Do political protests matter?

As the protests over unprecedented violence by the Trump Administration’s immigration enforcement surge in Minneapolis, it’s timely to ask whether political protests matter in changing policy.

In a recent op-ed in The Boston Globe, MIT student Siddhu Pachipala noted that “Protest has become the reflexive form of political participation on college campuses in recent years.” I’d edit that to remove “in recent years.” However, looking back at such protests as Occupy Wall Street, March for Our Lives, Black Lives Matter, the wave of campus protests over Gaza, Pachipala concludes that despite their scale, “often in the millions, [they] did not reliably cash out politically.”

On Boston Common this past Saturday, the Globe reported that hundreds gathered “to denounce the Trump administration’s deportation tactics around the country and to urge leaders on Beacon Hill to step up pressure against federal immigration actions in the state.” Carter Chamberlain said he regularly protests outside the regional ICE facility. “We need our representatives to wield the power they’ve been constitutionally given — to use their power to do random inspections of the facility and make sure everyone’s rights are being followed,” he said.”

As the current protests over unprecedented violence fostered by the Trump Administration’s immigration enforcement surge in Minneapolis, Portland, and across the U.S., it’s timely to ask whether political protests matter in changing policy.¹ If I were restricted to a binary “Yes or “No, I’d have to choose “Yes.” Nonetheless, as you might expect, that’s a simple question with a nuanced answer.

Ambiguous research results

Research suggests that political protests may have measurable effects on government policy, public opinion, and legislation—though their impact varies significantly based on size, tactics, and context. Thus, their impact depends on whether elected officals and other policy-makers have concerns about legitimacy, public opinion, and electoral consequences. The “shame” factor likely explains why Donald Trump seems to be impervious to protests. More on this later.

You may recall the Tea Party movement, which rose to prominence through coordinated rallies across the country on Tax Day, April 15, 2009. Research on the movement found that the number of protesters at that event had significant consequences for the subsequent local strength of the movement. It increased public support for Tea Party positions, and led to more Republican votes in the 2010 midterm elections. Policymaking was also affected, as incumbents responded to large protests in their district by voting more conservatively in Congress.

Additional academic research suggests that “nonviolent protests are most effective at mobilizing sympathetic audiences, while more disruptive protests may be effective at motivating policy concessions from resistant audiences.” Four key factors help movements succeed: size, diversity of participants, discipline in sticking to their message, and the ability to shift the loyalties of people in different pillars of support.

I examined several major protest movements in greater depth.

Vietnam War

Scholars still debate whether the anti-Vietnam War protests were effective.

Research shows protests took root in 1965 and continued through 1972. The movement’s persistence changed the discourse on the war, restrained escalation, and accelerated troop withdrawals relative to President Nixon’s goals for the Paris Peace Accords. Memoirs by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger show considerable preoccupation with the opposition movement, suggesting protests may have accelerated troop withdrawals and caused Nixon to pull back from Cambodia earlier than planned. Pressures from protests forced the Johnson Administration to begin peace talks with North Vietnam and suspend bombing, and, by some accounts, the movement ultimately forced the U.S. to sign a peace treaty, withdraw forces, and end the draft in 1973.

However, other evidence suggests the protests may have had negative results. One large study analyzing 15 major anti-Vietnam demonstrations from 1965-1971 found weak, short-term, counterproductive effects on public opinion, concluding that demonstrations had little or no lasting impact. Another perspective from the time shows the obscenity, illegality, and anti-patriotism of anti-war protesters made them the most hated group in America during the late 1960s and early 1970s, creating a “negative follower group” effect where others became friends of the protesters’ enemy.

In the end, multiple factors contributed to pressure to end the war, including North Vietnam’s fierce resistance and the massive financial drain the war had become by the early 1970s. Thus, the protests mattered, but not necessarily in the ways protesters intended, and other factors may have mattered more.

Occupy Wall Street

This movement had mixed results on direct policy but a significant cultural impact. The movement helped reintroduce income inequality into political discourse and inspired subsequent campaigns, such as Fight for $15 and efforts to address student debt. Experts credit Occupy with laying the groundwork for the progressive wing of the modern Democratic Party. Bernie Sanders suddenly found a much larger audience ready to listen to his message. However, the movement had no discernible direct impact on banking regulation, and its refusal to make concrete demands and engage institutionally limited its effectiveness.

Black Lives Matter

Black Lives Matter (BLM) was an organization created in 2013 in response to the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the fatal shooting of African-American teen Trayvon Martin. With the goal of highlighting concerns with police brutality and racially motivated violence against Black people, it has produced significant policy changes, though with limitations. Between 2014 and 2020, at least 40 states enacted policies designed to limit police contact, increase transparency, and punish officers deemed to have abused power.

Reforms included bans on chokeholds and no-knock warrants, body-camera requirements, and improvements in police data collection.

Black Lives Matter shifted public opinion. For example, a 2017 Pew study found that 54% of white people viewed officer-involved shootings involving Black people to be signs of a broader problem. The fact that over 50% of white people think that policing has racial issues is a huge achievement. This attitudinal shift created a policy window for local, state, and federal changes to policing and the criminal justice system.

However, a 2024 study found no meaningful change in national rates of nonfatal injuries from police violence between 2004 and 2021, suggesting many reforms were too narrow or underfunded to make a substantial impact.

Campus Gaza protests

The anti-Israel protest in support of the Hamas war in Gaza achieved limited but tangible results at some institutions. Several universities reached agreements with protesters: the University of California, Riverside, agreed to publish investment details and to discontinue programs in Israel; Rutgers agreed to accept 10 displaced Palestinian students on scholarship and to develop an Arab Cultural Center; and Northwestern and Brown entered negotiations that led to some concessions, according to Al Jazeera. However, the protests and encampments prompted many universities to tighten campus protest regulations, and student protests became less frequent after the implementation of these policies.

No Kings rallies

The No Kings rallies last year were responses to the Trump administration's policies and actions, which were perceived as authoritarian. They are too recent to estimate long-term policy impacts. The October 2025 protests drew an estimated 7 million participants across 2,700 locations, making them potentially among the largest single-day protests in U.S. history. Similar to the Women’s March in 2017, there was no specific “ask” associated with the protest.

National vs. local effects

There’s compelling evidence that protests are often more effective at the local/congressional district level than nationally due to several key mechanisms.

Researchers analyzing congressional elections from 1960 to 1990 found that a wave of liberal protests in a congressional district increased Democratic vote share by 2% and reduced Republican vote share by 6%, whereas conservative protests had the opposite effect—these margins can swing close elections. The same research found that more protest activity dramatically increases the likelihood of quality challengers entering races, with the odds jumping from 20% to 50% as protest intensity increased.

The Tea Party example mentioned earlier demonstrated this clearly: Research found that elected officials are much more likely to hold positions closer to protesters if protests in their district are larger, and they’re more likely to take action like proposing bills or asking questions.

It’s not hard to hypothesize why representatives are uniquely responsive to district-level pressure for several reasons:

Electoral vulnerability: Members of Congress must take public opinion in their district into account or risk being voted out. House members face elections every two years, creating constant accountability pressure. Local protests signal both the intensity of constituent sentiment and the potential vulnerability of incumbents to prospective challengers. That said, gerrymandering into lopsided red or blue districts may undercut any sense of vulnerability on the part of incumbents.

Direct constituent relationships: Congressional offices track daily phone calls by issue and tally calls for and against various bills, but they only tally calls from their own constituents, requiring callers to provide zip codes. This localized accountability creates direct pressure that national movements can’t replicate.

The anti-Trump resistance that emerged in 2017 provides a case study in district-level effectiveness. Nearly 6,000 groups from the Indivisible movement formed, averaging 13 local groups per congressional district, with at least 2 in every district. Their sustained local action has been credited with being critical in defeating the Republican-controlled Congress's attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

Trump and protests in Minneapolis

In “Protest as a Political Resource,” an influential article from 1968, Michael Lipsky compared effective and ineffective movements.

He argued that successful movements have clear strategic goals, use protest to broaden coalitions, seek to enlist more powerful individuals in their cause, and connect expressions of discontent to broader political and electoral mobilization. Lipsky cited the civil rights movement as a classic example of political activism that met all of those conditions and achieved landmark political and policy successes.

In the context of the current Minneapolis protest, I asked the often reliable Claude:

“What is the likelihood that the current protests against ICE in Minneapolis and other cities might actually get President Trump to ease off his aggressive raids and violence in searching for undocumented immigrants?”

Claude was not reassuring²:

Based on the research we’ve reviewed and what’s currently happening, I need to give you a sobering assessment: the likelihood of these protests causing Trump to ease off in the short term is very low. In fact, the evidence suggests the opposite is happening.

Although last week Trump removed Gregory Bovino of the CBP as the lead in Minneapolis and sent the so-called “border czar,” Tom Homan, as his replacement, Trump’s response to these protests has been escalation as well. He’s continued to blame the Democrats rather than reconsidering his approach. Earlier, he had threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act if state officials didn’t “stop the professional agitators and insurrectionists from attacking the Patriots of I.C.E.”

The protest effectiveness research I’ve reviewed shows protests work best when:

1. They target electorally vulnerable officials: Research on the Tea Party showed that protests affected representatives who responded to constituent pressure because they needed votes. However, Trump isn’t facing re-election (unless he’s still toying with 2028), removing electoral pressure.

2. Public opinion shifts create political costs: Polling shows Trump’s approval on immigration has dropped substantially. Well over half now support ending mass ICE raids. Trump has repeatedly claimed that the polls are dishonest.

3. There are institutional pathways to change: Congressional representatives may respond to district-level pressure because they’re in constant electoral cycles. As a term-limted President (we expect), Trump has more insulation.

We all have burned into our cerebral cortex Trump’s prescient assertion at a campaign stop in early 2016: “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK? It’s, like, incredible.” This has been his superpower: his apparent imperviousness to erosion of his base support, which means that only a small fraction of other voters is required for him to remain dominant over the Republican Congress.

What Could Actually Work

Applied to the militarization of ICE and its aggressive surge into Minneapolis, Portland, and other cities, research suggests the most effective approaches would be:

Target Congress, not just Trump: Congress allocated $170 billion for immigration enforcement in July 2025 and is currently negotiating the next DHS budget. Focused, sustained constituent pressure in swing districts can move narrow majorities—Congress has real constitutional power if it chooses to use it

Continued legal challenges combined with protests: Minneapolis and St. Paul have filed lawsuits seeking a Temporary Restraining Order to stop the federal government’s unlawful activity. Courts have historically been more responsive than executive branch officials to constitutional challenges.

Sustained local organizing for 2026 midterms: Following research that shows protests increase quality challenger recruitment and voter turnout, with effects lasting into subsequent elections, the path to restraining Trump may run through flipping Congress in 2026. That assumes Trump doesn’t interfere in the elections.

The protests matter, but changing Trump’s mind isn’t how they’ll matter most. Their impact will likely come through congressional pressure, legal victories, electoral consequences in 2026 and 2028, and long-term shifts in what’s politically sustainable.

Bottom Line

As noted at the outset, if I were restricted to a binary “Yes or “No, I’d have to choose “Yes.” It’s just a slim edge over a “No” conclusion. That is because protests can matter, but their effectiveness depends on sustained organizing beyond the initial demonstration, having clear objectives, coalition-building, and translation into electoral and legislative action. Successful movements often take months or years to achieve policy victories. Successful protests require considerable time, patience, and perseverance, and must extend beyond mass demonstrations to include candidate recruitment, fundraising, and voter mobilization.

The current protests may not move Trump, but they be sufficient to make an impact in other pockets that matter.

1. The videos of ICE, Customs and Border Patrol troops have certainly had their impact on public opinion, though their effect on policy is still undetermined. But I separate out videos such as these from the broader protests, as the former can exist without the latter.

2. Anthropic’s Claude added, “And honestly, the current Minneapolis situation is heartbreaking. It felt important to be direct about what the evidence actually suggests rather than offering false hope. Protests do matter—just not always in the ways or timeframes we might want.”