Why is this so close??

Our system gives autocrats a fighting chance — but democracy can win

There’s something fundamentally baffling about American politics right now. We’re feeling it, and we suspect you’re feeling it too. 

It boils down to a seeming contradiction: A commitment to democracy is central to our national history, identity, and politics. An overwhelming majority of voters claim, according to surveys, that they believe in and support democracy over authoritarianism. The authoritarian-infused Project 2025 agenda is “severely unpopular.” (Only four percent of voters view it positively!) To be sure, there’s a long strain of autocratic-style politics in our country dating back to the Confederacy and beyond that has rejected a democracy that includes all Americans. That might explain why an autocrat has the support of a quarter — or even a third — of the voting public. Yet, an outwardly authoritarian candidate has the support of at least 45 percent of likely voters and has a serious shot at winning the presidency. 

What gives? How could a “pro democracy” country plausibly elect an autocrat?

It’s complex enough to defy a complete explanation (our colleagues have previously written about why democracies are reeling around the world). But with respect to this election we can identify at least four reasons for how we got to this contradictory moment. 

They’re true regardless of who wins the election. And taking them seriously points to some directions ahead, whoever the next president may be. 

How can a democracy-destroying candidate have a chance in a pro-democracy country?

The first is the “believability gap” — too many Americans, both elites and non-elites, still don’t think that Trump will follow through on his plans and promises. According to a New York Times poll, 41 percent of likely voters think “people who are offended by Donald Trump take his words too seriously.” Some influential elite voices — like the Wall Street Journal editorial board and certain New York Times columnists — have a long history of not believing Trump’s open authoritarianism even after all the times he’s done just what he said he would. David Graham has also extensively documented these circumstances in The Atlantic. 

This problem is exacerbated as traditional sources of information and news have fractured and disintegrated, taking our sense of shared reality with it. 

Second, our electoral system is almost uniquely designed to give authoritarians like Trump a fighting chance. Yes, the Electoral College is part of it, but also, our winner-take-all system — where every election, top-to-bottom, has one and only one winner —  creates what Lee Drutman calls a “two-party doom loop.” At every level, there’s pressure to retreat back into two ideological camps — “us-versus-them” — and to normalize and accommodate bad behavior because “the other side is worse.” 

Our colleague Grant Tudor published a new report that goes deeper on this structural problem: Advantaging Authoritarianism: How the U.S. electoral system favors extremism. 

The core issue is:

Specific features of the U.S. electoral system are structurally favoring political extremism, such as by exaggerating one party’s electoral wins over the other, diluting minority voting power, weakening competition between the major parties, and preventing an electorally viable new center-right party, among other effects.

In other words, our electoral system has created a dynamic where it’s too easy for an extreme autocratic candidate to capture one of our two parties. And the resulting two-party doom loop has driven such strong polarization and calcification effects that this major party candidate almost automatically gets support from nearly half of the voters.

Third (and relatedly), elections are thermostatic. They serve two functions — to select qualified individuals to lead, but also to provide policy direction — and there’s a “right-track or wrong-track” quality to those things. Fundamentally, that’s good; providing that high-level national direction is part of what democracy is for. But just like voters in other western democracies, many American voters are feeling pretty “wrong-track” right now, and Trump, as a “blow-it-all-up” figure, seeks to capitalize. 

Lots of Americans don’t feel like democracy is working for them right now. That alone explains a large chunk of support for the non-incumbent-party candidates — and we see something similar in polling and election results in democracies around the globe. The drivers include (among other things) a diminishing sense of community, fear of scarcity and loss of social status as demographics and labor markets change, and economic factors from cost-of-living increases to widening inequality. As a country we’re historically distrustful of establishment institutions. There’s usually an innate desire for change. And given the current two-party doom loop, that creates a floor of support even for an avowed autocrat, and especially one who promotes himself as an “outsider” (even if Trump, as a billionaire mogul and former president, is the consummate political insider). 

Finally, the unfortunate reality is that many slow-burning anti-democratic strategies designed to make it easier for candidates like Trump to win are functioning in tandem. The gutting of the Voting Rights Act and new restrictive state laws are making it harder for many eligible voters to vote. The Citizens United line of cases and a flood of unrestricted money in politics has made it so that a few billionaires can effectively bankroll a presidential candidate. Trump’s allies’ coordinated campaign against anti-disinformation efforts has helped flood the internet with falsehoods that interfere with the election in myriad ways. And Trump-appointed judges and justices in courts across the country — especially in the Supreme Court immunity ruling and in the dismissal of the national security documents case — have helped protect him from legal and political accountability for his past conduct.

It’s hard to assess the individual impact of each of these factors (and many others), but together they add up to a relatively high political floor for an autocratic candidate and help explain why Trump is outperforming the apparent unpopularity of his authoritarian platform.

Again, none of this means that there isn’t an enduring authoritarian faction in the United States that is genuinely opposed to democracy — especially an inclusive multiracial democracy. The long-standing strains of racism and misogyny in America are all too real, and Trump is taking fullest advantage of playing to them. It also doesn’t mean the autocrats will win, either, both in the short- or long-term. But these “high floor” factors explain why — without a sustained, long-term effort to change things — it’s always going to be possible that a democratic society could elect an undemocratic president.

The good news, though, is that we can change things. 

What to do in the short-term, whoever wins?

The 2024 election is — as we all know — an enormous pivot point for our democracy. 

We have two paths. If we take one path, we will have an autocrat in the White House with plans for consolidating power, gutting checks and balances, and turning our country into an expression of one-man rule. If we take the other path, we will have a leader in the White House committed to basic democratic institutions, accepting election results and peaceful transfers of power, and respecting the law and the Constitution. 

But, regardless of what path voters choose, there will still be close to half of the voters who selected an openly autocratic candidate. How do we make this the last election where that’s true? 

First and most importantly, take the threats seriously. Resist the myth of a dictator-proof democracy. The most important time for that is now. It’s also true if somehow Trump returns to the White House. Policymakers, judges, government officials, and others should not demur when he starts to do the things he has promised to do. Media organizations and those who shape public opinion should describe accurately and with context what is happening. The broader public should assume he is pursuing the precise autocratic plans he has laid out. Only by being clear-eyed about the seriousness of the threat can we uphold the Constitution and laws.  

We must also recognize that even if Trump loses, the autocratic faction will not fade. Even then, the autocratic campaign will likely have earned a vote share in the mid-40s. A loss could add fuel to the movement driven by Trump’s most extreme supporters who are ready to escalate tensions. As the Republican Party grapples with its path forward, we’ll still see a dangerous array of mini-Trumps in state laboratories of autocracy and other key institutions. Defeating Trump will prevent the autocratic faction from seizing the White House, but that won’t mean the threat is over. 

Second, stay engaged and avoid “anticipatory obedience.” According to historian Tim Snyder, the core of how modern autocrats win is not by overwhelming democracy’s defenders with brute force repression but rather by convincing them to take themselves off the field. To “obey in advance.” To decide that standing up to autocracy is not worth the risk of potential retaliation, harm, or even violence. 

If you’re feeling afraid of a second Trump term, that’s both (a) understandable and (b) what he and his supporters want you to feel. This is why Donald Trump broadcasts his most extreme threats — to send the military against his opponents or to weaponize the Department of Justice — not for electoral politics, but to try to intimidate the country into submission. 

To be clear, staying engaged is equally crucial if the autocrat loses  — but in that scenario, taking ourselves off the field looks like unabated celebration and exhaustion: the pro-democracy coalition prematurely declaring victory and scattering before the hard work of building a more resilient and representative democracy begins. 

Third, remain united and focused on the challenges ahead. The flip-side of the reasons for Trump’s floor is that the pro-democracy candidate is performing remarkably well, considering the circumstances. Notwithstanding all those factors above, a broad, sustained, cross-ideological coalition is putting aside differences and uniting in the face of autocracy. 

Regardless of whether that remarkable effort is enough in 2024, our democracy’s long-term fate likely depends on our ability to grow that coalition and truly marginalize the autocratic threat. 

On either path, if, in the election’s aftermath, we descend into a circular firing squad — or at the other extreme, stifle healthy deliberation over how to proceed — it will only advantage authoritarianism. 

We must democratize our democracy

To get out of this cycle where every election is a coin-flip existential risk, we need to accomplish a set of very hard but plausible reform goals: 

• We need to reform our electoral system to break the “doom-loop” of polarization and get back to a place where voters have a choice between more than one candidate willing to respect the Constitution. (Again, read Advantaging Authoritarianism.)

• We need to rebuild the guardrails on the presidency and strengthen the voting rights protections that have been so badly eroded in recent years. 

• We need to finally excise the minoritarian aspects of our system that allow autocrats to take and wield power without majority support. (For a good primer, read Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt’s Tyranny of the Minority).

• We need to strengthen, not sideline, our political parties so that they can one day serve as a bulwark against dangerous and anti-democratic candidates, not be captured as their personal vehicles. (For more, read the American Political Science Association’s: More than Red and Blue: Political Parties and American Democracy.) 

And beyond making legal, policy, and structural reforms, we need to stitch our diverse and ever-more-fractious country together at a social and cultural level. Until we act as fellow Americans, drawing on our varied backgrounds and beliefs, together to pursue a common good, our politics will always reflect our division. 

All of these are going to take time. They won’t all happen in the next four years, regardless of who is the next president. We need to be prepared for an enduring, generational effort. 

Still, if we keep building momentum — including with ongoing reform and democracy-building efforts in states and cities — we can ensure that this election is not the death of our democracy, but rather, the beginning of its rebirth. 

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An important legal victory in Virginia

Beyond those bigger picture thoughts, some good news this morning. A court ruled that Virginia had illegally purged eligible voters before the election. Here’s Anna Dorman on what this means: 

The ruling today was a win for eligible voters, but the fact that such a major political movement has invested so much in a strategy to discredit and undermine our electoral process is dangerous and has done real damage. We’re watching those harms play out right now in realtime in states across the U.S., as thousands of eligible voters’ right to participate in our democracy is being questioned and is in limbo.

Read about the case: An illegal voter purge based on conspiracy theories.

And about the nationwide effort aggressively targeting eligible voters: The “deceive, disrupt, deny” strategy behind voter eligibility lies.

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What else we’re tracking: 

• It doesn’t get any clearer than that. Trump’s own chief of staff (John Kelly), secretary of defense (Mark Esper), and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (Mark Milley) all agree: Donald Trump is “a fascist.” 

• Last weekend, Alex Tausanovitch walked through Trump’s promises to send soldiers against his political opponents and the many reasons why it’s dangerous to deploy the military within the United States: How to explain the threat of deploying the military on American soil.

• Speaking of electoral reform, Jennifer Dresden has a new analysis published by the Niskanen Center on our hollow political parties and how we must strengthen them, not sideline them, through electoral reform. Plus, she and Farbod Faraji write for Just Security about how our electoral system is contributing to the risk of political violence. 

• Big news this week: a federal judge ordered Rudy Guiliani to turn over most of his property to our clients, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss. Read more. 

• In a sweeping new essay, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt summarize the ways countries around the world have constrained would-be autocrats, how the U.S. has failed to to the same, and what we can still do: There are four anti-Trump pathways we failed to take. There is a fifth.

Finally, for those worried about the threat of election subversion, two reassuring pieces to read: One, Paul Rosenzweig on how “the places most crucial to the election have leaders who are committed to a fair process.” Two, David French on why “Trump’s election reversal dreams are dead.” 

To be clear, there is very much a plan to attempt to subvert the election should Donald Trump lose. But David and Paul are right — we have every reason to expect this plan will fail. 

For more on why, see Amanda Carpenter’s must-read series Subverting 2024.