Winning may not be everything, but it goes a long way toward building trust in elections — even if temporarily.
A recent report from UC San Diego’s Yankelovich Center found that confidence in the voting process rose dramatically following the 2024 election. There was one reason: Donald Trump’s election as president.
“On the eve of the election, there was a wide gap in trust between supporters of Donald Trump and those who backed Kamala Harris,” the authors of the report wrote.
“After Trump’s victory, that gap entirely disappeared. Trust among Harris supporters dipped slightly but remained at a high level, while trust among Trump supporters increased sharply to that same level.”
Confidence in the election among Democrats declined by 12 percentage points, falling from 89 percent to 77 percent, according to the study. Trust among Republicans rose by 28 percentage points, from 54 percent to 82 percent.
Overall, Americans who said they were “very” or “somewhat” confident that votes nationwide were counted as intended rose 6 percentage points after the election.
So the difference was winning?
“In a word, yes.” said UC San Diego political science professor Thad Kousser, co-chair of the Yankelovich Center for Social Science Research. “… The winning effect is really the biggest driver of trust.”
Somewhat similar conclusions were drawn in a Pew Research Center study, which compared views about this election with the 2020 vote.
Pew had 93 percent of Trump voters reporting the 2024 elections were run and administered “at least somewhat well.” Four years ago, as Trump was contesting his defeat by Joe Biden, Pew said just 21 percent of his supporters said the elections were run well.
That’s not a big surprise. There was plenty of post-election analysis that noted the ubiquitous, unfounded claims of fraud by Trump and his supporters before the 2024 election had evaporated afterward.
Further, Pew said it’s common for supporters of winning candidates to have more confidence in the outcome than supporters of the losers, “but the size of the gap in 2020 was particularly large.”
The integrity of elections had taken constant beating from Trump since before his 2016 election. Even after that victory, he made claims without evidence that millions of people voted illegally for rival Hillary Clinton — including 1 million in California. Democrats questioned the legitimacy of Trump’s 2016 win but it was never seriously challenged and that died out quickly.
Kousser noted that this time, neither the losing nor winning side cried election fraud, with some relatively obscure exceptions.
That provides a reprieve, though perhaps not long-term confidence in elections.
“Donald Trump’s election has given American democracy breathing room,” Kousser said.
The UCSD political scientist of course was aware of the irony in that statement, given Trump’s critics for years widely branded the president-elect as a threat to democracy, in part because of his efforts to undermine the election process.
Kousser said the relative post-election calm may facilitate the additional work that needs to be done to shore up public confidence, which is a main goal of the Yankelovich Center.
“This study is a little offshoot of a larger set of studies (about) working with elected officials to test and explore ways to build trust,” he said.
That ongoing research has produced periodic reports on what appears to be effective, or not, to assure the public their votes will be recorded properly.
In the latest report, demographic breakdowns revealed differences beyond political partisanship.
Ethnic divide. “Trust among white (non-Hispanic) voters, who were one of the least trusting groups before the election, rose 12 percentage points to 80% expressing confidence in the national vote count after the election. By contrast, trust fell among each of the other racial and ethnic groups.”
The trust level among Black Americans dropped 11 percentage points to 68 percent and declined among Asian Americans by 3 percentage points to 71 percent. Trust among Latino voters dipped by 2 points to 66 percent.
Gender, education. Men remained more trusting of elections than women, though the rise among men showed that the gender gap in trust increased from 5 percentage points to 9 points after the election.
People with college or higher degrees remained more confident in elections than those without them, though trust grew for each group, and the gap between them narrowed slightly.
Age, income. “Before the presidential election, there was little consistent correlation between age and trust in elections (a reversal of past patterns in which older Americans were more likely to say that they trusted the accuracy of the elections). After the election, the traditional pattern returned.”
Income differences “remained relatively stable from before to after the election.” People with higher incomes had more confidence in elections and the trust level for all income groups rose by similar amounts after it.
Among the Pew survey highlights: Trump voters were considerably more confident than in 2020 that their in-person votes cast would be counted properly, while there was a huge increase in trust regarding mail ballots — a increasingly common method of voting that Trump had assailed for years.
Harris voters expressed high confidence in both, but less so than Biden voters in 2020.
Still, one bit of data suggests a division still exists in trust in elections.
Fifty-five percent of Trump voters said they still have little to no confidence ineligible voters were kept from voting, according to Pew.
An overwhelming majority of Harris supporters were confident that those not eligible were prevented from casting ballots.
What they said
Christopher Cadelago (@ccadelago), Politico’s California bureau chief.
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Originally Published:
