Why is this so close??

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

Deana El-Mallawany and Justin Florence

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.

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