The Bright Line Watch team today published a piece in the Washington Post‘s Monkey Cage segment entitled “Trump supporters and opponents are increasingly divided on whether constitutional principles are under threat.” This analysis summarizes the findings from a new article in Perspectives on Politics: “Searching for Bright Lines in the Trump Presidency.”
Both the Washington Post op-ed and the academic paper are built upon Bright Line Watch’s regular surveys of political scientists and the American public about the importance and U.S. performance on democratic principles. The “bright line” term in the name of the initiative comes from the idea that the citizens of every democratic society must have a shared idea of those principles that serve as bright lines that politicians cannot cross without provoking a mass defensive reaction.
We have found that while Trump supporters and opponents largely share the same views on the importance of most democratic principles, there is vast division on how the United States is performing on such principles.