Political experts surveyed recently were prone to pessimism — and were often wrong, says a study co-authored at UC Berkeley. Still, when their predictions were averaged out, they were ‘remarkably accurate’

By Edward Lempinen, UC Berkeley News

The past decade has seen historic challenges for U.S. democracy and an intense focus by scholars on events that seem to signal democratic decline. But new research released two weeks ago finds that a bias toward pessimism among U.S. political scientists often leads to inaccurate predictions about the future threats to democracy.

The research, co-authored by UC Berkeley political scientist Andrew T. Little, offers a possible solution: an approach that aggregates experts’ predictions, finds the middle ground, and then reduces the influence of pessimism, leading to the possibility of “remarkably accurate predictions.”

The study was released by Bright Line Watch, a consortium of political scientists who focus on issues related to the health of U.S. democracy. It offers provocative insight into political scientists’ predictions for the months ahead, including some that would be seen as alarming risks for democracy.

According to an analysis that Little distilled from a Bright Line Watch survey done after the November election, political scientists generally agreed that incoming Republican President Donald Trump is highly likely to pardon MAGA forces imprisoned for roles in the Jan. 6, 2021 uprising that sought to block the peaceful transfer of power from Trump to Democrat Joe Biden.

The research concluded that it’s less likely, but still probable, that Trump will pardon himself from a series of federal criminal convictions and investigations, and that his allies will open an investigation of Biden.

In understanding the future course of U.S. politics, Little said in an interview, it’s important to listen to the consensus of expert political scientists rather than to individual experts who, sometimes, become media figures based on their dire predictions.

“If we’re worried about being excessively pessimistic,” he explained, “and if we don’t want to conclude that every possible bad thing is going to happen, then we should make sure that we’re mainly worrying about things where there is wider consensus (among political scientists).”

Believe the Consensus, Doubt the Outliers

For example, the raw data from hundreds of survey responses studied by Little and Bright Line researchers showed that more than half of the political scientists also expected Trump to form a board that would explore the removal of generals; deport millions of immigrants; and initiate a mass firing of civil service government employees.

But once the researchers aggregated the scholars’ opinions, determined the average of their expectations and controlled for their pessimism bias, the consensus was that the likelihood of those developments falls well below 50%.

Bright Line Watch, founded in 2016, is based at the Chicago Center on Democracy and is collaboratively run by political scientists at the University of Chicago, Dartmouth College, the University of Michigan and the University of Rochester in New York.

The research collaboration between Little and the Bright Line Watch scholars sprang from a collegial disagreement that emerged last January in the pages of the journal Political Science and Politics.

Little and Anne Meng, a political scientist at the University of Virginia, authored a research paper in that issue positing that there is little empirical, data-based evidence of global democratic decline in the past decade.

At the request of the journal editors, scholars at Bright Line Watch submitted a study to counter the argument made by Meng and Little.

But in subsequent weeks, the two teams came together and, in the study released on Dec. 17, found agreement that raw opinion on the state of democracy skews toward pessimism among the political scientists who have participated in the surveys run by Bright Line Watch.

A Stark Measure of Pessimism (and Error)

Surveys conducted during election seasons in 2020, 2022 and 2024 asked political scientists to provide their forecasts on dozens of scenarios that would be, without doubt, harmful for democracy.

The raw data in the new study showed a high level of inaccuracy in the forecasts: While the political scientists, on average, found a 45% likelihood of the negative events happening, fewer than 25% actually came to pass.

Before last month’s election, Bright Line Watch asked the political scientists to assess dozens of possibilities that seemed to be ripped from the headlines. Would foreign hackers cripple voting systems? Would Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate, declare victory before the winner was called by the news media? Would Trump incite political violence again?

Altogether, the political scientists predicted a 44% probability for the list of negative events — but only 10% actually happened.

In the interview, Little defended the focus on possible negative developments by political scientists and others. It’s “very important” to be aware of the potential for harmful developments, he said.

But the focus on worst-case scenarios can also be distracting and destabilizing. The question, then, is why political scientists might develop a bias for pessimism.

To some extent, Little said, it may be a matter of expertise. The data show that scholars who specialize in American politics tend to be the least pessimistic — and the most accurate — forecasters. Political scientists with expertise in international relations, political theory or other areas tend to be more pessimistic and less reliable.

Little offered several other possible explanations. For example, he said, when scholars focus on one narrow area, like threats to democracy, they might see the potential threats with a heightened urgency. Their worry might shape the way they see the wider political world.

“People who study authoritarian politics are probably drawn to that because they think it’s an important problem, and they think it’s a problem that we need to address,” he explained. “If you spend a lot of your time and effort focusing on bad scenarios that might happen, you might end up thinking they’re more likely than they really are.”

And occasionally, he said, scholars may find that raising alarms about imminent dangers to democracy leads to more media invitations.

The Battle for Scholars’ Public Credibility

For the interwoven fields of political science and journalism — and for the wider health of democracy — accuracy is essential. That’s the value of the analytical system described by the authors of the new study. If researchers can find the expert consensus on complex issues and tone down unwarranted alarm, understanding should improve, and democracy should operate more efficiently.

Still, Little cautioned, it would be a mistake to discount or discard the insights offered by expert political scientists.

“You don’t want to say, ‘I’m just going to ignore the experts,’” he advised. “This research shows that that would be a very bad idea. Once you do the adjustments, the experts are very informed, and you can learn a lot from what they say.

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By Amy Cranch, UC Berkeley News

Prisha Bhadra said her journey to graduate from UC Berkeley began long before she set foot on campus. Her parents, who immigrated from India, “left behind familiarity, security, and every single loved one they had” to give her the chance to choose her own path. For students with immigrant roots, she said, “This moment feels bigger than just us. It’s the product of generations of hope. … This degree doesn’t just belong to me. It belongs to them.”

Bhadra, who majored in political science and minored in South Asian studies, represented more than 1,000 undergraduate and graduate students as the student speaker for the Class of 2024 Winter Commencement in Haas Pavilion on Dec. 21. Nearly 9,000 guests cheered the graduates on as their names were called and they walked across the court — often pausing to dance, take a selfie, or wave to proud onlookers.

Prisha Bhadra, class of 2024, is the daughter of Indian immigrants who left everything behind for her to have the opportunity for her education. Photo by Keegan Houser/UC Berkeley.

Later in the ceremony, Chancellor Rich Lyons presented the Elise and Walter A. Haas International Award to Khadija Bakhtiar, who received a master’s degree in public policy in 2010. The award annually honors a UC Berkeley alum with a distinguished record of service to another country.

Bakhtiar founded Teach For Pakistan, which has recruited 600 talented young Pakistani graduates to teach more than 30,000 students in high-need public schools. She has also catalyzed a national movement to eliminate educational inequity and push for government investment in teacher-leadership models.

Commenting on her journey — which began at Berkeley, where she learned about Teach For America — Bakhtiar said that people didn’t think the program would work in Pakistan “because children from low-income backgrounds can’t make such rapid progress, or because public schools and school systems are too far gone to change,” she said. “It felt like I could see what lies beyond the mountain, but others couldn’t.”

Khadija Bakhtiar, left, received the Elise and Walter A. Haas International Award from UC Berkley Chancellor Rich Lyons. Photo by Keegan Houser/UC Berkeley.

But staying the course has reaped rewards. “I would have missed the moment where students are no longer ‘beneficiaries’ of a teaching program but ask in every school and classroom I visit, … ‘Tell us how we can help the larger movement,’” she said. “I might not have seen the young people who were floundering and overwhelmed in their first months of teaching grow to become school leaders, teacher trainers, entrepreneurs, [or] government advisers supporting learning for hundreds of thousands kids.”

In his remarks, Lyons encouraged graduates to consider all that they will carry with them. “You value truth and know it must be protected. You believe in science. You know that conventional wisdom and the status quo can and must always be challenged in order to find a better way,” he said. “I can only hope you share the gratitude I feel for these attributes, values, and aspirations that form the foundation of all that Berkeley is and stands for.”

Below, a few graduates share their favorite memories, advice for future students, and other tidbits on their Berkeley experience. Their responses have been edited for length and clarity.

Muki Barkan, Oakland, CA, law

Muki Barkan of Oakland, who received his degree in law, will take up criminal defense. Photo by Keegan Houser/UC Berkeley.

Favorite class: A post-conviction and sentencing practicum with Chesa Boudin, the former district attorney of San Francisco. We got to help draft sentencing motions that the Alameda County DA would then file, and a good number of people who’d spent decades in prison got out because of it. That was pretty cool.

Aha moment: I came in wanting to do tenants’ defense and tenants’ rights, and I worked for the East Bay Community Law Center for a summer. That was interesting, but I really found that criminal defense was what I preferred when a friend of mine was unfairly convicted in Marin County for all kinds of reasons. That really struck me.

Extracurricular activities: I had a job outside of campus. I had a community in Oakland, so I did food distribution that I’ve been doing since before I came here, and sometimes we organized care villages. I spend a lot of time hiking in the hills by Berkeley, foraging mushrooms. I’ve got my chanterelle spots up there.

Lester Cedeño, San Bernardino, CA, integrative biology with an emphasis in human anatomy 

What you’ll miss most: The faculty. Every single one of the professors I had in integrative biology was so in tune with the courses that they teach and the wellness of their students. I’m going to miss that mentorship.

Jamie Hernandez, San Bernardino, CA, integrative biology

Favorite class: California natural history. A few years ago the teacher took us to the UC natural reserve in Pt. Reyes. He had memorized like a thousand bird calls. During the trip he would stop the car, pull out the binoculars, and make us look at the birds. It was a really good experience.

Monica Gomez, Vallejo, CA, integrative biology with an emphasis in wellness

What you’ll miss most: I appreciated all the libraries that we have here. They’re so big, and there are so many to choose from.

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UC Berkeley researchers found that taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages, coupled with media attention, coincided with significant changes in social norms around sugary drinks.

By Jason Pohl
UC Berkeley News

It wasn’t that long ago when cigarettes and soda were go-to convenience store vices, glamorized in movies and marketed toward, well, everyone.

Then, lawmakers and voters raised taxes on cigarettes, and millions of dollars went into public education campaigns about smoking’s harms. Decades of news coverage chronicled how addictive and dangerous cigarettes were and the enormous steps companies took to hide the risks and hook more users.

The result: a radical shift in social norms that made it less acceptable to smoke and pushed cigarette use to historic lows, especially among minors.

New UC Berkeley research suggests sugar-sweetened beverages may be on a similar path.

The city of Berkeley’s first-in-the-nation soda tax a decade ago, along with more recent Bay Area tax increases on sugar-sweetened drinks, have not only led to reduced sales. They are also associated with significant changes in social norms and attitudes about the healthfulness of sweet drinks, said Kristine A. Madsen, a professor at UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health and senior author of a paper published Nov. 25 in the journal BMC Public Health.

Over the span of just a few years, taxes coupled with significant media attention significantly affected the public’s overall perceptions of sugar-sweetened beverages, which include sodas, some juices, and sports drinks. Such a shift in the informal rules surrounding how people think and act could have major implications for public health efforts more broadly, Madsen said.

“Social norms are really powerful. The significant shift we saw in how people are thinking about sugary drinks demonstrates what else we could do,” Madsen said. “We could reimagine a healthier food system. It starts with people thinking, ‘Why drink so much soda?’ But what if we also said, ‘Why isn’t most of the food in our grocery stores food that makes us healthy?’”

Madsen and colleagues from UC San Francisco and UC Davis analyzed surveys from 9,128 people living in lower-income neighborhoods in Berkeley, Oakland, San Francisco, and Richmond. Using data from 2016 to 2019 and 2021, they studied year-to-year trends in people’s perception of sugar-sweetened beverages.

They wanted to understand how the four taxes in the Bay Area might have affected social norms surrounding sugary beverages — the unwritten and often unspoken rules that influence the food and drinks we buy, the clothes we wear and our habits at the dinner table.

Although social norms aren’t visible, they are incredibly powerful forces on our actions and behaviors; just ask anyone who has bought something after an influencer promoted it on TikTok or Instagram.

Researchers asked questions about how often people thought their neighbors drank sodas, sports drinks, and fruity beverages. Participants also rated how healthy several drinks were, which conveyed their own attitudes about the beverages.

The researchers found a 28% decline in the social acceptability of drinking sugar-sweetened beverages.

In Oakland, positive perceptions of peers’ consumption of sports drinks declined after the tax increase, relative to other cities. Similarly, in San Francisco, attitudes about the healthfulness of sugar-sweetened fruit drinks also declined.

In other words, people believed their neighbors weren’t drinking as many sugar-sweetened beverages, which affected their own interest in consuming soda, juices, and sports drinks.

“What it means when social norms change is that people say, ‘Gosh, I guess we don’t drink soda. That’s just not what we do. Not as much. Not all the time,’” Madsen said. “And that’s an amazing shift in mindsets.”

The research is the latest from UC Berkeley that examines how consumption patterns have changed in the decade since Berkeley implemented the nation’s first soda tax.

A 2016 study found a decrease in soda consumption and an increase in people turning to water. Research in 2019 documented a sharp decline in people turning to sugar-sweetened drinks. And earlier this year, Berkeley researchers documented that sugar-sweetened beverage purchases declined dramatically and steadily across five major American cities after taxes were put in place.

The penny-per-ounce tax on beverages, which is levied on distributors of sugary drinks — who ultimately pass that cost of doing business on to consumers — is an important means of communicating about health with the public, Madsen said.

Researchers tallied more than 700 media stories about the taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages during the study period. That level of messaging was likely a major force in driving public awareness and norms.

It’s also something Madsen said future public health interventions must consider. It was part of the progress made in cutting cigarette smoking and seems to be working with sugary drinks. And it’s those interventions that can lead to individual action.

“If we change our behaviors, the environment follows,” Madsen said. “While policy really matters and is incredibly important, we as individuals have to advocate for a healthier food system.”

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