section_path: Indicators/Bright Line Watch
section_name: Bright Line Watch
paragraph_text: Bright Line Watch
  
  Bright Line Watch polls political scientists more regularly than some other indices and has shown a significant decrease in democracy in the US at the start of Trump's first and second terms. Brendan Nyhan and NPR interpreted 2025 survey results as showing significant consensus among political scientists around concerns for further democratic backsliding at the start of the second Trump administration. While not a representative sample, it is a large sample that has been used since the election of Donald Trump in 2016 to gauge shifts in how experts and the public perceive the health of american democracy.