Vanderbilt Unity Index

The Vanderbilt Project on Unity & American Democracy’s VUI measures the level and amount of change in Americans’ faith and trust in democracy.   In the first quarter of 2023, the Vanderbilt Unity Index increased almost half a percentage point, driven by a decrease in the number of… Read More

The Vanderbilt Project on Unity & American Democracy’s latest Vanderbilt Unity Index, a quarterly measurement of Americans’ general faith and trust in democracy, remained largely stable for a third consecutive quarter, even through the heated rhetoric surrounding the 2022 midterm elections. Today, the Unity Project released the 2022 fourth-quarter Vanderbilt… Read More

The Vanderbilt Project on Unity & American Democracy’s newly released data from the Vanderbilt Unity Index, which measures Americans’ general faith and trust in democracy, shows little change from the second to the third quarter of 2022.   For the second quarter in a row, the Vanderbilt… Read More

Read Dean John Geer and Mary Catherine Sullivan’s recent piece in the Washington Post about the Vanderbilt Unity Index. The new measure of national unity examines shifts over decades, and tells a better story than you might think. Read More

A new index designed by researchers at Vanderbilt University shows a steady erosion of trust in American political institutions over the past 40 years, with it hitting its lowest point in 2017 after racial unrest in Charlottesville, Virginia.  Launched by the Vanderbilt Project on Unity and American Democracy, the… Read More