New Research Reveals What Americans Actually Think About Democracy — and What Can Close the Gap

Kevin T. Kirkpatrick, head of strategic communications at Metropolitan Group, synthesizes findings from two major national research efforts — the Kettering Foundation and Gallup's Democracy for All Project and Metropolitan Group's Pro-Democracy Playbook — to offer practitioners a data-grounded portrait of how Americans understand and experience democracy as the country approaches its 250th anniversary. The research reveals that while attachment to democratic ideals remains strong, more than half of Americans believe democracy is performing poorly, with dissatisfaction closely tied to economic stress, felt exclusion from institutions, and uncertainty about how to participate beyond voting. Crucially, the studies identify specific narrative frames — centering freedom, fairness, accountability, and connection to everyday life — that consistently increase public engagement and resonance across political differences. These findings offer the NCDD network both a diagnostic and a practical resource for designing civic engagement efforts that meet people where they are and rebuild the connection between democratic ideals and lived democratic experience.

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As the United States approaches its 250th anniversary, two complementary research efforts have produced some of the most actionable findings available to practitioners working to strengthen democratic participation. Kevin T. Kirkpatrick of Metropolitan Group, writing for the Kettering Foundation's From Many, We blog series, synthesizes findings from the Democracy for All Project — a partnership between the Kettering Foundation and Gallup based on surveys of more than 20,000 American adults — alongside Metropolitan Group's own Pro-Democracy Playbook research, which tested narrative framing across focus groups and a national survey conducted in July 2025. Together, the two studies offer a detailed and nuanced portrait of where Americans stand on democracy: deeply attached to its ideals, significantly disappointed by its performance, and hungry for clearer pathways to participate in it.

The research surfaces six interconnected findings that deserve close attention from anyone working in dialogue, deliberation, or civic engagement. Americans broadly prefer democracy and connect it most powerfully to the value of freedom — but 51 percent believe it is currently performing poorly, and that dissatisfaction tracks closely with economic stress and lived experience of exclusion from institutional power. Young adults show measurably lower attachment to democratic governance than older generations, and support for authoritarian alternatives — while still relatively low — skews toward the 18 to 34 age group. At the same time, the research finds that Americans overwhelmingly believe in pluralism, value compromise as a sign of democratic health, and want to participate in civic life beyond voting — they simply lack a clear picture of how. When democracy is described in terms of everyday freedoms, accountability, and concrete connection to economic opportunity and housing, engagement and resonance increase substantially across political lines.

For NCDD members and practitioners, this research is not merely diagnostic — it is a roadmap. The finding that people become more interested in civic participation when democracy is described as something they can see, feel, and shape in their own communities speaks directly to what structured dialogue and deliberation make possible. The evidence that acknowledging democracy's failures increases rather than undermines public buy-in validates an approach to civic conversation that is honest, grounded, and inclusive of disappointment as a legitimate starting point. As the nation marks 250 years of democratic experiment, this research calls the field to connect its methods to the language and lived realities that actually move people — freedom, fairness, accountability, and the practical conditions of daily life. The full blog post and research synthesis are available through the Kettering Foundation at https://kettering.org/us-democracy-at-250-closing-the-gap-between-reality-and-the-ideal/