PRL has collected data on Americans’ support for political violence since 2022. We also fielded a survey on attitudes toward partisan violence in the week following the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Executive SummaryPublic support for political violence in the United States is virtually nonexistent, with less than 1% of Americans endorsing acts like partisan murder. Despite this consensus, an overwhelming majority of citizens across the political spectrum perceives political violence as a major national threat, leading many to curtail their own political expression out of fear. This pervasive fear has created a dangerous appetite for authoritarian solutions, with a substantial…

In the inaugural year, PRL Lab Director Sean Westwood traveled with 10 Dartmouth undergraduates to Washington, D.C., for a three-day immersive experience exploring the work required to sustain a healthy democracy. The visits provided students with insight into the day-to-day work of supporting American values, democratic norms, and strong institutions. Students engaged with leaders across partisanship and sectors, including former government, foundations, think tanks, and media.  Read Dartmouth’s coverage of the pilot program. PRL hopes to offer the program to students annually in the coming years.

How do Americans perceive the role of the courts? The independence of court decisions from executive and legislative politics plays an important role in maintaining the balance of power in the U.S. government. In the past few weeks the courts have been increasingly called on to adjudicate the legality of executive orders such as those concerning birthright citizenship, government funding for research, and deportation of immigrants, underlining the importance of bipartisan respect for these decisions. Data from PRL’s weekly pulse survey shows that since early 2025 there has been a divergence in support for respecting decisions made by out-party judges,…

AI models are increasingly part of our daily lives, but we know little about their potential biases. The Model Slant project analyzes the political slant of large language models. The goal is to provide transparency about how different AI models may exhibit partisan leanings in their responses to political questions. The project will help increase transparency of AI models and alert users about potential partisan biases in the models they engage with.  The dashboard shows the results of the experimental research. We showed Americans anonymized results from a variety of Large Language Models. We then asked them to assess the…

Perspectives from Brazil, Germany, Poland, Israel, and India PRL conducts quarterly surveys on democratic attitudes in five countries in addition to the US: Brazil, Germany, Poland, Israel, and India. This report includes data from the October 2024 and January 2025 waves of the survey.  Global respondents did not expect Trump to win, and they were not optimistic about their country’s relationship with the US if he was elected. In all of the countries less than 50% of respondents predicted that Donald Trump would win. The highest prediction was 45% in Germany, closely followed by 43% in Poland, and the lowest…

In a new paper out in PNAS Nexus, PRL researchers show that affective polarization is better explained by individual-level attitudinal measures than by geographic differences across states, such as political institutions, demographics, or economic conditions. Abstract: US partisans view each other with increasing negativity. While many attribute the growth of such affective polarization to nationally cross-cutting forces, such as ideological partisan sorting or access to partisan media, others emphasize the effects of contextual and institutional forces. For the first time, we introduce and explore data sufficiently granular to fully map the extent of partisan animosity across the US states. With…