I had the opportunity to review the third report from the Democracy for All Project before it was released this week. The project is a collaboration between the Charles F. Kettering Foundation and Gallup and involves an annual survey of more than 23,000 American adults to understand civic life and Democracy in America.
The results from these new data, which were collected April-June 2026 are both hopeful and concerning.
The findings document how Democracy in America is strong at the local level. Respondents were generally more positive about democracy in their local communities than at the national level. The data also point to what makes local democracy strong: Americans who reported feeling like their local officials are more responsive to their needs also perceived that they had more of a say over decisionmaking. Moreover, those who reported being most satisfied with local services, trusting local electeds, and feeling that their neighbors would help them if needed also reported being more supportive of democracy in their communities. It is worth noting that these findings were strongest in areas where people reported their local governments being sensitive to ‘people like themselves.’ In other words, even though support for local democracy is quite robust, the results highlight that we still need to think through how to build civic trust in more diverse communities.
The findings document that most Americans (56%) believe that Democracy in America is doing moderately poorly or very poorly. Since the report is based on data collected annually, it clearly shows that confidence in democracy is down 5% since last year. These changes are overwhelmingly driven by the opinions of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents who report substantial drops in believing that US Democracy is doing well (down 10% and 8% respectively) and a growing belief that US Democracy is performing poorly (up 8% and 9% respectively).
I expect that we will see the consequences of these changes in confidence in our democracy play out in voter behavior during the midterm elections (which take place in 39 days).
The report (and the dataset, which should be publicly available soon) is a treasure trove for understanding where we are and where we need to go to reinvigorate our democracy. I’ll be sharing more detailed analyses in the not-too-distant future. In the meantime, anyone who cares about Democracy in America should give the new report a read!
