William & Mary Research Project

Democratic erosion, recorded state by state.

DEED is an event-level record of democratic erosion across all 50 U.S. states, 2008–2024. When something happens in your state, this is where you find what it was, what came before it, and everything we have published about it.

Explore the data About the project

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States: 0
Years covered: 0
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Events in this demo

Start with a state

Something happened where you are. What led to it?

Every state has its own page — its events year by year, the themes most present in it, and links to every report, brief, and resource guide that touches it.

Or browse all 50 state pages.

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Three ways in

Explore the data

Dashboards, the national map, and the download — filter by year, state, and theme.

Open the dashboard

Read the methodology

How an event is defined, sourced, coded, and checked — with the codebook in full.

See how it works

Find your state

A page per state: its events over time, the themes most present, and every report touching it.

Browse all 50

The problem

Erosion is measured nationally. It happens locally.

Most measures of democratic backsliding score a whole country at a time, which leaves the level where most American governing actually happens — the state — invisible. DEED works the other way round: one coded event at a time, in one state at a time, so patterns can be compared across 50 of them and traced over 17 years.