In new survey data from the Americas Barometer project, respondents were asked whether this was a good or bad form of government: “Having a strong leader in the government, even if the leader bends the rules to get things done.” The question was asked twice under Biden and once under Trump. Here are the results:
Some key findings:
- In the 2021 and 2023 surveys, support for strong leaders who bend the rules was relatively low among both parties.
- During the Biden presidency, the percentage of Democrats who supported strong leaders increased a little bit, while Republican support declined. By 2023, more Democrats than Republicans supported this.
- But in 2025, the percentage of Republicans increased about 34 points – to 58%. Thus, a majority of Republicans endorsed a strong leader once Trump was in office.
We can learn a few things here. One is that, as I’ve shown before, questions about democratic principles and norms often reveal at least some partisan bias. Here is the trend in the Americas Barometer surveys of how many Democrats and Republicans say it’s justifiable for the president to close Congress and govern without it:
Who supports this aggrandizement of the president’s power clearly depends on whether their party’s president is in office.
At the same time, the spike in GOP support for the “strong leader who bends the rules” in Trump’s second term (and for allowing the president to close Congress in his first term) suggests that there is weaker Republican support for democracy and more willingness to endorse autocratic maneuvers if their party is in power. This is consistent with other evidence showing that, although Democrats can waver in their support for democratic norms, they waver less than Republicans do.
However, we do not have a long history of data for these two questions – only enough to span a few presidential administrations at most. A Democratic victory in the 2028 presidential race would give us an opportunity to observe how much a desire for “strong leaders” is merely an opportunistic response to being in power, or how much it is specific to Republicans when Donald Trump is in power.
