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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...