People outside the US, do you still consider America a democracy?

Sure, though the developments are worrying. If Donald gets a third term, I will consider USA an autocracy.

The amount of voter suppression, the broken FPTP system and mass media influence over the US electoral system, means that for all intents and purposes, the USA federal election is just picking your favourite of the two viable owning-class-endorsed candidates. "The people" never had a realistic chance of representation or empowerment. This is not a new critique, it's been discussed for at least a century and a half.
There is simply no real value in calling the USA a democracy at any point during our lifetimes, regardless of whether you are allowed to vote or even write-in candidates, regardless of the two-party system, because the power imbalance between the working class and the owning class surrounding that vote makes it as much a sham election as Russia's sham elections. But even compared to other (until recently) close allies, the US implementation of federal voting has long been an absolute circus.
- It hasn't been a democracy since it had the 'electoral college' and unequal representation. So, forever..
  But within the context of the previous status quo - I'd say it stopped being a democracy exactly when Trump was allowed to be a candidate for the presidency after the Jan 6 coup attempt, and parallel attempts to invent votes and pressure states to lie about their vote counts. Which was blatantly unconstitutional and illegal. More than enough evidence to bar him from being a candidate, and yet the senate allowed it to proceed - that was the end.

One interesting thing I haven't read here yet (haven't read all the comments though) is religion. Sure, officially there's separation of church and state, but Christianity is everywhere in your country, including government. The amount of times I've heard "God bless the United States" being said is ridiculous. To me, that's undemocratic and I would feel very uncomfortable with that as an atheist.
- Yeah, it's a cheap knock off Christianity, too. It's just there for the subjugation of people who cannot be bothered to think for themselves.
- Christianity Lol
  No my friend these people worship Mammon. They were taught to believe it was god
- Of course you would be uncomfortable with that because you're an atheist... You're an atheist. The US has freedom of religion, this freedom also applies to government officials.

No, because I'm sure it's passed the tipping point towards autocracy. There's endless different forms of both it and democracy, but it's a constant that democracy begets democracy and autocracy begets autocracy, so that's my "line in the sand".
In America's case as of now, all the checks and balances that used to work are still there, but they've been questionable for many years and aren't going to do anything going forwards, so they're functionally more like Canada's monarchy.
If you're looking for a perspective on what's normal and what's not, consider that when there's a big social problem in Canada, it's only a matter of time until a law trying to address it gets passed. That's what a functioning democracy is like. Meanwhile, there's been a known place in the US where no courts have jurisdiction to prosecute serious crimes for two decades now.

Not when they have the Electoral College bullshit upending every election in favor of a minority.
- If this is true how to democrats win elections?
  
  Well, it takes a bigger portion of voters voting blue just to reach equilibrium, which then results in a few swing states because that's the stupid system they have. The whole purpose is to dilute the blue vote so Republicans can have a coin flip chance. So whoever wins the swing states instead of the popular vote wins the election. One example is Trump vs Clinton. Technically, Clinton won the popular vote but not the electorate.
  
  Source
  So, really, it's not "why are Dems winning elections?" but "why are Reps winning them at all?"

For a long while I thought America was a democracy but that the population was rather uneducated. Their media and culture seemed to glorify ignorance and shame intellectualism.
I now consider America a fascist state, early stages. I've seen too many simulations to know that the level of organized resistance required to prevent the descent into fascism is either too morally grey or too risky to be worth it. It must get much worse before resistance is meaningful.
At best an American is a victim, at worst they are a fascist.
- Resistance to early fascism is not morally grey or too risky.
  Whether it's effective when 90% of the population is made of shallow, consumerized brainlets is another question.

Never have

To me it never really was. If you look into how they do voting here, its insane, really.
US citizens always loved to make these "we'll bomb some democracy in to you" but they never brought democracy either. I think it's fair to say that no other country started asa y dictatorships as the US has
Add to that;
Bush lost the election and became president anyway.
Trump has heen successfully lying his way through the past four years (and well, yeah the 4 years before that too) instigated an insurrection and was never held accountable
- So many people not reading the "people outside the US" part.

If a presidential candidate can lose an election and still become president, it's not a democracy.
- Why should all the densely populated urban centers be the only people with control over the federal election?

American political system can very easily produce a new authoritarian leader, the president has much more power and with Congress majority can easily turn things around. The fact it hasn't happened before is a great achievement. Looking at everything Trump administration has been doing is to concentrate power at the top and to become new dictatorship. It wont be Trump, maybe JD Vance who knows.
It depends on what the Americans will allow to happen, cause I feel that Americans are getting pissed harder each year and many large protests will happen. Is it going to be a wakeup call to become democratic and sensible again or full dictatorship only time will tell.

It is still a democracy, but that democracy is in crisis. You will know over the next 2/years if it will survive, although the next federal election will be the real test.
if the judicial and congress still share power,
if elections are still fair.
Democracies can recover if they keep their representation.
- Elections in the US aren't really all that fair TBH.
  Researchers at the Brookings Institution agree that the strategic manipulation of our electoral process is largely to blame for the erosion of US democracy in recent years. Brookings says this manipulation takes various forms: the intentional addition of administrative barriers to voting, unfairly drawing electoral maps, the subversion of the election certification and counting process, and the violent coup attempt on January 6, 2021.
  https://blog.ucs.org/liza-gordon-rogers/us-elections-arent-as-free-and-fair-as-they-should-be-heres-how-science-can-help/
  The United States is experiencing two major forms of democratic erosion in its governing institutions:
  Strategic manipulation of elections. Distinct from “voter fraud,” which is almost non-existent in the United States, election manipulation has become increasingly common and increasingly extreme. Examples include election procedures that make it harder to vote (like inadequate polling facilities) or that reduce the opposing party’s representation (like gerrymandering).
  Executive aggrandizement. Even a legitimately elected leader can undermine democracy if they eliminate governmental “checks and balances” or consolidate power in unaccountable institutions. The United States has seen substantial expansions of executive power and serious efforts to erode the independence of the civil service. In addition, there are serious questions about the impartiality of the judiciary.
  https://www.brookings.edu/articles/understanding-democratic-decline-in-the-united-states/
  
  One thing that I think they may have missed in this analysis is erosion from the inside. Our supreme Court overturned or instituted a couple major rules that have allowed corporations to funnel billions of dollars directly to politicians with citizens united decision, then helped erode administrative functions of government by overturning Chevron deference. When you combine that shit with the way we allow corporate lobbying in the US, we're not even close to "democracy" in this shit hole. It's a corporate oligarchy masquerading as a republic/democracy. Corporations own this country, the government protects them, that bullshit you hear about the "land of the free" is about corporations not individuals.

Speaking on the federal level (have less of a view on the local and state level). It was a very flawed democracy, and it's descending a less and less functioning system as we speak, moving towards some form of fascism/techno feudalism.

I never considered it a democracy. It's one-party system with two parties, what can be democratic about it? Smoke and mirrors.

People seem to think freedom and democracy are synonymous. Places can be free, but not have democracy; places can also have democracy and not be free. When a simple majority of the voting public supports cracking down on freedoms - you will have one of the two, but you can't have both.

Nope, it's an oligarchy pretending it's a democracy.

I barely considered it a democracy as a two party system as the elites controlled it all, but now it's just even more messed up. They need to hold people accountable and not elect criminals to office.
I fear for the future of America as a country.

Is anywhere really?

@Clinicallydepressedpoochie no

When was the US the last time a democracy?
You can vote democrats or republicans, which mostly get bankrolled by the same rich assholes. As a normal citizen of the US you have almost no influence at politics at all, because the media is controlled by rich people, the biggest internet platforms are controlled by rich people, elections are paid for by rich people, ...
The current situation is not a spontaneous, miraculous, magical result of Trump and his gang, it was years in the making by lobby groups, influential/rich/powerful people and neo liberal brainwashing of the masses.
Same holds true for most other western so called democracies.

Absolutely not. When laws don't apply to the president, the jig is up. Trump clearly plans to be in power forever. Either there won't be elections or they'll be rigged.
- all those images of venezualen immigrants .... being handled like the absolute worst possible being.. its crazy

For me, the US is still a democracy with elements of an authoritarian regime. Yes, I believe this can happen in any country, including mine, if the elected party or a wealthy figure decides to amend such authoritarian, manipulative, and exploitative policies.

I'm inside the US, and the federal government is most certainly no longer a democracy. It still has all the trappings, but corruption will ensure that the will of the people is secondary to whatever those in power want - even more than has been the case in the past. Locally, democracy is still practiced, in places like blue states.

Not since I saw this graph:
From this paper:
https://archive.org/details/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc/page/n7/mode/1up
This was published in 2014, back when Obama was in office.
The institutions are completely captured. Yes, even the ones you thought were on your side all this time.
- I am a bit too dumb to understand that graph and asked ai for an explanation. It helped me, maybe it also helps others:
  This graph comes from a study by Gilens and Page that examines how different groups influence U.S. policy decisions. It has three separate charts, each showing how policy adoption (whether a policy is enacted) relates to the preferences of different groups:
  1 Average Citizens’ Preferences (top chart)
  2 Economic Elites’ Preferences (middle chart)
  3 Interest Group Alignments (bottom chart)
  Breaking It Down:
  • X-axis:
  • In the first two graphs, it represents how much each group supports a policy (from 0% to 100%).
  • In the third graph (Interest Groups), the x-axis shows alignment, with negative values meaning opposition and positive values meaning support.
  • Y-axis:
  • The left y-axis (dark line) shows the predicted probability of a policy being adopted.
  • The right y-axis (gray bars) shows how often different levels of support occur in the data (percentage of cases).
  Key Takeaways & Surprises:
  1 The top chart (Average Citizens) is nearly a flat line.
  • This means that whether the general public strongly supports or opposes a policy has little impact on whether it gets adopted.
  2 The middle chart (Economic Elites) has a rising curve.
  • This suggests that policies supported by the wealthy have a much higher chance of being adopted.
  3 The bottom chart (Interest Groups) also shows a strong upward trend.
  • The more interest groups align in favor of a policy, the more likely it is to be adopted.
  Big Picture:
  This graph suggests that the opinions of average citizens have little to no effect on policy decisions, while economic elites and interest groups have significant influence. This challenges the idea that the U.S. operates as a true democracy where the will of the majority decides policy.
- Average citizens banding together into interest groups is a pretty common way to get things passed, and this chart agrees.
  
  That is not what the paper means by "interest groups".

- I grew up in the US and have lived outside it for 10 years now. I would agree with this. Voting and representation have never been total and is definitely less available for many groups. Further things are being stripped away.
- Yeah. My wake-up call was quite early in life, when SCOTUS handed the election to GWB. If I was born a generation earlier I'd have called it with Watergate. If I was an ancestor currently dead, I would have called it around the time an assassin put the presidency in the hands of the opposite party, and a drunk asshole subsequently decided reconstruction efforts should fail. Or possibly just prior, when we somehow decided not to hang every man Jack of the confederacy for treason.
  Edit: an earlier still version of me would have overseen the death of a culture brought on by poxy mad white religious extremists, and laughed ruefully to hear that centuries later the utter bastardy continues unchanged.
- also the media influence on elections is out of control
- exactly, two party system completely pulls the pants down for top1% lobbyism to be rampantly in control
- This

still consider
It has only two political parties, and a weird system where all votes are not equal and the actual vote majority doesn't always win.
It has frequently had multiple people from the same families running for office, and only wealthy people have a shot. Corporations get to lobby for laws in their favour.
It also spies on its own citizens, holds people indefinitely without trial, has a huge prison population, a militarized police with a high homicide rate, and is the only western nation with the death penalty.
Trump and Musk are laying bare how fragile the veneer of "democracy" really is in that country.
- To be honest, not even from the start was it a true democracy, the Electoral College is a layer on top of democracy to give different weight to each vote.

See, as a German, when I see a country go down the same route as the Weimar Republic after handing over the power to the Nazi party, I think it's just very obvious. Hitler took some two months to completely destroy democracy, and the US are juuust in the middle of that. History doesn't repeat, but sometimes it rhymes, and the similarities are just remarkable.
So yeah, I guess that would be a big fat trench in the sand.
- As a German also I agree with this statement. Ostensibly it is a democracy but in reality it's not. And yes, there is a lot of rhyming going on

No.

Democracy is an umbrella term. These are the types of democracy the US is:
Representative Democracy
Constitutional Democracy
Presidential Democracy
Liberal Democracy
Types of Democracy the US is not:
Direct Democracy
Parliamentary Democracy
Illiberal Democracy
Participatory Democracy
Social Democracy
So yes, it's a democracy.
- You are confusing a lot of pol science terms, as well as using some which aren't part of pol science at all.
  All modern democracies are representative democracies, as in voters votes for representatives to represent them. Switzerland has elements of direct democracy, but on a foundation of representative democracy as well. Constitutional, presidential and liberal democracy are not an actual meaningful terms in political science.
  Technically the US is a representative democracy, but I am pretty sure OPs is asking about the practice of the thing. And the practice is very different from the written word about how it was supposed to be, especially this recent presidential term.

Canadian here.
Before Trump? Ehhh, not really. I've always viewed the US as a place where you vote for which oligarch-backed monarch you'd want to put in absolute power for 4 years. Every 4/8 years the new incoming overlord just rips up whatever the previous one did and nothing of substance is actually achieved.
After Trump 2.0? No. There isn't a snowball's chance in hell that Trump is going to surrender all that power he and the GOP have accumulated. And why would he? He doesn't have to. He literally controls every branch of government that he can and ignores those that he doesn't. If the US ever has another election it will purely be for show, like China's elections. The mask is now fully off and the charade of US democracy is over as those who actually wield the power now do so openly on their sleeves.
- China's democracy is among party members.
  
  Oh I love parties! I'll bring the glowsticks!

Nope Trump proved yet again the US is a Russian puppet today earlier in the week Ukraine destroyed a huge Russian Oil plant. Now a few days later Trump is giving them a Ceasefire against energy targets which Putin supposedly broke just a mere 3 hours later.
If anything this proves two things Ukraine really hurt them with that attack and Trump is again proving he's Putins lapdog and acting outright against Ukraine and Europe.
Actually saw some combat footage of that Ukraine attack and it looked almost like a nuke, from what I remember it's a 1000km ranged missile called Neptune.

Not for quite some time now. Not since I learned about the electoral college.

No and it hasn't been for a long time. As long as you can buy influence via lobbying then the playing field is not level.
The difference this time is they are not trying to hide it anymore

In some aspects, but no more than china. (spaniard here)

lol

A struggling democracy, in the beginning of an Orban/Hungary-like overtake of the country.
Its possible to revert, but you seem to have atleast a 1/3 of the country that would walk down a straight up facist line willingly and happily do so.
You need to fix your shit america.

The US had always been a questionable democracy with the hyperfixation on the president and just two parties setting the agenda, but I'd argue that it's still a democracy, though it is a rapidly deteriorating one.

Line in the sand? Going after political opponents. Censoring information. Dismantling media. Abandoning rule of law. Business and government mixing too much.
USA is speed running these.

Am Dutch. I have considered the US an incomplete democracy since I learned about voting in school. It’s not one person one vote, which to me is crucial for a democracy. The US right now is still a nation of laws, but democracy is sharply in decline. The voter-roll issues and Gerrymandering come to mind immediately. Not to mention the fact that guaranteed access to polls has been pulled by the courts. Which is insane to me.
- Also president having so much power was clearly never democratic to begin with as we can see it all play out now.
  
  The power of the president did not start out like this. Congress kept giving their power to the executive for political reasons.
  It happened over centuries.
- $ is votes, who could have seen where that would go.

Absolutely not. A two party system was barely nominally a form of democracy. Current government walks like a dictatorship and quacks like a dictatorship. They might hold a fake election one day like many of those do, but still no.
- Firstly, the USA is obviously not a "dictatorship". Come on, be serious. Words mean things.
  Second, America's two-party system also has internal factions and primaries, many of them completely open (you don't even need to declare allegiance to the party). The primaries are effectively the first round in a two-round electoral system (of which there are plenty in the world). The whole point is to create a binary choice in the final round. For some reason this always gets missed by otherwise informed observers. "There are only two parties" is just not a valid argument in this debate.
  Of course, none of these facts will be popular here, since the real point of this thread is to allow participants to performatively dump on the shared hate-object. Classic social media, I get it.
  
  Firstly, the USA is obviously not a "dictatorship".
  You sure about that? Have you read the news lately?
  
  Its not about popular. You are simply wrong.
  
  The primaries that are not required to be democratic and can simply be rigged by the party?
  I wouldn't call America a dictatorship yet, but I would claim that it is heading there at a rapid pace. Trump and Republicans actions such as disregarding the Constitution, removing rights, beginning mass deportations including legals, bringing in a billionaire to shred the government, and ignoring court orders is not a good look for a democratic government.
  
  In practice, however, it is a two-party system.
  
  While I don't consider the system of governance there very good, I'll have to agree. While I do absolutely worry for the American democracy, it isn't a dictatorship in its current form. I also agree that the primaries do make the system better and more democratic. I still think that the two part system is abysmal, but the primaries do make the claim to democracy stronger.

I still believe there are democracies in America but the US of A aren't one of them.

Anyone who is eligible to vote, and chooses not to, implicitly throws their support behind whoever wins.
On 2024-11-05, ⅔ of US citizens who were eligible to vote told the rest of the world they don’t want to be taken seriously for at least 2 years.

I consider it an autocratic regime with strong fascist characteristics.
- I consider America to be a plutocracy, which successfully propagandized the majority with the illusion of democracy, now transitioning into a Christian fascist kleptocracy... Basically a mafia state / corporate dictatorship using religion to control the masses (as is tradition).
  If you think it's not very Christian, that's because most Christians consider Jesus's teachings to be evil communism.

On paper, I guess so? In reality, and as is the case with pretty much every developed democracy, money and technology make a mockery of the whole idea. A society in which billionaires can buy their way into the Whitehouse - literally - is no democracy.
- on paper.. .checks paper Democratic People's Republic of Korea... checks out

I guess, I'd say it's a democracy-in-progress currently. I mean, all democracies always are, but the US perhaps a bit more. Seeing the protests is a very good sign, though.

Noper....

I consider it a faux democracy. It still has the semblance of one, with people voting, believing they matter and that they have actual free speech, but the masses are being, increasingly less subtly, controlled by media corporations and rendered incapable of critical, independent thinking by an ever decreasing quality of education.
Don't be fooled though! This isn't happening in the US alone. It is widespread all over the globe. The US is simply doing it in a smarter, more cunning way, while leading the wealthy 1% in other countries by example.

First off, I'm an American. Born a stone's throw from the location of one of the critical events in the history of the American revolution.
To answer the question, no. Leaving aside the whole Republic versus democracy argument, my point of realization was when one party seized upon a minor technical issue and disenfranchised countless voters via lawsuit, sufficient to allow the race to be called in their favor.
I'm sure there are many readers who believe I'm talking about 2016. For those readers, your keyword search is "hanging Chad".
- Another key search from the same events is "Brooks Brothers Riot".
  
  Wow, this happens before I was born, had no idea this shit happened before.

Nope. I see it as an autocracy run by an elite oligarchy.

It was never a democracy.

Not at all, you are just an autocracy now but don't fully realise it, and as the other commentator had said, not even really a good democracy in the loosest of terms before this entire mess going on ATM!

Absolutely not. A country where two parties are the only two viable electoral options, is absolutely not a democracy. Doesn’t mean I’ll stop my membership for the PSL.
- What does PSL stand for?
  
  Party for Socialism and Liberation.
  
  Plus Sized Lobsters
  
  Pink Sexy Lizards
  
  Pumpkin Spice Latte
  
  Pacific South Lest
  
  .ml dipshits who spam "nato aggression" memes

How can you be a democracy if you have only two political parties?
- With one not giving a fuck, and the other severely fractured due to conflicting ideals none the less

No but this isn't recent. My line in the sand was Russian interference in the 2016 US election that came to light in 2018.
*United States Democracy Index

The answer depends of the reference point. I was born in Russia (I'm living abroad from 2022) and compared to the putin's dictatorship US is a democracy. You guys still have a freedom of speech, not fake opposition to Trump and independent courts. From the other side, most of the countries are democracies if compared to Russia..