New research by Professor Erica Chenoweth’s Nonviolent Action Lab—published right before the October 18 No Kings protests across the country—shows that the 2025 protests against the Trump administration’s policies have not only been notably large and persistent, but they are more geographically diverse than past protests, reaching into counties that voted for Trump. Chenoweth is the Frank Stanton Professor of the First Amendment and cofounder of the Crowd Counting Consortium, which has been measuring protest size since the first Trump administration.
We asked Chenoweth about this work and the significance of the latest findings.
Q: What is the background on your work measuring the size of protests?
The Crowd Counting Consortium is a research collaboration with Jeremy Pressman of the University of Connecticut. He and I launched it in 2017 on the day of the Women’s March. Since then, our wonderful team of researchers has been collecting data every single day. As a result of this longitudinal study, we have some ability to do comparisons between different phases of mobilization.
Q: This new study is about the geographic spread of these protests. Can you talk about your findings?
One of the big questions that people often have about the patterns of protests in the United States is whether they are largely concentrated in what you might think of as more liberal areas—the areas in which voters were overwhelmingly supportive of Kamala Harris in the 2024 election—or whether they are occurring in areas that are swing districts, places where it was a marginal victory for one candidate or the other.
There are strategic questions about whether movements largely comprise people who are expressing views that are shared by those around them, or whether they’re expressing views around people who may not yet be persuaded. That gets to the heart of whether the movement is in a position to appeal to new and different constituencies, or whether it’s largely reinforcing widely shared beliefs. Over the past eight months of data collection, we had noticed many protests happening in deep red areas. In some cases, organizers claim that it was the first protest that had ever happened in their town. And yet we didn’t have a handle on whether that was a statistically significant phenomenon, or we were just finding anecdotal cases.
As it turns out, we have seen over the last nine months a striking increase in the number of protests in the United States at levels that are comparable to what happened in the summer of 2020 which, at the time, was the largest and broadest mass mobilization in U.S. history.
What makes the current period comparable to 2020 is, first of all, the number of counties in which we’ve observed at least one protest since Trump was inaugurated for the second time. In June 2025, primarily because of the No Kings protests, we saw about 38% of U.S. counties featuring at least one protest that month.
But what differentiates the summer of 2025 from the summer of 2020 is that over the preceding months, and in the months after, we’ve similarly seen extremely high proportions of protest counties in the United States. It wasn't just a one-month deal.
We have also overwhelmingly observed that the protests so far in 2025 have been peaceful. Some of the indicators that we use to determine whether protests are violent or not is looking at the injuries that occur in relation to the protest, either to other protesters or police. We also look at whether there was observed property damage and whether there were any arrests. What we’re overwhelmingly observing is an extremely low number of injuries, property damage or arrests, particularly if you consider that tens of thousands of protests have taken place in the country since Donald Trump was inaugurated the second time.
And we do think we’re seeing a shift in the willingness of people in pro-Trump areas in the country to participate in a broader mass movement emerging in opposition to many of his administration’s policies.
“We do think we’re seeing a shift in the willingness of people in pro-Trump areas in the country to participate in a broader mass movement emerging in opposition to many of his administration’s policies.”
Q: To what extent do you think these changes are happening because of underlying demographic changes in those regions versus changing attitudes?
We can’t yet say whether it’s because of changing demographics in those counties or changing partisan affiliations or feelings of alienation. We can’t really explain why this is happening yet. We can just demonstrate that it’s happening in a descriptive sense. That sets us up for a broader analysis to understand the underlying reasons for this new trend.
Q: Why is it significant that these protests are happening across a wider range of places in the country?
It can be useful to think about why protests and movements change politics in the first place. Sometimes protests are effective in motivating people to turn out for elections or in encouraging a more diverse range of people to run for office or in galvanizing enthusiasm within one’s base.
A lot of times movements work because they elicit defections within the pillars that uphold their opponent’s key capacities. Those pillars reside in people’s communities: business leaders, faith leaders, labor leaders, civic leaders, etc. There’s plenty of evidence that suggests that when these pillars begin to reevaluate their own commitments, they sometimes shift and accommodate what their constituents are demanding.
Protests are a way of expressing and participating in shaping the political conversation between elections. We know from lots of research that when people protest, local leaders are much more likely to be responsive to their demands. And that results in changes in policy. It can result in something getting on the agenda that otherwise wouldn’t. It can result in new legislation. It can result in power shifts and changing coalitions.
Q. Can you say more about the rates of participation within Trump counties and how they differ with the Harris counties?
In counties that voted for Trump, and especially ones that voted overwhelmingly for Trump, we see smaller absolute numbers of participants in protests. So, during, the whole of Trump’s first term, the average protest participation was something like 40 people per 10,000 in a county. In the second term, we’re seeing a higher number. We’re up to 65 people per 10,000 in each county as the average protest figure over the whole of the second term so far. That’s a sizable increase in nationwide protest participation.
In the areas in which Trump won, which do tend to be more rural and tend to have lower overall population density, we’re seeing smaller numbers compared to the national average, but those numbers are growing over time. Whereas we saw 2 people per 10,000 in the whole of Trump’s first term in places that ultimately went strongly for Trump, we’re seeing now 7 per 10,000, which is a significant increase.
Q: What questions do you want to analyze over the next few years as more data comes in?
The big questions that naturally arise are, What impacts are these protests going to have on things like special election results and midterm elections? What results might they have on changing public opinion about different policy issues or overall approval ratings? What impact might these protests have on the types of conversations that are had in the country?
There are also many questions about what can explain the broadening and deepening of protests in the United States. How is it that the country has experienced such a growth in protest over the past number of months and been able to maintain, a basically peaceful movement, even as rhetoric claims otherwise?
Many people often wonder who’s showing up at these protests and whether the demographics matter. There’s plenty of research about the importance of, say, women’s participation, whether protests are representative of the multiracial and multiethnic society that they claim to represent, and how that might both produce opportunities for defection or shape the narrative and the public conversation in ways that the movement would like.
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Photography by Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images.