Public Opinion On An Accurate Vote Count

There are more than 10,000 election jurisdictions in America. For most people, that means their local county, but in New England and parts of the upper Midwest, often very small cities, towns, and townships run elections. Twenty years of polling show that the vast majority of Americans believe their own votes have been counted accurately in their jurisdiction in both presidential and off-year contests. As Donald Trump and others try to raise doubts about the 2022 vote count, most people in most places say their votes will be counted accurately once again. This column looks at the polling evidence, while my next Forbes column explores how easy people say it is to vote.

Confidence in the vote count first entered political discourse after the 2000 presidential election and the Bush v. Gore fallout. That year, in a December post-election Los Angeles Times poll, 50% of adults said they had a lot of confidence and 19% some confidence that their votes were counted.

Between 2004 and 2016, the Pew Research Center asked self-identified voters after each presidential and midterm election whether they believed their own vote was counted accurately. In each survey, around nine in ten voters said they were very or somewhat confident. Perhaps more impressive, in each of the seven elections, between 64% and 73% were very confident of the vote count.

Despite significant public concerns about Russian or Chinese interference and disinformation in 2018, people again voiced strong confidence in pre- and post-election poll questions on the vote count. Two-thirds of registered voters in a September 2018 NPR/Marist poll said they had confidence that the election would be counted accurately. Republicans expressed more confidence in 2018 (81%) than Democrats (60%). In another 2018 pre-election poll, Pew asked adults whether votes in their community would be counted as intended. Eighty-six percent of Republicans and 81% of Democrats were very or somewhat confident. Seventy-two percent nationally had the same level of confidence that votes in the US would be counted as intended. Other questions in the poll showed that large majorities felt elections in their community and in the US would be run and administrated very or somewhat well.

Going into the 2020 presidential election, according to a Washington Post/University of Maryland poll from August 2020, 82% of adults were very or somewhat confident votes in their state would be counted accurately. Pew asked its main question again after the 2020 election, and 85% said their vote was counted accurately. High confidence, however, dropped to 59%.

So what about 2022? When an NBC News poll asked registered voters in October about their expectations for their own vote, 77% said it would be counted accurately, while 19% didn’t think so. In an October Pew poll, 84% of registered voters were very or somewhat confident in-person votes would be counted as intended across the country. There was more skepticism about mail or absentee votes: 62% said they would be counted as intended. Two new 2022 questions had a different but relevant emphasis. In an October online Economic/YouGov poll, 62% of adults said poll workers in their community were very or somewhat trustworthy. Only 9% described them as untrustworthy. Republicans in states Trump won were more likely to say they were trustworthy than Republicans in states Biden won, but large majorities in both indicated they trusted them (76% and 64%, respectively). Only 5% of Republicans in Biden states believed poll workers were very untrustworthy and 8% said they were somewhat so. A January Quinnipiac poll found that 66% of adults said they were either very or somewhat confident that their state officials would protect the right to vote, while a third said they were not.

MIT’s Election Data + Science Lab researchers evaluated polling evidence in an April 2021 report and found confidence in an accurate vote count was greater after elections than before them. They also found people were more confident about their own vote than votes cast nationwide. Whether a party wins or loses also affects confidence. MIT’s conclusion: despite increased polarization, average overall voter confidence has not changed much.

This year, both Democrats and Republicans are preparing for recounts, contested elections, and litigation, some of which has already begun. No doubt a handful of candidates will refuse to accept the results. However, given the number of elections this fall, these isolated challenges are unlikely to have a significant impact on public opinion. It appears at this point that the vast majority of Americans think their votes will be counted accurately in elections across the country.