{"id":470462,"date":"2021-02-26T10:58:21","date_gmt":"2021-02-26T15:58:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/?p=470462"},"modified":"2021-02-26T10:58:21","modified_gmt":"2021-02-26T15:58:21","slug":"republican-and-democratic-voters-agree-on-need-for-generous-covid-19-relief-470462","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/republican-and-democratic-voters-agree-on-need-for-generous-covid-19-relief-470462\/","title":{"rendered":"Republican and Democratic voters agree on one thing\u2014the need for generous COVID-19 relief"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yet, Bright Line Watch finds strong partisan divides over election and impeachment.<\/h2>\n

Both Democrats and Republicans overwhelmingly favor politicians who support generous COVID-19 relief spending, yet remain deeply polarized over the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election results and former President Donald Trump\u2019s second impeachment. Meanwhile, political experts find that the former president\u2019s actions and those taken by congressional supporters in the aftermath of the election represent serious departures from American democratic norms.<\/p>\n

Those are among the most recent findings<\/a> of Bright Line Watch, the political science research project cofounded by Gretchen Helmke<\/a>, a professor of political science at the Ä¢¹½´«Ã½<\/a>, and her colleagues at the University of Chicago<\/strong><\/a> and\u00a0Dartmouth College<\/strong><\/a>. <\/strong>The watchdog group started regular surveys about the health of US democracy in February 2017.<\/p>\n

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Full report<\/h3>\n

Read Bright Line Watch\u2019s latest (February 2021) survey, \u201cAmerican democracy at the start of the Biden presidency<\/a>.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The team found strong bipartisan support for a new COVID-19 relief package, with Republican voters favoring a hypothetical candidate who supports a $500 billion pandemic appropriation over one who opposes it by 11 points, independents by 12 points, and Democrats by 18 points.<\/p>\n

COVID relief has proven to be extremely popular with supporters of both parties, says Bright Line Watch cofounder Brendan Nyhan<\/a>, a professor of government at Dartmouth College. \u201cWe\u2019ve seen Democrats and Republicans in Congress at times compete to provide more generous offers of aid and assistance. The public seems to largely agree that the government should provide more help given the economic circumstances Americans currently face.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the legitimacy of the election result remains a polarizing issue: while 42 percent of Republican public policymakers expressed confidence in the integrity of the election results at the national level, only 22 percent of Republicans in the public sample felt the same way. To Helmke, the public\u2019s continued partisan view of the election is troubling.<\/p>\n

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More about Bright Line Watch<\/h3>\n

Originally founded by the Ä¢¹½´«Ã½\u2019s\u00a0Gretchen Helmke<\/strong><\/a> and three other political scientists\u2014Brendan Nyhan<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0John Carey<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0of Dartmouth College, and\u00a0Susan Stokes<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0of the University of Chicago\u2014Bright Line Watch is a nonpartisan initiative that conducts regular surveys designed to gauge the overall stability and performance of American democracy.\u00a0Mitchell Sanders<\/strong><\/a> \u201997 (PhD), of Rochester-based Meliora Research, is the group\u2019s director of survey research.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cIn a democracy people basically have to trust that the rules are fair and that if their party or their team loses, the stakes of that loss won’t be intolerable, that in the future they’ll be able to contest an election again, and that they\u2019ll have a chance of winning. That keeps everyone committed to democracy and to playing by the rules,\u201d Helmke says. \u201cOnce you break that faith\u2014that elections actually determine who the winner is\u2014people’s allegiance to democracy wanes.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the latest survey provides a snapshot of the state of democracy in the early days of the new Biden administration, it\u2019s also a look in the rearview mirror. The Bright Line Watch team<\/a> found that loyalties and antipathy toward the former president\u2014whose Senate impeachment trial began immediately after the surveys were conducted\u2014continue to shape the views of citizens and government officials alike.<\/p>\n

As a result, the \u201ccountry still lives in the shadow of the Trump legacy,\u201d the team writes.<\/p>\n

As they had done throughout the project,\u00a0the group\u00a0fielded two parallel surveys\u2014one to political experts and one to a representative sample of the US population\u2014between January 28 and February 8.<\/p>\n

Among the key findings in the survey of the public<\/strong>:\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n