm in 2019 but supported it in 2022 or Democrats who supported it in 2019 but opposed it in 2022. The majority of Americans who changed their views about media oversight and having a strong leader also do so in a way that also suggests a partisan double standard.

Notably, when it comes to norms that do not involve some form of checks and balances on executive power, the portion of those who change their points of view are not as heavily driven by a partisan double standard. This is the case for opposing army rule, preferring democracy over other systems, and agreeing that having a democracy is good. For these norms, fewer than half of Americans who changed their views are doing so in a way consistent with a partisan double standard. In these cases, the majority of respondents are changing their answers to the survey for other reasons. These may include inattentiveness, not having a well-formed opinion on the topic, or providing insincere responses for contrarian or provocative reasons.

In the real world, few aspiring autocrats ask for public support to violate democratic norms. Instead, they offer compelling justifications for emergency authority. Autocratic leaders around the world have exploited public health emergencies, natural disasters, crime waves, and corruption, among other circumstances, to rule by decree or amass greater power, often with the approval of the public.

Reflecting this, we asked how appropriate it would be for the president to act without congressional approval under different real-world scenarios when the Constitution does not give them the explicit power to act. To test for a partisan double standard, we presented participants with one of two different prompts. One prompt read:

“Please read the following scenarios. How appropriate would it be for a Democratic or Republican president to take action on their own, even if the Constitution does not give them the explicit power to act without congressional approval.”

The other prompt asked directly about President Trump in 2019 or about President Biden in 2022:

“Please read the following scenarios. How appropriate would it be for [President Trump/Biden] to take action on their own, even if the Constitution does not give them the explicit power to act without congressional approval.”

The scenarios that they then respond to are:

• The country is facing an immediate military threat
• A large majority of the American people believe that the president should act
• The president knows it is the right thing to do for the American people
• The president has sought a compromise with Congress but the other party is playing partisan games

Though the scenarios vary, all questions explicitly present a tradeoff between respect for checks on executive authority and ignoring this democratic value. By directly stating that the actions of the president are being done even when the Constitution does not grant them the explicit permission to act without congressional approval, the question should leave little room for ambiguity about the nature of the behavior.

“Autocratic leaders around the world have exploited public health emergencies, natural disasters, crime waves, and corruption, among other circumstances, to rule by decree or amass greater power, often with the approval of the public.”

We recognize that, in reality, there is much debate about the constitutionality and democratic nature of some of these actions — a swift military operation by the president in response to a military threat, for example, is not necessarily unconstitutional. But we worry about unilateral action by the president because, around the world, democracies have been dismantled little by little through executive aggrandizement, often legally, and by presidents amassing more power than what the law explicitly allows.^{xvi, xvii} The extent to which Americans are willing to give the president latitude without congressional oversight — and how their willingness is influenced by partisanship — can pose a grave, if subtle, danger to democracy. Moreover, we are also interested in how approval for the same type of unilateral action can change due to partisanship.

In our 2019 report we found that Republicans were more likely to agree that executive unilateral action is appropriate or very appropriate than Democrats. In response to all the scenarios, the majority of Republicans thought executive unilateral action is appropriate or very appropriate. By 2022, however, partisans reversed their views with President Biden in office (and a different partisan composition of Congress), as illustrated in Figure 7. Only the scenario of an immediate military threat drew majority Republican support for the appropriateness of unilateral action. In 2022, for instance, 30 percent of Republicans approved of unilateral executive action when the Democratic or Republican president provided the justification that they know it is the right thing to do, compared to 51 percent in 2019, and only 12 percent approved of it when they were told it was President Biden, compared to 58 percent when told it was President Trump.

Among Democrats, we see the same pattern but in reverse. In 2019, when Trump was president, the majority of Democrats disapproved of unilateral action. However, by 2022, Democrats were more supportive of unilateral action and this change was more pronounced when President Biden was mentioned.

Views toward unilateral action shifted among exactly the same group of people. Here we focus on respondents who are in the same experimental group in both waves of the survey. In the case of Democrats, when asked about executive action in the face of a military threat, the proportions essentially reverse themselves from 2019 to 2022. In 2019, only 24 percent said it would be appropriate for President Trump to initiate unilateral action; in 2022, 67 percent of them said it would be appropriate if President Biden did it. About 70 percent of Republicans said unilateral action in the face of a military threat would be appropriate under President Trump, but 47 percent said it would be appropriate if President Biden did it — still almost a majority of Republicans. Therefore, this scenario of a military threat against the country, when swift executive action is most needed even in a liberal democracy, can be seen as a baseline against which to compare the magnitude of the changes that occur in the other scenarios.

In the other scenarios, very few Republicans thought unilateral action was appropriate when President Biden was mentioned, even though most of them had said it was appropriate under President Trump back in 2019. For instance, when told President Trump knows it is the right thing to do, about 61 percent of Republicans said unilateral action is appropriate, but in 2022, only 15 percent said it is appropriate for President Biden to engage in unilateral action when he knows it is the right thing to do.

“We find that there is a strong association between affective polarization and the willingness to tolerate democratic norm erosion.”

In contrast, about 16 percent of Democrats polled in 2019 said unilateral action is appropriate when President Trump believes it is the right thing to do. But in 2022, 66 percent said it is appropriate when told President Biden knows it is the right thing to do. We observe similar patterns for the rest of the scenarios, like when majorities of Americans support the president and when the president has sought compromise with Congress. The sample size here is admittedly limited — but the shifts are so large that the result is clear.

Like other research on polarization and democracy, we find that there is a strong association between affective polarization and the willingness to tolerate democratic norm erosion.^{iii, vi, xi, xviii} Moreover, our analysis suggests that the partisan double standard — in this case approving of unilateral executive action when the president is a co-partisan and disapproving of it when the president is from the other party — is more pronounced among the most affectively polarized citizens.

We illustrate this with the scenario in which President Trump in 2019 or President Biden in 2022 initiate unilateral executive action without congressional approval because they know it is the right thing to do. As shown in Figure 9, in 2019, almost all Democrats rejected such behavior from President Trump. Republicans, in contrast, were more likely to approve of Trump engaging in unilateral action the higher their levels of affective polarization. In 2022, there is a dramatic reversal. Higher levels of affective polarization among Democrats are associated with higher levels of approval of unilateral action by President Biden when he “knows it is the right thing to do” while for Republicans, higher levels of polarization are associated with reductions in their level of approval of unilateral action by Biden. At the lowest levels of affective polarization, Democrats and Republicans have similar levels of approval of unilateral action by Biden.

“Higher levels of affective polarization among Democrats are associated with higher levels of approval of unilateral action by President Biden when he ‘knows it is the right thing to do’ while for Republicans, higher levels of polarization are associated with reductions in their level of approval of unilateral action by Biden.”

For democracy to remain sustainable, candidates, parties, and their supporters must accept losses. Healthy democracies need high levels of support for agreed-upon electoral norms, like conceding losses, upholding voting results, and peacefully stepping down from office.

There are worrying signs that confidence in the electoral system and popular respect for electoral norms are eroding in the United States. The combination of the country’s winner-take-all system with intensifying polarization have significantly increased the costs of losing an election, leading many citizens and politicians to openly question electoral results. It is in this context that we explore whether professed support for democracy among Americans translates to support for electoral norms or if partisanship compromises democratic views.

A particularly dramatic illustration is the plummeting support for the norm that the loser of a presidential election should publicly acknowledge the winner as the legitimate president. Table 4 shows that in September 2020, most Americans agreed that it is important for the loser of the election to publicly acknowledge the winner as the legitimate president of the country. Republicans and Democrats agreed that this norm is important at roughly the same level (81 percent and 83 percent), while 60 percent of independents shared this view.

Following the November 2020 election — and after the race had been called for Joe Biden — the share of Republicans who believed it is important for the loser of the election to publicly recognize the winner as the legitimate president dropped dramatically (from 81 percent to 31 percent). These are the same respondents from the September survey. Independents also declined dramatically in their support for this norm (from 60 percent to 46 percent), while the decline among Democrats was much more modest (83 percent to 77 percent).

“High dislike of the Democratic party and high approval of the Republican party makes it intolerable to have a Democrat as president and can make violations of American electoral norms more palatable.”

Among the 81 percent of Republicans who believed in September 2020 that it is important for the loser to acknowledge the winner of the election, 62 percent rejected Biden as the legitimate president after the election, 53 percent said it was appropriate for Trump to never concede the election, 87 percent thought it is appropriate for Trump to challenge the results of the election with lawsuits, and 43 percent approved of Republican legislators reassigning votes to Trump.

Republicans who exhibit higher levels of affective polarization were the most resistant to accepting an electoral loss. Figure 10 shows that increases in affective polarization — as measured in 2019 — among Republicans are associated with a lower likelihood of accepting Biden as the legitimate president after the race had been called for him. As affective polarization increases, Republicans become more likely to approve of Trump challenging the results of the 2020 elections with lawsuits, more likely to approve of Trump never conceding the race, and more likely to approve of Republican legislators reassigning votes to Trump.

Line graph shows that as affective polarization among Republicans increases, so does their approval of challenging election results and of Trump never conceding.

In democracies, ballots are the “paper stones” that prevent a society from resorting to violence as a way of resolving conflict and allocating power. But when the cost of losing an election is too high and the prospects of seeing an opposition party win office are difficult to digest, citizens may be tempted to use or condone violence to achieve their preferred outcome. They may become supportive of elites using violence to maintain or obtain power. When this happens, democracy breaks down: it is no longer the only game in town — violence is an option too.

Fears of political violence in the United States have been rising in recent years. Beyond the violent mob that tried to take over the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 and revert the results of an election, there has been an increase in attacks against elected officials and election clerks, most of which have been committed by people on the far right.^{xix, xx} For these reasons, it is worth exploring the extent to which support for political violence is widespread in the American public.

Studying political violence using survey data, however, presents important methodological challenges. First, self-reported survey responses can be misleading, particularly when it comes to contested issues.^xxi Second, survey participants often rush through surveys and pick answers haphazardly, which may inflate support for violence when the question asks about how much violence is justified and there is only one option for “not at all” and no option for answering “don’t know.”^xxii Moreover, questions about violence in general may be interpreted differently by different Americans, with some interpreting violence as something grave, like murder, and others interpreting it as harassment or insults. This makes responses difficult to compare.^xxii Such issues likely mean that the questions we use could overestimate support for incidents of political violence.

Our surveys gauge support for political violence by asking the following questions:

• How much do you feel it is justified for people you agree with politically to use violence in advancing their political goals these days?
• When, if ever, is it OK for people you agree with politically to send threatening and intimidating messages to political leaders you don’t agree with?
• When, if ever, is it OK for an ordinary person you agree with politically to harass an ordinary person you don’t agree with politically on the internet in a way that makes the target feel unsafe?

“Only 2 percent of Democrats and 4 percent of Republicans consistently justified the use of political violence across the four survey waves.”

The American public is overwhelmingly opposed to political violence. Indeed, across survey waves, rejection of different types of violent and uncivil behavior remained high and stable from November 2019 through November 2022. A substantial majority of Americans, whether Democrats, Republicans, or independents, rejected sending threatening messages to leaders of the other party, harassing members of another party online, and using violence to advance political goals.

The most notable change we see is among Republicans. Their rejection of violence has increased from 2019 to 2022. While 72 percent of Republicans agreed that it is never okay to send threatening messages to leaders of the other party in 2019, this share increased to 83 percent by November 2022. Rejection of harassing members of the other party online also increased among Republicans from 76 percent in November 2019 to 84 percent in November 2022.

Attitudes toward political violence remained relatively stable across the years, with the majority of Americans rejecting violence. Among Democrats, rejection of political violence hovered around 84 percent during this time period. Among independents, rejection of political violence started off at 84 percent in 2019 and dropped slightly to 82 percent by November 2022. Among Republicans, rejection of political violence remained at around 86 percent from 2019 to November 2022.

Given the methodological concerns highlighted before, a better way to gauge for genuine support for violence is to see if survey participants remain consistent in their views over time. When we look at the same respondents over time, we find that only a small share of the population consistently expresses support for violence and uncivil behavior across the years. Indeed, only 2 percent of Democrats and 4 percent of Republicans consistently justified the use of political violence across the four survey waves. The remaining participants switched their answers from one survey wave to the other, which may be due to not having well-defined views on the issue, rushing through the survey, or selecting responses at random.

Similarly, only 2 percent of Democrats and 4 percent of Republicans consistently justified the harassment of members of the other party online and sending intimidating messages to leaders of the other party. On this last question of sending intimidating messages to leaders of the other party, views were noticeably less consistent over time, suggesting that people might not have had a well-defined idea of what intimidating messages might include and were more likely to change their views on this behavior over time.

While the share of Republicans who consistently justified violence was considerably low and comparable to that of Democrats, Republicans were more inconsistent in their responses to the questions of violence and uncivil behavior. Close to a third of them changed their views at least once over time. Whether this was due to less well-defined views or speeding through surveys, this higher level of inconsistency among Republicans is notable.

Responses to January 6

According to the States United Democracy Center’s poll on political violence, Americans appear to be more willing to support political violence in specific hypothetical scenarios, such as if the government banned elections or jailed people critical of the government.^xxiii The violent events that unfolded on January 6, 2021, are a specific and real case where many Republican voters perceived a danger to the democratic process that at least some believe warranted political violence. These events are a useful case for analyzing whether rejection of violence in the abstract translates to rejection of actual political violence. In addition, analyzing views toward a specific event helps us overcome some of the methodological limitations identified previously. We find that — in contrast to the overwhelming rejection of political violence identified before — the violent events of January 6th were viewed favorably by Republicans, illustrating how support for democratic norms frays in the face of partisanship and when considering concrete situations.

The January 6th events were perceived quite differently by Democrats and Republicans. Most Democrats described what happened as an attempt to overturn the elections, an attempt to overthrow the government, and as an insurrection. Only 35 percent of Republicans saw January 6th as an attempt to overturn the elections, 20 percent of them described it as an attempt to overthrow the government, and 23 percent described it as an insurrection.

Instead, 82 percent of Republicans and 76 percent of independents characterized January 6th as a protest that went too far and almost half of Republicans (46 percent) described these events as acts of patriotism. These different perceptions of the January 6th events fit with the idea that partisans are willing to break a norm — in this case the rejection of violence — when they perceive the other side to be engaging in anti-democratic behavior. By and large, Republicans believed their party’s rhetoric that the election was stolen by the Democrats — something very undemocratic — which made it acceptable for them to engage in violence to defend democracy, a patriotic act in their view.

The different understanding of the events color partisan approval of January 6th and subsequent investigations into them. While 89 percent of Democrats disapproved of what happened on January 6th, only 72 percent of Republicans and 64 percent of independents disapproved of it. Meanwhile, 14 percent of Democrats disapproved of the House Select Committee that was formed to investigate the January 6th events while 72 percent of Republicans and 39 percent of independents disapproved of it.

“In contrast to the overwhelming rejection of political violence identified before — the violent events of January 6th were viewed favorably by Republicans, illustrating how support for democratic norms frays in the face of partisanship and when considering concrete situations.”

There is no canonical measure to determine the number of Americans who are true authoritarians, democrats, or anything in between. Rather, we have asked various questions about our political system, asked similar questions in different ways, returned to the same respondents over time, and described real-life scenarios to dig deeper into individual beliefs.

In calculating an overall assessment, we test for:

• consistent belief that democracy is always a good system and better than its alternatives,
• consistent support for checks on executive authority as well as free and fair elections, and
• consistent rejection of authoritarian systems of government and the use of violence to achieve political goals.

Perhaps most importantly, support for democracy should come out ahead of support for party. Our definition of a consistent democracy champion is someone who accepts election results and checks on executive authority regardless of the partisan consequences.((While the VOTER Survey has occasionally asked questions that test support for pluralism (touching on, e.g., what characteristics make someone a “true” American), these were unfortunately not asked consistently enough to be included as a measure. However, we have little reason to believe that the addition of these questions would significantly change our findings based on the correlation of these views with the other measures we are tracking.)) Thus, we test whether support for basic democratic norms remains consistent across different presidential administrations and regardless of specific political leaders being named as the actors in a scenario (e.g., President Biden or Trump facing a check on their authority, acting unilaterally, or winning/losing an election).

When we look across responses to questions about preferred political systems, support for checks and balances, views about political violence, and acceptance of the 2020 election results, we find that only 27 percent of Americans were consistent democracy champions. In other words, across each wave of our survey, 27 percent of respondents always provided the pro-democracy answer. Broken down by partisanship, this group includes 45 percent of Democrats, 13 percent of Republicans, and 18 percent of independents.

The collective number declines considerably when we include scenarios about unilateral action by the president without constitutional authority or congressional approval. Specifically, we include the scenarios in which action is taken because the other party is “playing partisan games,” the president “knows it is the right thing to do,” and a large majority of the American people believe the president should act.

With these added conditions, 92 percent of Americans failed to meet the highest standard of consistent and unwavering support of democracy. Only 8 percent of Americans consistently provided the pro-democracy response across the battery of questions over time. This includes 10 percent of Democrats, 5 percent of Republicans, and 11 percent of independents.

At the other end of the democracy-support spectrum, we find a small percentage of Americans who are consistently authoritarian. Here we take a somewhat different approach. Rather than looking across our battery of questions, we focus on two core characteristics of authoritarianism.

• First, we look at the number of people who consistently believed over time that an authoritarian political system (featuring a strong leader or army rule) is favorable. For these questions we are looking to exclude survey respondents who accidentally or temporarily express support for an authoritarian system.
• Second, we look at the number of people who were consistent in their belief that violence is an acceptable way to achieve their political objectives. We consider those who consistently supported authoritarian political systems or who consistently justified political violence to be authoritarian.

In Section 2 of this report, we note that 78 percent of Americans have rejected army rule every year of our study and 68 percent consistently rejected having a strong leader who doesn’t have to bother with Congress or elections. But how many consistently endorsed an authoritarian system?

Across every survey wave, only 6 percent of Americans consistently supported any of the alternatives to a democratic system, with 5 percent of Americans unwavering in their support of a strong leader who does not have to bother with elections or Congress, and 2 percent supporting army rule. Likewise, 4 percent were in favor of a military takeover to reduce corruption both times this question was asked.

In Section 6, we find that most Americans consistently rejected violence to achieve their goals, but how many consistently endorsed it? Only about 3 percent consistently said that violence is justified to advance political goals. This number does not vary significantly by party affiliation.

Combining these figures to see the extent of consistent support for alternatives to democracy or for violence to achieve political goals, we find that 8 percent of Americans are consistently authoritarian — either repeatedly endorsing an authoritarian system or repeatedly endorsing political violence. Broken down by party, we see that a similar share of Democrats consistently endorsed an alternative to democracy or violence while a lower share of independents did so (4 percent). Support for a system other than democracy or political violence was highest among Republicans at 11 percent.

To be sure, these numbers are only our best guess, based on survey responses. It is possible that the share of authoritarians is higher. To the extent our results are biased because of differential non-response rates, we would expect higher non-responsive rates from authoritarians, who tend to be less engaged in politics and less inclined to respond to surveys. Though we have done our best to adjust for differential response rates, we must acknowledge this possibility.

Though 8 percent is small as a percentage, it represents approximately 21 million people in a country of more than 258 million adults. We also note that this “small” number is just about the same as the portion of Americans who are unwavering democracy champions, providing consistent pro-democracy responses across all the questions we analyze over all the survey waves.

The vast majority of Americans are neither consistently authoritarian nor consistently pro-democracy. To be sure, most Americans are closer to the consistent champions of democracy, equivocating on a couple of questions over time, as Figure 13 illustrates. Most of them say democracy is a good system; reject strong, unaccountable leaders and army rule; and tend to express support for checks on the executive while rejecting political violence. The catch for many seems to be when support for democracy comes in tension with their partisan interests and when partisanship is made salient to them.

Definitions of democracy can range from a minimalist view that emphasizes the peaceful transfer of power through free and fair elections to a thicker view that includes robust checks and balances.^xxiv In our study we test this thicker definition, demanding a high standard of support for democracy that includes not just support for the abstract value of democracy and opposition to authoritarian rule, but also support for the separation of powers and the rule of law; rejection of political violence; and acceptance of electoral results, regardless of the partisan consequences and power.

The VOTER Survey, with its multiple waves spanning a Republican and Democratic administration, allows us to identify the consistent supporters of liberal democracy. As described in the introduction, we combine various questions from different years that capture the different dimensions of democracy for analysis. A consistent supporter of democracy, we assert, should express the pro-democratic view in all of these questions and at all times.

We are concerned that consistent support for abstract democratic principles is low, with only 27 percent of Americans consistently holding pro-democratic views on all questions of democratic systems, alternatives to democracy, checks and balances, acceptance of electoral results, and rejection of political violence. We are alarmed that only 8 percent of Americans hold a pro-democratic view on all the questions when we also include specific scenarios of unilateral executive action.

As we have shown, the share of true authoritarians in the country is quite limited. And we find that those who do not consistently and fully support pro-democracy norms are likely not doing so because they do not prefer democracy but rather because they have second thoughts when democracy is in the way of their partisan agenda. Paraphrasing Matthew Graham and Milan Svolik, who find that only between 4 percent to 12 percent of Americans would vote against a candidate of their own party who adopts undemocratic positions, Americans are often partisans first and democrats second.ⁱⁱ

“The simple conclusion is that many Americans believe that executive aggrandizement is okay when their side does it.”

The panel nature of our data makes clear that much support for anti-democratic backsliding and norm violation is motivated by partisanship. Citizens are far more consistent in their partisan orientations than they are in their support for various principles of liberal democracy, and they are even more inconsistent in their reactions to particular scenarios of executive aggrandizement. The simple conclusion is that many Americans believe that executive aggrandizement is okay when their side does it. This is not encouraging.

Perhaps this inconsistency reflects a limited understanding of the meaning of liberal democracy. Perhaps it represents a belief that un-democratic actions are justified (and pro-democratic) because the opposition party is a threat to democracy. Perhaps it represents inflated abstract support for democracy out of social desirability bias. Regardless of the explanations, our findings suggest that the reservoir of public commitment to preserve liberal democracy is distressingly shallow.

It seems that democratic backsliding may depend on the actions of political leaders. But political leaders can be limited by what the public lets them get away with. Unfortunately, our surveys show that they can get away with quite a bit. In contemporary American democracy, the citizenry does not provide much of a guardrail against democratic backsliding. Part of the reason for this is that high levels of polarization motivate Americans to believe that the other side is more extreme and anti-democratic than theirs, leading them to justify and rationalize anti-democratic behavior by their own side.

All of this is particularly worrisome at a time when core democratic norms and institutions are being challenged in unprecedented ways.

We began this study in 2017 out of a concern that American democracy might be far weaker than any of us would like to believe. We feared that our republic would see many challenges over the coming years that would test our political system and that public support would be critical for American democracy to make it through these challenges. Unfortunately, we were right about the challenges that were to come. We also were right to fear that large portions of the public would readily turn a blind eye to these transgressions.

Thankfully, all is not lost. The past seven years have seen countless examples of both leaders and citizens heroically championing our democracy. Election officials, judges, journalists, activists, and voters have defended democratic norms and stood up for our shaky institutions. As we enter yet another presidential election — this time with a former president and leading candidate going to trial for past attempts to subvert our democracy — it will be more important than ever that democracy’s champions are prepared.

i. Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stepan, “The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes: Crisis, Breakdown and Reequilibration. An Introduction,” Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978, p. 160.

ii. Matthew H. Graham and Milan w. Svolik, “Democracy in America? Partisanship, Polarization, and the Robustness of Support for Democracy in the United States,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 114, No. 2, May 2020, pp. 392–409.

iii. Gabor Simonovits, Jennifer McCoy, and Levente Littvay, “Democratic Hypocrisy and Out-Group Threat: Explaining Citizen Support for Democratic Erosion,” The Journal of Politics, Vol. 84, No. 3, 2022, pp. 1806–11.

iv. John Carey, Katherine Clayton, Gretchen Helmke, Brendan Nyhan, Mitchell Sanders, and Susan Stokes, “Who will defend democracy? Evaluating tradeoffs in candidate support among partisan donors and voters,” Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties, July 7, 2020, pp. 1–16.

v. Steven V. Miller and Nicolas T. Davis, “The Effect of White Social Prejudice on Support for American Democracy, Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics, 2020, pp. 1–18.

vi. John Kingzette, James N. Druckman, Samara Klar, Yanna Krupnikov, Matthew Levendusky, and John Barry Ryan, “How Affective Polarization Undermines Support for Democratic Norms,” Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 85, No. 2, October 21, 2021, pp. 663–77.

vii. Elizabeth Gidengil, Dietlind Stolle, and Oliver Bergeron-Boutin, “The partisan nature of support for democratic backsliding: A comparative perspective,” European Journal of Political Research, Vol. 61, No. 4, 2022, pp. 901–29.

viii. Caterina Chiopris, Monika Nalepa, and Georg Vanberg, “A wolf in sheep’s clothing: Citizen uncertainty and democratic backsliding,” Working paper, 2021.

ix. Zhaotian Luo and Adam Przeworski, “Democracy and Its Vulnerabilities: Dynamics of Democratic Backsliding,” Available at SSRN 3469373, 2021.

x. Michael K. Miller, “A Republic, If You Can Keep It: Breakdown and Erosion in Modern Democracies,” The Journal of Politics, Vol. 83, No. 1, 2021, pp. 198–213.

xi. Jennifer McCoy, Tahmina Rahman, and Murat Somer, “Polarization and the Global Crisis of Democracy: Common Patterns, Dynamics, and Pernicious Consequences for Democratic Polities,” American Behavioral Scientist, Vol. 62, No. 1, 2018, pp. 16–42.

xii. Yunus Emre Orhan, “The relationship between affective polarization and democratic backsliding: comparative evidence,” Democratization, Vol. 29, No. 4, 2022, pp. 714–35.

xiii. Suthan Krishnarajan, “Rationalizing Democracy: The Perceptual Bias and (Un)Democratic Behavior,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 117, No. 2, May 2023, pp. 474–96.

xiv. Alia Braley, Gabriel S. Lenz, Dhaval Adjodah, Hossien Rahnama, and Alex Pentland, “Why voters who value democracy participate in democratic backsliding,” Nature Human Behaviour, 2023, pp. 1–12.

xv. Michael Albertus and Guy Grossman, “The Americas: When Do Voters Support Power Grabs?,” Journal of Democracy, Vol. 32, No. 2, 2021, pp. 116–31.

xvi. Nancy Bermeo, “On Democratic Backsliding,” Journal of Democracy, Vol. 27, No. 1, 2016, pp. 5–19.

xvii. Will Freeman, “Sidestepping the Constitution: Executive Aggrandizement in Latin America and East Central Europe,” Constitutional Studies, Vol. 6, 2020, p. 35.

xviii. Aytuğ Şaşmaz, Alper H. Yagci, and Daniel Ziblatt, “How Voters Respond to Presidential Assaults on Checks and Balances: Evidence from a Survey Experiment in Turkey,” Comparative Political Studies, Vol. 55, No. 11, September 1, 2022, pp. 1947–80.

xix. Rachel Kleinfeld, “How Political Violence Went Mainstream on the Right,” Politico, November 7, 2022, accessed October 25, 2023. Available at: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/11/07/political-violence-mainstream-right-wing-00065297.

xx. Rachel Kleinfeld, “The Rise of Political Violence in the United States,” Journal of Democracy, Vol. 32, No. 4, 2021, pp. 160–76.

xxi. Shanto Iyengar, “Impending Civil Strife or Further Evidence of Non-Attitudes? A Review Article,” Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 138, No. 2, June 7, 2023, pp. 239–50.

xxii. Sean J. Westwood, Justin Grimmer, Matthew Tyler, and Clayton Nall, “Current research overstates American support for political violence,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Vol. 119, No. 12, March 22, 2022, e2116870119.

xxiii. States United Democracy Center, Americans’ Views on Political Violence—Key Findings & Recommendations, June 15, 2023, accessed October 25, 2023. Available at: https://statesuniteddemocracy.org/resources/americans-views-political-violence/

xxiv. Michael Coppedge, John Gerring, David Altman, Michael Bernhard, Steven Fish, Allen Hicken, Matthew Kroenig, Staffan I. Lindberg, Kelly McMann, Pamela Paxton, Holli A. Semetko, Svend-Erik Skaaning, Jeffrey Staton, and Jan Teorell, “Conceptualizing and Measuring Democracy: A New Approach,” Perspectives on Politics, Vol. 9, No. 2, 2011, pp. 247–67.

The following survey findings are from the November 2022 VOTER Survey, which interviewed 6,000 Americans from November 15 to December 6, 2022.

1. Here are various types of political systems. For each one, would you say it is a very good, fairly good, fairly bad or very bad way of governing this country?

2. Please read the following statements and tell us which is closest to your view, even if none of them are exactly right.

Democracy is preferable to any other kind of government.	73%
In some circumstances, a non-democratic government can be preferable.	15%
For someone like me, it doesn’t matter what kind of government we have.	12%

3. Please read the following statements and tell us which is closest to your view, even if none of them are exactly right.

Since the President was elected to lead the country, he should not be bound by laws or court decisions that he thinks are wrong.	11%
The President must always obey the laws and the courts, even if he thinks they are wrong.	89%

4. Please read the following statements and tell us which is closest to your view, even if none of them are exactly right.

The news media should scrutinize the President and other politicians to ensure they are accountable to the American people.	82%
The news media should allow the President and politicians to make decisions without being constantly monitored.	18%

5. Please read the following statements and tell us which is closest to your view, even if none of them are exactly right.

Members of Congress should provide oversight of the President and executive branch, even if the President is in their same party.	83%
Members of Congress should give the President freedom to make the decisions he feels are right for the country.	17%

For the following scenarios about unilateral executive action, one group of respondents was asked:

Please read the following scenarios. How appropriate would it be for a Democratic or Republican President to take action on their own, even if the Constitution does not give them the power to act without Congressional approval?

Another group of respondents was asked:

Please read the following scenarios. How appropriate would it be for President Biden to take action on his own, even if the Constitution does not give him the power to act without Congressional approval?

6. Scenario: The country is facing an immediate military threat.

	President	President Biden
Very Appropriate	President 27%	President Biden 25%
Somewhat Appropriate	President 31%	President Biden 27%
Somewhat Inappropriate	President 13%	President Biden 14%
Very Inappropriate	President 11%	President Biden 15%
Don’t Know	President 18%	President Biden 19%

 

7. Scenario: A large majority of the American people believe that the President should act.

	President	President Biden
Very Appropriate	President 15%	President Biden 14%
Somewhat Appropriate	President 28%	President Biden 25%
Somewhat Inappropriate	President 18%	President Biden 16%
Very Inappropriate	President 20%	President Biden 25%
Don’t Know	President 19%	President Biden 21%

8. Scenario: The President / President Biden knows it is the right thing to do for the American people.

	President	President Biden
Very Appropriate	President 12%	President Biden 12%
Somewhat Appropriate	President 24%	President Biden 19%
Somewhat Inappropriate	President 20%	President Biden 18%
Very Inappropriate	President 25%	President Biden 31%
Don’t Know	President 19%	President Biden 19%

9. Scenario: The President has sought a compromise with Congress but the other party is playing partisan games.

	President	President Biden
Very Appropriate	President 11%	President Biden 13%
Somewhat Appropriate	President 23%	President Biden 21%
Somewhat Inappropriate	President 20%	President Biden 16%
Very Inappropriate	President 24%	President Biden 27%
Don’t Know	President 23%	President Biden 22%

10. In some countries, military leaders have suspended elections, closed down the legislature, and temporarily taken charge of the government in order to address extreme corruption. What would
be your view if the military took these steps in the United States?

Strongly Favor	5%
Somewhat Favor	10%
Somewhat Oppose	11%
Strongly Oppose	54%
Don’t Know	19%

11. When, if ever, is it OK for Democrats/Republicans/people to send threatening and intimidating messages to Republican/ Democrats/political leaders you don’t agree with?

	Democrats		Republicans	People
Never		Democrats 85%	Republicans 82%	People 88%
Occasionally		Democrats 8%	Republicans 11%	People 9%
Frequently		Democrats 4%	Republicans 4%	People 3%
Always		Democrats 4%	Republicans 4%	People 1%

12. When, if ever, is it OK for an ordinary Democrat/Republican/people in the public to harass an ordinary Republican/person you don’t agree with politically on the Internet, in a way that makes the target feel unsafe?

	Democrats	Republicans	People
Never	Democrats 87%	Republicans 82%	People 87%
Occasionally	Democrats 7%	Republicans 10%	People 9%
Frequently	Democrats 4%	Republicans 4%	People 2%
Always	Democrats 3%	Republicans 4%	People 2%

 

13. How much do you feel it is justified for Democrats/Republicans/people to use violence in advancing their political goals these days?

	Democrats	Republicans	People
Not At All	Democrats 84%	Republicans 85%	People 81%
A Little	Democrats 6%	Republicans 6%	People 7%
A Moderate Amount	Democrats 6%	Republicans 6%	People 8%
A Lot	Democrats 3%	Republicans 2%	People 2%
A Great Deal	Democrats 2%	Republicans 1%	People 2%

14. How confident are you that votes in your community were counted as voters intended in the elections this November?

Very Confident	50%
Somewhat Confident	32%
Not Too Confident	11%
Not At All Confident	8%

15. How confident are you that votes across the United States were counted as voters intended in the elections this November?

Very Confident	38%
Somewhat Confident	31%
Not Too Confident	19%
Not At All Confident	12%

16. Which comes closer to your own views, even if neither is exactly right?

There has been permanent harm done to the United States as a result of the election process this year.	36%
There has been no permanent harm done to the United States as a result of the election process this year.	64%

17. Would you say that Joe Biden legitimately won the 2020 election, or not?

Biden legitimately won the election.	69%
Biden did NOT legitimately win the election.	31%

18. Overall, do you approve or disapprove of the actions taken by the people who forced their way into the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, 2021?

Strongly Approve	4%
Somewhat Approve	7%
Somewhat Disapprove	13%
Strongly Disapprove	66%
Don’t Know	10%

19. Thinking about the people who forced their way into the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, 2021, would you describe their actions as…

	Insurrection	Patriotism	Trying to Overthrow the U.S. Government	Trying to Overturn the Election and Keep Donald Trump in Power	Defending Freedom	A Protest that Went Too Far
Yes	Insurrection 60%	Patriotism 25%	Trying to Overthrow the U.S. Government 59%	Trying to Overturn the Election and Keep Donald Trump in Power 68%	Defending Freedom 26%	A Protest that Went Too Far 72%
No	Insurrection 41%	Patriotism 75%	Trying to Overthrow the U.S. Government 41%	Trying to Overturn the Election and Keep Donald Trump in Power 33%	Defending Freedom 74%	A Protest that Went Too Far 28%

20. Do you approve or disapprove of the House Select Committee’s handling of the investigation of events at the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, 2021?

Strongly Approve	28%
Somewhat Approve	19%
Somewhat Disapprove	11%
Strongly Disapprove	26%
Don’t Know	16%