Americans Don’t Support Autocrats
Trump’s Illiberal Actions are Unpopular and Politicians Shouldn't Be Afraid to Say So
Trump’s Address to a Joint Session of Congress on Tuesday had the feeling of a campaign speech. Praising his own executive orders and actions, he declared that “the people elected me to do the job, and I’m doing it.”
This isn’t true. It's been shown over and over again that Trump is historically unpopular (bested in unpopularity only by himself in his first term). People don’t like the job he’s doing.
But what is at stake with Trump goes far beyond just the unpopularity of his policies: the core foundations of American democracy are at risk. Trump’s term—only 44 days-long at the time of this writing—is already unprecedented in its attempts to expand executive power to new, authoritarian heights. Trump’s acts, although too numerous to list here, have primarily consisted of executive orders that recklessly disregard constitutional limits. This lawless arrogation of power has continued mostly unabated, enabled by a Republican Congress unwilling to defend the constitution and undeterred by numerous court orders. This is all on top of the administration’s open, wanton corruption.
A question we’ve heard a lot lately, in some form or another, is essentially: “why aren’t Americans taking to the streets in resistance to Trump?” This question seems particularly relevant given that there were widespread protests in Trump’s first administration both before and after he took office, even though Trump 1.0 was a relatively tame affair compared to what we are experiencing now. Is it because Americans do not recognize just how bad things have gotten or do they not care that Trump’s actions are taking us down the path to authoritarianism?
Perhaps. In political science, there is a common assumption that people don’t know or don’t care about the finer points of politics. This is likely especially true when it comes to issues or actions that have trouble staying at the top of the news cycle—Trump’s “shock and awe” or “flood the zone” strategy ensures that each illiberal action is bumped aside and overshadowed by the next. For example, his blatant corruption in pressuring the Justice Department to drop its case against Eric Adams quickly lost prominence because J.D. Vance went to Munich and lobbied on the behalf of the neo-nazi AfD.
We also assume that people are even less likely to engage with issues when they involve complicated matters of policy and law or abstract matters like liberal norms (e.g., is an action authoritarian). And, perhaps frustratingly, Trump’s movement towards authoritarianism falls squarely in this space: somewhat abstract and intangible to most Americans: does a typical person care if Trump illegally fires an inspector general or a career prosecutor?
In the face of such complicated matters, people often revert to partisanship—so if a Democrat does something, Democrats like it. If Republicans do something, Republicans like it. Even in the context of relatively simple issues, the behavior of and endorsements from politicians is highly influential. For example, previous research has found that Republicans are more likely to support a minimum-wage increase and Democrats funding for Border Patrol if endorsed by their own party. So in the face of complicated issues of democratic norms, people might be especially likely to rely on their partisanship to determine what they support.
This tendency to be “rationally ignorant” about politics and to instead rely on their partisanship and “partisan cues” isn’t anything special about Americans’ lack of attention, instead it is a result of people being busy with other aspects of life and using psychological short cuts: “If I agree with my political party on issues that are important to me, then I probably agree with them on issues I don’t know much about.” Such tendencies have been documented over and over again.
Trump’s illiberalism benefits from these psychological tendencies because he, probably correctly according to political science research, assumes that people don’t care enough about what he’s doing to stop him. Modern authoritarians intimidate the opposition, choke off the civil service, flaunt the finer points of the law—Trump’s actions to a T—but they try to avoid revolt in response to these actions because such actions are not something the typical citizen cares about. They assume that people more likely care about the bread and butter of a strong economy or that they can distract the average person by demonizing groups like immigrants or a racial or religious minority.
Trump’s purges of the civil service and abuse of the justice system are not related to one’s pocketbook nor are they highly salient moral issues, like immigration or trans rights. Understanding the repercussions of his actions on democracy requires knowledge of abstract notions relating to liberal democracy and the rule of law or, at a minimum, a rudimentary ability to identify authoritarianism. Simply put, you have to know something about civics to understand that a budding authoritarian is dangerous for democracy. This is an exceptionally tall order for most voters and, in many respects, is an even taller order for a democratic system.
But here’s the thing, despite these powerful forces, Trump’s actions, matters of complex questions relating to civic and constitutional norms, are incredibly unpopular: they are not supported by an overwhelming majority of Democrats (unsurprising), a significant majority of Independents (more surprising), and nearly half(!) of Republicans (extremely surprising). And, particularly among Republicans, if you cut through the partisan blinders and remind people these actions are illegal and unconstitutional, people are even more likely to disapprove of his actions.
We see this in data that comes from questions we asked about Trump’s actions on the most recent Harvard CAPS/Harris poll.1 In particular, we asked people how much they support the following authoritarian actions (full questions can be seen at the end of the post):
Working with Elon Musk to purge the government of disloyal civil servants.2
The closing of USAID without Congressional approval.3
The firing of FBI agents and DOJ attorneys who had investigated the January 6th, 2021 attack on the US Capitol.4
The proposal to close the Department of Education by executive order.5
The firing of 18 Inspectors General without cause.6
Responses were on a five-point scale from “strongly support” to “strongly oppose”. For ease, we’ll bin those into “support” and “no support” where we put the people in “neither support nor oppose” in the “no support” category. Thus we are isolating levels of support (full response distributions are at the end of this post). For each of these questions, we also included an experiment where about half of our respondents were asked the question with additional text reminding them that these actions are illegal and/or unconstitutional. For example, the question: “President Trump’s [unlawful] firing of FBI agents and Department of Justice Attorneys who had investigated and tried cases involving the January 6th, 2021 attack on the United States Capitol” for some respondents included the treatment of “unlawful” and for some it did not.
Let’s start with overall support:
Clearly, these moves are wildly unpopular: across all five questions, the average level of support is only 31%. People don’t support authoritarian moves that purge the civil service or end programs without constitutional authority. While relatively small, reminders of these moves’ illegality make them even less popular, particularly for the civil service purges conducted by Elon Musk and Trump (DOGE) (the large effect for this question might be due to the strongly worded treatment: “even if these firings are found to be unlawful or unconstitutional”).
Keep in mind that the low levels of support for Trump’s policies are more remarkable given that this poll historically runs a bit conservative. In fact, Trump's net approval rating in this very same poll was +9, which was in the upper-middle of the distribution of approval ratings from polls at the time, so the lack of support we identify here may be even more meaningful than what we conclude from our top line results.
This finding is not driven by Democrats alone, look at Independents:
Their overall support for these actions is still only 21%. And here’s something notable: when we remind Independents that these actions are illegal, their lack of support doesn’t substantially move (with a slight exception for the civil service purges, which again is our strongest treatment). Apparently, you don’t have to remind them, they already see these actions for what they are: illegal and unconstitutional.
Democrats and Independents both already know what’s going on. But what about the other side of the aisle?
Even Republicans don’t love these. Considering that these actions come from a President with overwhelming personalistic control over the party, Republicans are downright wishy-washy about these actions. And, importantly, they respond pretty strongly to being told these are illegal. For the purging of the civil service, this information shifts support by 10 percentage points and for the firing of the inspectors general, it shifts a lack of support all the way to 50%.
These findings among Republicans show that the reliance on partisanship to decide what’s right can be blunted: in the absence of a reminder, people who support Trump probably assume what he’s doing is legal. But if you inform them that it’s not, this support drops significantly. While support doesn’t fall to zero, like some of us might like to see, it clearly makes a difference.
So what does all of this data mean? Americans broadly oppose authoritarian actions and they clearly don’t like the flouting of the rule of law. This is heartening, particularly given the difficulty of understanding these issues for the average voter. And this lack of support matters. Popularity is important, even for established autocrats. But is it important for aspiring autocrats? Yes, popularity is a necessity for growing their power and Trump’s control of his party relies on his perceived popularity. Political scientists have long recognized that education is something dictators should fear. Perhaps America’s strong tradition of civic education has paid off in enabling us to recognize, even in the face of polarized politics, that what Trump is doing is wrong (and pollsters might overstate Trump’s levels of support when focusing on support for his policies, rather than his authoritarianism).
A lot of discontent and criticism has been directed at Democrats who seemed cowed by Trump’s popularity and thus unable to lead a resistance. However, we know that resistance builds unpopularity, so there can be a vicious cycle of inaction where discontent never reaches a level that spurs risk-averse politicians into action.
So what should Democrats do? Should they talk about egg prices and wait for the next election and the inevitable thermostatic swing in opinion that will hand them back the House? There is a danger in this strategy. In addition to the fact that you shouldn’t assume— given current and past behavior—that Trump is committed to free and fair elections, we must also be concerned about the danger of normalizing Trump’s autocratic actions. Fortunately, the American people see these actions for what they are: illegal and dangerous. Democrats should seize on this recognition and lean into it. Call Trump out for what he is and what he is establishing: authoritarianism. Remind people that Trump is doing things that they don’t like and are illegal. It can help save our democracy (and will probably lead to electoral benefits too).
Special thanks to Jack Rametta for his input on question design.
Appendix:
Question Wordings
Do you support President Donald Trump and Elon Musk firing civil servants throughout the government who are deemed ''insubordinate'' and ''disloyal'' [treatment: even if these firings are found to be unlawful or unconstitutional]?
President Trump’s [treatment: unlawful] firing of FBI agents and Department of Justice Attorneys who had investigated and tried cases involving the January 6th, 2021 attack on the United States Capitol.
[treatment: By not notifying Congress 30 days in advance], President Trump’s [treatment: unlawful] firing of 18 inspectors general–independent watchdogs that oversee executive actions with agencies.
President Trump’s recent suspension of the acting administrator and other top officials of the United States Agency of International Development (USAID) and his [treatment: unlawful] closing of USAID’s offices and operations [treatment: without Congressional approval].
President Trump’s proposed, [treatment: unlawful] executive order to abolish the Department of Education [treatment: without Congressional approval].
2,224 registered voters via opt-in, web-panel recruitment with propensity score weighting, fielded February 19-20
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/02/06/elon-musk-doge-access-personnel-data-opm-security/
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/03/05/us/politics/usaid-trump-timeline.html
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/top-fbi-official-forced-criticizing-trump-pursuit-agents-investigated-rcna194610
https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/draft-of-trump-executive-order-aims-to-eliminate-education-department-5315c3a4?st=i92oTT
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/12/us/politics/inspectors-general-trump-lawsuit.html
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