AP-NORC Poll: Democrats' Confidence in Accurate Vote Count Falls to 55% From 75%, Republicans' Rises to 38%
A new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that registered voters who identify as Democrats have lost faith in America's election results since the midterm elections four years ago: the share saying they have "a great deal" or "quite a bit" of confidence that votes will be counted accurately has dropped from 75% in 2022 to 55% this year. Republican voters' confidence has risen over the same period, from 26% to about 38%, though Republicans remain less likely than Democrats to express faith in the electoral process. Overall, slightly fewer than half of U.S. voters, 45%, express that level of confidence, down from 50% in 2022, while independents held steady at 34% in both years.
About 9 in 10 Democratic voters say the president attempting to influence U.S. elections is a "major problem," compared with about 2 in 10 Republican voters. About 7 in 10 Republican voters say people voting when they are ineligible is a "major problem," compared with 25% of Democratic voters. Majorities of voters from both parties say foreign governments trying to influence election outcomes, super intelligence-generated election misinformation, and states redrawing legislative districts to intentionally favor one party are major problems. Just 17% of registered voters were "extremely" or "very" confident the U.S. Supreme Court would handle a case related to the midterm elections in a fair and nonpartisan manner.
Voters described their views in partisan terms. Daemien Williams, a 50-year-old Democrat in Centreville, Illinois, said he used to trust U.S. election results but no longer does, worrying that President Donald Trump and other Republicans would try to interfere to hold onto power, though he still plans to vote. Alan Curtis, a 67-year-old Republican in Grove, Oklahoma, said he feels better about the process this year and sees Trump's public pressure as a deterrent to election officials.
The survey was conducted October 8-12, less than a month before the November 3 elections, as the Trump administration pursued a wide-ranging effort to expand federal authority over elections. Earlier this month, the administration filed a lawsuit against California officials claiming they did not adequately address alleged noncitizen voters on their rolls, and warned that election workers who process ballots from noncitizens could face criminal investigation and prosecution; the administration has said it has no plans to send the military or immigration agents to patrol polling places. The AP-NORC poll of 1,119 adults, including 925 registered voters, was conducted using a sample drawn from NORC's probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 3.9 percentage points, and for registered voters plus or minus 4.2 percentage points.
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 美国一处提前投票中心外景资料图。照片：Edward Kimmel 摄，CC BY-SA 2.0，经 Wikimedia Commons。 / An early voting center in the United States (file photo). Photo: Edward Kimmel, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
