Political scientists are disturbed by the state of American democracy. At a conference convened to discuss the erosion of political norms last October, one suggested that “if current trends continue for another twenty or thirty years, democracy will be toast.” Others have noted that a willingness to deny legitimacy to opponents, tolerate public displays of violence, and undercut the press is how democracies died elsewhere. Another has argued that the breakdown has already begun: President Trump has “damaged American democracy while simultaneously accelerating democracy’s global decline.”

What should we make of these warnings? Is it true that ordinary citizens are beginning to devalue democracy? That they’re warming to authoritarianism and stoking a crisis of democratic legitimacy?

These are not purely academic questions. As Jonathan Rauch writes in the Atlantic, “Democracy can start to unwind if popular support for it declines, if the public becomes open to undemocratic alternatives, and if undemocratic politicians emerge who can exploit that opening. All of those factors are visible in a multitude of places.”