Opinion | What political scientists see as worrisome, Republicans see as welcome

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

62% : Unsurprisingly, actions taken by Biden were viewed more positively by Democrats, while actions taken by Trump were viewed more positively by Republicans.
55% : Among those who said they were primarily supporters of Trump, 55 percent indicated that they viewed a strongman form of government positively.
51% : Bright Line also presented both the panel of political scientists and the public with a number of characteristics of healthy democracies, asking each group to evaluate whether those characteristics applied to the United States.
46% : That's very obviously (and predictably) because Republicans view Trump and Trump's presidency positively, regardless of the impact on democracy.
45% : The poll also asked Republicans if they were primarily supporters of the party or of Trump.
44% : Follow Philip Bump Follow For example, the Bright Line researchers presented respondents with a number of actions taken by Trump and by former president Joe Biden over the past few months.
43% : The gap among Trump Republicans was only 23 points.
41% : The researchers also asked the panel of political scientists whether they saw those actions as a threat to democracy.
41% : On average, Democrats were about three points less likely to say the United States met democratic standards than were political scientists.

*Our bias meter rating uses data science including sentiment analysis, machine learning and our proprietary algorithm for determining biases in news articles. Bias scores are on a scale of -100% to 100% with higher negative scores being more liberal and higher positive scores being more conservative, and 0% being neutral. The rating is an independent analysis and is not affiliated nor sponsored by the news source or any other organization.