Week 4: A Declining Faith In Elections

Conspiracy theories are becoming ever more prominent in American politics. A study that appeared in Fairleigh Dickinson University’s PublicMind poll, a think tank member of the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) Transparency Initiative, found that a majority of voters believed in at least one election conspiracy, often including one side or the other committing voter fraud. This proclivity has only worsened since then. The Survey Center for American Life, a part of the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, a right-leaning high profile non-profit, found a large partisan divide in voter fraud belief with almost 100% of Democrats believing the election was legitimate, and only a third of Republicans agreeing. Compared to the PublicMind polls assessment of the 2004 election in Ohio, the number of Democrats who believed in fraud was cut in half, and the number of Republicans who believed so doubled. This may be in part due to the winner effect.

It was found that supporters of the winning candidate had much higher faith in elections than the losing party, so much so that it mitigated even pre-election fear-mongering. In the opposite vein, the pre-election fear-mongering that was mitigated in 2016 was probably strengthened in 2020 due to the opposite party’s victory. This may lead to overall less faith by some conservatives in the results of this study.

There is also a general lack of faith in the running of the system. Current perceptions that view the democratic process as poorly run decrease faith in it. With these compelling reasons for decreasing faith, it is clear to see how support for elections is only getting lower.