{"id":540302,"date":"2022-11-05T13:37:59","date_gmt":"2022-11-05T17:37:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/?p=540302"},"modified":"2022-11-07T15:54:28","modified_gmt":"2022-11-07T20:54:28","slug":"bright-line-watch-democracy-2022-midterm-elections-540302","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/bright-line-watch-democracy-2022-midterm-elections-540302\/","title":{"rendered":"Bright Line Watch assesses American democracy on the eve of 2022 midterm elections"},"content":{"rendered":"

Experts in Bright Line Watch poll see a high chance some Republican candidates will be unwilling to concede midterm election losses.<\/h2>\n
About Bright Line Watch<\/strong>
\nCofounded in 2017 by the University of Rochester\u2019s Gretchen Helmke and three other political scientists\u2014Brendan Nyhan and John Carey of Dartmouth College, and Susan Stokes of the University of Chicago\u2014Bright Line Watch<\/a> is a nonpartisan initiative that conducts regular surveys designed to monitor the overall stability and performance of American democracy. Mitchell Sanders \u201997 (PhD), of Rochester-based Meliora Research, is the group\u2019s director of survey research.<\/div>\n

According to the most recent<\/a> Bright Line Watch survey, American Democracy on the Eve of the 2022 Midterms<\/em>, academic experts see a roughly 75 percent chance that more than two high-profile Republican candidates, running for national or statewide offices in the midterm elections, may refuse to concede an election loss. Additionally, these experts rate the high number of 2020 election deniers among Republican candidates \u201cthe most abnormal and important event of the past year\u201d and one of the \u201cmost extreme\u201d political events to take place in the United States since\u00a02016.<\/p>\n

The same survey, fielded by a team of nonpartisan academics who poll experts and the public at regular intervals about the health of US democracy, also finds that two years into President Joe Biden\u2019s term, approximately two-thirds of Republican voters still don\u2019t consider him the legitimate winner of the 2020 election.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are losing an essential feature of any democracy\u2014the willingness of parties to lose elections,\u201d says Bright Line Watch cofounder Gretchen Helmke<\/a> who is the Thomas H. Jackson Distinguished University Professor and the faculty director of the Democracy Center<\/a> at the University of Rochester<\/a>. \u201cWe now have a situation in which one of the major parties is signaling that it\u2019s no longer willing to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Helmke, who studies political instability, constitutional crises, the rule of law, and Latin American politics, adds: \u201cRepublican elites are very wary of challenging Trump\u2019s narrative about 2020 because they\u2019ll get blowback from him and from his base, and we\u2019ve seen in this election cycle how that can end in primary defeats.\u201d<\/p>\n

As voters gear up for the first national elections since the failed attempt to overturn the outcome of the 2020 election and the subsequent January 6 insurrection, Bright Line Watch<\/a> polled 682 academic experts and a representative sample of 2,778 Americans between October 5 and 14.<\/p>\n

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\"Bar<\/p>\n

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The survey showed that about 67 percent of Democratic voters rated US elections as fraud-free, versus just 27 percent of Republican voters. In earlier surveys in 2021<\/a>, Bright Line Watch found that only 22 percent of Republican survey respondents regarded elections as free of fraud, compared to 71 percent of Democrats. While the gap between the two camps has narrowed somewhat, \u201ca gigantic chasm\u201d nevertheless remains, notes Helmke.<\/p>\n

Get involved<\/strong>
\nJoin us for the Bright Line Watch virtual panel<\/a> on Monday, December 5, from 1 to 2 p.m. ET. The event, hosted by the University of Rochester\u2019s Democracy Center<\/a> (as part of the cross-university Democratic Erosion Consortium<\/a>), is free and open to the public. Registration<\/a> is required.<\/div>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s so pernicious about \u2018the big lie\u2019 is that the vast majority of Trump supporters likely think they are protecting democracy, not undermining it.\u201d Helmke says, \u201cAlong with conceding defeat, the democratic principle of free and fair elections is absolutely fundamental to democracy,\u201d she says. That\u2019s why denying Biden\u2019s legitimacy would not be \u201cundemocratic,\u201d she says, if you believed that principle had been violated. But, Helmke stresses, \u201cno credible evidence has been put forth to support that belief\u201d [that the 2020 elections were not free and fair]. \u201cIt\u2019s all based on fact-free insinuation and conspiracy theories,\u201d she says. \u201cIn the wake of the 2020 election, courts across the country rejected claims of voter fraud, as did Trump\u2019s own appointees at the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security, as well as numerous Republican leaders.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bright Line Watch\u2019s key findings on the eve of the midterm elections:<\/strong><\/h3>\n