The study warns that many American voters answer neutrality when asked about threats to democratic rules. Researchers collected responses from more than 45,000 voting-age Americans across three surveys. Two were run in the summers of 2024 and 2025, and a larger third ran weekly through the YouGov panel between 2022 and 2023.
Survey respondents were asked to agree, disagree, or remain neutral about four examples of undemocratic practice: reducing opposition polling stations, ignoring opposition court decisions, putting party loyalty above the Constitution, and censoring partisan media. About half of participants chose the neutral option for at least one question, and overall up to two-thirds did not actively oppose undemocratic actions by leaders. Fewer than one in five Americans explicitly supported such practices.
The authors—led by Matthew E.K. Hall and published in Nature Human Behaviour, with coauthors B. Tyler Leigh and Brittany C. Solomon and support from the Rooney Democracy Institute—link neutrality to conditional tolerance, uncertainty, apathy, ambivalence, and social pressure. They recommend new persuasion strategies that focus on neutral voters, including in primaries for the 2026 midterm elections.
Difficult words
- neutrality — absence of a clear opinion or position
- undemocratic — not following democratic rules or processes
- respondent — a person who answers survey questionsrespondents
- censor — to remove or block information from public viewcensoring
- ambivalence — mixed or unclear feelings about something
- apathy — lack of interest or concern about something
- persuasion — the act of trying to change someone's opinion
- primary — an election to choose a party's candidateprimaries
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Discussion questions
- Why might many voters choose the neutral option on questions about democratic threats? Give two possible reasons.
- What could political campaigns do to persuade neutral voters before the primaries in 2026?
- Do neutral answers mean voters are indifferent, or could they show uncertainty or social pressure? Explain your view.
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